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Dual Processors, How much better are they?
In truth dual processors have been in your PC long before their public debut. A technique known as multi-threading enabled your computer to intelligently decide what tasks could be executed simultaneously and automatically perform them in parallel to boost speed. True dual processors add improvements and disadvantages. In a true dual processor a whole new set of resources for the processor are set asside. Principly this involves high speed memory known as its cache. Since resources can bottle neck the performance of a system as easily as waiting on the processor this addition of resources further improves performance. Other resources are not duplicated, such as your main electronic memory, or RAM, as well as your hard drive, cd-drive, network access, etc. The true downside comes in the dual processors requirement that the programmer define separate processes, or threads to achieve full use of the two (or more) processors. Very few programs take advantage of this, though having two actively processing programs that are unrelated can take advantage of this. An example would be running large scale statistical calcultions while having a spreadsheet calculate comparably difficult values. Rarely do users perform these types of operations in a business world. More often we are stuck waiting for resources that a multiprocessor system can do little to helps us with, such as waiting for a web site to download.
In short multiprocessor systems are unlikely to help you more than a couple of percentage points as they chug away on lightweight background tasks. True measures of performance are better derived from the processors speed, the speed of the bus, which is used to deliver data internally, and the performance of your internet connection.
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