Hey, recently I’ve been browsing r/thinkpad alot and have been a part of the ThinkPad craze. I’ve noticed that lots of people, especially on that subreddit, still use Dual-Core CPUs, and deem them as more than capable, or enough.
I’ve been in the US for almost 5 years now, but I used to live in Brazil back in 2019. I’ve never owned a laptop with a quad-core CPU if I’m not mistaken, and I don’t think I’ve ever had more than 8GB of RAM (except on a Desktop) before moving here. I’ve grown accustomed to having a decent laptop, and desktop while living here, as well as a up-to-date phone, etc.
I’m curious to know what are people’s thought on older CPUs and usability of older hardware. I currently own a laptop with an i7 6th gen, which is Dual-Core and 8gbs and it really doesn’t get any attention, be it for watching youtube or doing online, browser-related study or just reddit browsing.
I couldn’t really picture myself using anything that doesn’t have 16GB Ram, and 4 cores, and preferably not freezing or having slowdowns, but after considering moving back to Brasil, and knowing the situation, especially for tech, since everything is harder to obtain and wayy more expensive, I’ve started question myself how many people are still using dual-core systems, that are happy with it and don’t see anything wrong with that.
I’d like to give the old X1 Carbon 4th gen another try and see how much my view could change. I know hardware has been getting a little cheaper in some ways and quad-core and higher CPUs have been popular for a few years, but I’m not sure that it’s still accessible to everyone as I’d like to think.
Thanks in advance!
I replaced my gaming laptop some time ago with an ultrabook that has an i3 10110U. The lightest task I use the laptop for is browsing the web. The heaviest task is using it as a real-time effect processor for my guitar. Dual core CPUs are still perfectly viable, depending on individual needs.
Imo dual cores still fine depending on what you’re using it for, having a good SSD is more important.
A major problem with them is that most dual core chips floating around lack 4k h.264 hardware decode. So it’s easy to basically bring the computer to its knees by selecting the wrong thing on YouTube. The lack of modern video codec decode in general in MOST dual cores tends to make these computers frustrating for the modern internet.
Generally, they obviously aren’t fast and I’d generally recommend an upgrade, but the computers are perfectly usable. Especially if you just want to use an old laptop with a nice screen and keyboard for something like writing. It’s hilariously more important to have an SSD than it is to have a quad core.
You would want to run a lightweight linux distribution like lubuntu. It’s basically your only choice. Win11 will bring dual core machines to their knees.
For light usage (web browsing, word docs, email,etc) modern dualcores are more than enough
If it has Hyperthreading then you can still boot up any game. If it doesn’t, it’s still good enough for web browsing, and other basic stuff.
I’m currently using a Dell Inspiron 15 5555 for college. (Visual Studio 2022, VSCode, Microsoft Office and a bit of light gaming (Geometry Dash, Minecraft, Terraria, ADOFAI and others)) It works surprisingly well. The only problem is the battery and the fact that I could have gotten something better for the price but i was in a hurry. It uses a I5 6200u, 12GB of LPDDR3 (idk why the guy who sold it put that), a 500GB SSD and it even supports Windows Hello
If it’s basic use, yes it’s usable
Yes, dual-core laptops are still usable in 2023. I use one as a secondary pc beside my desktop. It’s an older Lenovo Ideapad and has a 2C/4T Intel i3 8th gen. It does just fine in web browsing, simple programming, office apps and video playback. Even running Windows 11 and with a 1920x1080p screen I have no issues with the performance for everyday tasks.
Would I buy one today? Probably not, personally I’d like to have a higher buffer in performance.
Dual cores chug a lot even in basic tasks like using a browser or opening the file explorer. I would recommend 4 cores minimum.
That’s not my experience. And that’s not even a recent one I’m using. My laptop has an i5 6200u. It runs Edge fine and I can even watch 1080p60 videos on YouTube without frame drops. I didn’t check how many tabs I can use but i think the max I used was 10? And it still worked fine
Core2Duo E7400 (2008), 2x4GB DDR2 with Win10 installed on SSD, for browsing and office work is absolutely fine… still used as a daily driver of a small business without annoying anyone using it (including myself from time to time).
usable? Sure
Would i want to use one? Not when i could find a dirt cheap quad core (or better) used laptop.
I have a early 2015 MacBook Pro I use for college at home I have a nice gaming rig but the mac is the only laptop I have and it’s a dual core i5 and it’s more than fine for some tasks I might need to remote into my home pc like using any kinda of vm that’s isn’t Linux or Android studio but for light programming in vs code is more than fine the 8gb of ram hurt it more than the dual core cpu.
I still use a dual core MacBook Pro from 2013 for simple browsing. I have much more powerful computer for work and video games. But the old laptop is just fine for a couch computer.
Dual-cores are starting to struggle with more modern software that assumes a lot of cores and processes. Back when dual-core was introduced there was much more of a leaning towards multi-threading which is often better on older machines.
These older machines have lower disk I/O too so modern programmers assume faster standards and can be sloppier through complacency.
Both of these things are forgotten when people analyze Linux distros and the like by focusing primarily on RAM.
I have an 8th gen intel i3 laptop and it does fine for light browsing and media consumption. But I’m a heavy browser (lots of tabs, never ending reddit with images and videos expanded etc.) and it becomes sluggish before too long.
It’s not a dual core but I just upgraded my grandfather from a Phenom II X4 925 (2.8GHz) to a Phenom II X6 1055T (2.8GHz turbo to 3.3GHz). Even he noticed the performance boost. The system already had an SSD but it boots faster and loads programs and web pages faster. All he does is craigslist, Facebook marketplace, and a few other sites. So I’d say the extra cores help these days.