Number of Cores vs Clock Speed - Summary
In all instances I have found it better to have more cores, as a opposed to fewer cores, regardless of clock speed.
Number of Cores vs Clock Speed - Example
I run a XW8400 and an XW6600. They are both capable of running 8 cores split over two physical processors.
I have run the XW8400 in two configurations:
- 2 x Xeon 5160 (2 x 2 Core Processors @ 3.00GHZ - Total 4 Cores)
- 2 x Xeon E5345 (2 x 4 Core Processors @ 2.33GHZ - Total 8 Cores)
Despite the significantly lower clock speed, the 8 core set up is:
- Quicker
- Less Glitchy
- More Stable
Number of Cores vs Clock Speed - How Do I Know This
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ gives the following marks for the CPUs
- Xeon 5160 - 963
- Xeon E5345- 1868
Both systems are running 16GB RAM and High Quality SSDs. As such bottlenecks from these components are reduced.
I also really do trash this old PC with modern heavy modelling software & and video encoding. And have found that in all cases the machine is less prone to hang ups, and crashes when run in an 8 core configuration, as opposed to a 4 core configuration. And also completes tasks much moire quickly.
This is based on 10 years of observations, and using the same machine with 3 different operating systems (XP / 7 / 10).
Additional
Why am I using such an old (18 years) PC?
This:
And guess what this 18 year old PC still works really well. Please consider fixing / or upgrading what you already have, rather then adding discarding your equipment and adding to the e-waste problem.
