Will Core Duo Notebooks Trade Battery Life For Quicker Response?

Application Test Results

DivX 6.1

Because the DivX 6.1 codec runs faster on multi-core systems, the Core Duo T2500 blows everything else away. Even compared to the fastest running Pentium M (780) it still shows a performance advantage of a good 25 percent.

Adobe Photoshop CS 2

The dual core system is clearly faster than a single core system from the second Centrino generation (Pentium M 760) running at the same clock speed. Compared to the faster Pentium M 780, however, it shows no speed advantage. This is presumably because only three of the seven filters in the Intel-developed test scripts were optimized for multi-threading. In other words, when compared to the Pentium M 780, the Core Duo barely pulls ahead when running only those three filters optimized for multi-threading. When the tables are turned, and both machines run only the four filters that aren't optimized, the higher core clock rate for the Pentium M 780 lets it cross the finish line first.

AVG Anti-Virus 7.1

This application is obviously not optimized for multi-core processing. Even the Pentium M 760, which runs as the same speed as the Core Duo T2500, beats the dual core processor on this test.

ABBYY FineReader Pro 8.0

This next result is puzzling. ABBYY FineReader definitely belongs to the class of applications optimized for dual core CPUs, as results from our recent Pentium D Review clearly illustrate. That said, we monitored core loads while running this application on the Core Duo T2500 with Task Manager, and were astonished to see that FineReader used one core exclusively and left the other idle.