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What is the practical difference between dual core and quad core?

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pengyou

Well-Known Member
It seems that buying a tablet is full of compromises. I want 8 things but I can only get 6 at the price that I want to pay. That is, of course, true about many things in life. When I heard about the Nexus 7 I became somewhat obsessed at the idea of having a quadcore processor. As I do more shopping I find that there may be other tablets with dual core cpus that have of the features that I want for the same price of less. Specifically, I would like to have front and back cameras and be able to load a mini-sd card, or have 64 gb of memory installed in the computer and 2 gb of ram. The most intensive app that I will likely use on this tablet is Skype with video chat. Other things: ebook, videos, music, simple office apps, appointments, not taking, etc. I think if I get a dual core cpu I will be able to do all of the things that I want to do.

My question: what is the practical difference between a dual core and quad core cpu in a tablet? When running what kind of apps does the difference in speed become apparent?
 
Well the quad core is faster, unless you have a dual core A15, which is as fast as the quad core A9 on the Nexus 7. Other than that you're fine. We're at the point in time where smoothness isn't determined by processor alone but by RAM as well. A quad core with just 512MB of RAM will lag more than a dual core with 1GB worth of RAM.

Practically speaking though, there isn't much difference. As it is, only 3 tablets exist that have quad core chips that I know of, and its the Nexus 7, Note 10.1, and Note 8.0. I have a dual core tablet I haven't come across much incompatibilities.
 
What is the most taxing app that you use on your tablet? Do you use Skype video? and do you run multiple apps at the same time with Skype video?
 
Give us the specs of the tablets your looking at and we'll tell you which is faster.

Having more cores doesn't always mean ones faster

chanchan05 said:
unless you have a dual core A15, which is as fast as the quad core A9 on the Nexus 7.
Click to expand...

The Nexus 10 is faster than the Nexus 7, they don't offer the same performance.

It's good example of a Dual Core CPU being faster than a Quad Core CPU though, but it's the only one I know of using Exynos Dual Cortex A15's.
 
Shocky said:
Give us the specs of the tablets your looking at and we'll tell you which is faster.

Having more cores doesn't always mean ones faster



The Nexus 10 is faster than the Nexus 7, they don't offer the same performance.

It's good example of a Dual Core CPU being faster than a Quad Core CPU though, but it's the only one I know of using Exynos Dual Cortex A15's.
Click to expand...

I think the speed difference is also affected by the RAM in their case. The N10 AFAIK has twice as much.
 
Practical difference between dual and quad core is regarding multitasking.. More cores can be easily served to process, the ram available + needed processing speed.
Ex- A quad core will handle multiple apps at once much better then dual core but when it comes to single app/game which obviously is low resource hungry then they both will work same....
 
pengyou said:
What is the most taxing app that you use on your tablet? Do you use Skype video? and do you run multiple apps at the same time with Skype video?
Click to expand...

I don't do skype, but I do a lot of things, and my Tab Plus is heavily customized. On my homescreen, I have 15 UCCW widgets (with updates for calendar and weather), another that updates at a regular interval and several shortcuts. I am also running Widgetlocker with 3 UCCW widgets on it. with I also have a live wallpaper and is running Nova Prime, also have a custom brightness app for autobrightness running all the time.

In the background I have Facebook, Falcon Pro, Instagram, 3 email accounts, Sugarsync, Contacts and Calendar all syncing automatically.

With all that running in the background along with other services that Android needs, I can still Play Asphalt 7 with no lags.

I have an unrooted Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus with 3G. For perspective its got a 1.2Ghz Exynos dual core with a Mali-400 GPU and 1GB of RAM. Essentially its a huge Galaxy SII. It's a little bit more powerful than the current Tab 2 (since basically the Note 8.0 is the successor to the Tab Plus).
 
I am looking at the ASUS Transformer TF300 T-B1-BL 10.1-Inch 32 GB Tablet now. Actually, it is also quad core with 32 gb of ram and only about $30 more than the n7. I was originally looking at the Blackberry playbook, with dual core.
 
pengyou said:
I am looking at the ASUS Transformer TF300 T-B1-BL 10.1-Inch 32 GB Tablet now. Actually, it is also quad core with 32 gb of ram and only about $30 more than the n7. I was originally looking at the Blackberry playbook, with dual core.
Click to expand...

The TF300 has 1GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage. You're confusing RAM and internal memory. Anyway, don't bother with the Playbook.
 
herecomesmaggi said:
but when it comes to single app/game which obviously is low resource hungry then they both will work same....
Click to expand...

