> The whole system can become unresponsive from the load of a single process. Two cores is great if you have only one CPU-hogging thread, but as soon as a mult

> The whole system can become unresponsive from the load of a single process. Two cores is great if you have only one CPU-hogging thread, but as soon as a multithreaded app gets thrown in you have the same problem again -- more runnable threads than CPUs. If your dual core CPU doesn't "become unresponsive" when you start a 2+-threaded task then your single core problem is probably not processor-related. On the other hand, my dual-core laptop regularly screeches to a halt when certain IO loads get involved, esp. vmware, due to poor filesystem design (ext3/ext4). I've switched to data=writeback, sacrificing some integrity for responsiveness, but ultimately I think new filesystems like btrfs will go a long way towards improving response times.