Application Test Results
All conventional application benchmarks involving a single application at a time, as well as the multitasking tests, were run on the MSI S271 with the Turion 64 X2 TL-60 processor.
DivX 6.1
Since the DivX 6.1 codec is faster on multi-core systems, the laptops equipped with dual-core processors swept the table. AMD's 2 GHz Turion 64 X2 TL-60 was even a tick faster than Intel's Core Duo T2500, which operates at the same clock speed.
Adobe Photoshop CS 2
In this test, the AMD and Intel dual-core laptops were faster than a single-core system with the same clock speed. However, neither the Turion 64 X2 nor Intel's Core Duo could beat the Pentium M 780 with a higher clock speed. This is most likely because only three of the seven filters of the test script are optimized for multi-threading. In other words, a dual-core laptop like the MSI271 can initially gain some ground while applying the three optimized filters. However, the Sonoma system with the single-core Pentium M780 is faster with the four non-optimized filters due to its higher clock speed, and eventually wins the race.
AVG Anti-Virus 7.1
Obviously, this application is not optimized for multi-core environments.