Nope, when it comes to general apps it depends on two things. Does the app take advantage of multiple cores and how fast are the individual cores?

For games you have another two things to consider, GPU performance and screen resolution.

You can't say performance will be the same without knowing these details.

chanchan05 said:
I think the speed difference is also affected by the RAM in their case. The N10 AFAIK has twice as much.
Click to expand...

I don't think the amount of ram has anything to do with CPU performance, Cortex A15's are just that fast.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6425/google-nexus-4-and-nexus-10-review

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nexus-10-benchmark-tablet,3410-2.html
 
Shocky said:
Nope, when it comes to general apps it depends on two things. Does the app take advantage of multiple cores and how fast are.....
Click to expand...

Lets talk about Tapatalk, Titanium Backup, Whatsapp... Will there be actually a performance difference if compared between two handsets ex.- HTC One and Samsung nexus S. Answer is no and Handsets have quite large difference in Ram and processor.
However if same compared in case of launchers then one can feel the smoothness difference...
Most of the apps are considered to be low spec supporting during development as not everyone could afford a nexus or S4...
For me dual core never was a problem except gaming.
 
If you think about the galaxy s3, it has quad core and 1gb ram but the north american versions have dual core but 2gb ram. They perform almost identically on benchmarks and tbh, im on the quad core but id rather have the extra ram.

P.s i SO want a Nexus tab :)
 
There are many important things that to into overall performance rather than just number of cores.

4 is not necessarily better than 2

herecomesmaggi said:
Lets talk about Tapatalk, Titanium Backup, Whatsapp... Will there be actually a performance difference if compared between two handsets ex.- HTC One and Samsung nexus S. Answer is no
Click to expand...


If you're creating or restoring backups, I'd bet there's a huge difference in the amount of time it takes.

Even for nandroids, with system sizes taken into consideration. In fact, I've got a few phones laying around. I can test it
 
herecomesmaggi said:
Lets talk about Tapatalk, Titanium Backup, Whatsapp... Will there be actually a performance difference if compared between two handsets ex.- HTC One and Samsung nexus S. Answer is no and Handsets have quite large difference in Ram and processor.
However if same compared in case of launchers then one can feel the smoothness difference...
Most of the apps are considered to be low spec supporting during development as not everyone could afford a nexus or S4...
For me dual core never was a problem except gaming.
Click to expand...

I disagree with that, I used to use a Galaxy S which uses the same hardware as the Nexus S. There is a world of difference between general app performance on the Galaxy S and the Galaxy S4, the speeds in which the apps start, close and general responsiveness within the application are very different.

For more recent devices though with Dual Core Cortex A9 or better you have a point, however it still comes down to the individual app.
 
There are many factors that affect performance on a device. The number of core is one. You likely won't find two devices that are identical in every way except for the number of cores in the CPU. Even if you do, the software/OS/firmware may need some optimising to take advantage of more cores.

Building a device is a game of min/maxing. You want to get the best performance at the lowest cost. If you want to hit a higher price point, you can get a better CPU, GPU, RAM or other type of component or architechture and most likely a combination of them all.
 
most of the things you do.. that are important to you... a good dual core is sufficient.

the bigger games.. or very graphics intensive programs.. will need more computing power.

if you multi-task.. more apps.. and/or bigger apps.. then RAM is more important.

if you multi-task.. big games and apps.. then you want both quad core and more RAM.

but the way you want to use your tablet and at the price point.. go with dual core.
 
I actualy had a dream lastnight (omg im such a geek) about a "modular" phone where you buy the shell of the phone then buy a selection of CPU chips, RAM, GPU, storage, radio, camera etc to suit your needs/budget.
Sorry bit off topic lol :beer:
 
funkylogik said:
I actualy had a dream lastnight (omg im such a geek) about a "modular" phone where you buy the shell of the phone then buy a selection of CPU chips, RAM, GPU, storage, radio, camera etc to suit your needs/budget.
Sorry bit off topic lol :beer:
Click to expand...

That is an awesome dream...but if you think ahead a bit, it is not difficult to expect the average computer size to shrink to something smaller than a package of cigarettes within a few years...so then modularization at that point..when the industry comes up with a new mobo standard becomes not only a reality but a necessity, so that manufacturers can continue to offer products at too high a price :D
 
I guess most of the Android applications utilizes no more than 2 cores, it will probably remain this way for the next 2 years or so.
 
It depends on what you're looking to do with the tablet?

Are you looking to install/play games? Browsing? Reading etc?

I'd go with the first one tbh, only for the reason that it has more memory. The 8GB that the Samsung claims to have will probably be less than 5 after partitioning and OS install.
 
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