I need to purchase a laptop for school (it's a requirement), and I want to buy something that I can also use for game programming. Money isn't really an issue, but I am very apprehensive about how useful Intel's dual core processor technology would be for me.
I've been reading about the Intel dual core processors here:
http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/dual-core/
In general, my laptop will be used for academics (which requires little processing power) and game programming. The dual core technology seems like it will be most useful for multimedia applications, or anything that needs a lot of things to be done in parallel...big time multitasking, but I highly doubt it will yield any sort of an FPS boost or latency reduction in anything interactive.
On my current system, which is an older P4 with a high clock speed (released before P4 extreme edition), I had decided to disable the 'hyper threading' technology, which attempts to handle executions in parallel, a simulated 'dual core'. Ultimately it made things run like crap (menus in windows would take slightly longer to pop up when I had it enabled, programs took longer to start, input from programs was delayed, and in my own programs a slight increase in the time it would take to render a single graphics frame).
The only redeeming quality about the hyper threading technology is that it was only simulated, and could subsequently be turned off...not the case with the physical dual core processor.
Anyone care to opine?
