AMD dual core - bang for my buck...

I completely say do NOT get a dual core. They cost so much more, and you dont get extra performance power unless you are running two hard-working programs at once. Games wont use the dual core technology until a couple years from now, and for the money that your spending to get a dual core, you could be getting a much faster single core processor that will do just fine. There is no need to get a dual core now. If you must have one, wait 6-12 months and they'll be much cheaper then.

thanks for the fast reply.

howerver im looking at dual core over a single core for a number of reasons. the first and formost being future proofing (yea i know its neer impossable) but im working on a system i can use for at least 3 to 4 years without touching or no more than minimal upgrades (i.e. ram).

also my games are generaly played online these days with winamp, ventrillo etc in the background and having all that compeating for cpu time is not a good thing... but thats how i like it  

i also do web designing where i can be running dreamweaver/photoshop ect at the same time so i will be able to more tham make use of the dual cores  

Why didn't you tell me so?  

Hmm. Well, I'm running on a 2500+, and I still play Counter-Strike and listen to music, and do pretty well. If you do get a dual core, get the X2 3800+.

Link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E1681...

Actually, an 939pin Opteron 170 or 175 seems to be the best.
AMD just Friday stopped making them, temporarily I hope, but they are still available at NewEgg and Monarch, for about the same as an X2, but a better chip.

Opterons may perfor better but you also have to consider that the other parts of the pc are also going to cost more as well. and well being in australia i cant find anywhere to get a motherboard to put a Opteron on or the processor it seems....

im just looking for a system that can do what i whant as a home pc, that wont compleatly break my budget  

The Opteron 165, 170, 175 are socket 939 and work in standard nforce or ATI motherboards, same ones an X2 fits in, and same price per chip.
I ordered an Opty 175 for use in my Asus AT8-MVP socket 939 board.

In other words, they use same parts... and while you can get them, same price as X2, infact the Opty 175 is cheaper than the X2 4400

Asus A8R-MVP + Abit AT8 = Asus AT8-MVP?
Why not: Abit A8R?!

  That is too funny!  

Hello,

Dual core are really ideal for encoding audio/ video, winrar, auto-cad, rendering. However they cost much more.

Now if you plan on gaming, single core AMD's are still dominant over their dual core counter parts. For example, the AMD 3800+ 512k/ or 1mb version out does even the 4400+ in every area with the exception in some real world work.

Check out the CPU comparison chart. This should help you very much. http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/21/the_mother_of_al...

Hey Rich, are those Opterons the good overclockers I heard about - Or is there another reason you reccomend them?

Well, here are my two cents. I just built a dual core system with an X2 3800, and I absolutely love it. I haven't overclocked (yet), but the system is very fast, and rock solid.

I'm running the processor with 2GB of RAM, 300 GB Sata 150 hard drive, EPOX motherboard, and two 7800 GTs in SLI.

Hope this helps. I say go for the dual cores.

Hi just got this from another site , http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/52433/?o=... , and this is wot I picked up...soundes very interesting yes?



Re: X2 3800 vs X2 4200 vs 4000 rev E
hum learned something new.

If you install hot patch it splits all programs 50% to each core.

If you edit the registry as follows each program and games uses a different core of its own

Little more efficient

After you install the hotfix that is described in this article, follow these steps to enable the new performance state policy behavior:
1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. Right-click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession Manager, point to New, and then click Key.
3. Type Throttle for the new key name.
4. Right-click Throttle, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. Type PerfEnablePackageIdle for the value name.
6. Right-click PerfEnablePackageIdle, and then click Modify.
7. In the Edit DWORD Value box, type 1. In the Value data box, make sure that Hexadecimal is selected, and then click OK.
8. Quit Registry Editor.


3800+ X2 toledo @ 2.65GHz = to 5100+ 265x4x10
MSI K8N neo 4 plat
1 gig corsair @ PC 4200 T1
4x 36 gig raptor raid 0
ATI RADEON X1800XT 512 @ 690/1.6
X-fi Xtreme Fidelity sound card.
80 gig external hammer HDD

and I got this ...

Go here and get the X2 hot patch from microsoft.

http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News...

Go here and get X2 drivers from AMD

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/...

Go here and download duel core nvidia drivers. AKA Real 80 drivers. They do work I gained 20 to 30% going to them.

http://www.tweaksrus.com/index.php?option=com_docman&ta...


btw please note that none of this info is mine just wot a guy called pcgeek posted
his spec pc as well ;-)

can we get this back on track a little, i am already going to buy a dual core CPU from the x2 range, not an Opteron and im not intreseted in overclocking performance at this stage.

what i AM after is what model of the range will come out as the best balance between performance (and as a result longgetivy for the system) and cost to get set up.

those fans will be noisy unless you put it on sleep mode. I have to switch my p3-800 off before I can sleep (it keeps waking up from sleep mode). I'm also considering which of the dual core athlons to get. There are 100's of rave reviews from users going back 4 months for each of the 3800, 4200 and 4400 dual core athlons here:

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCa...

just type in 3800 or 4200 or 4400 in the 'keywords' box.

most are about how cool the processors run and how easy they overclock, but will also sometimes tell you about how noisy (or quiet) each of the processors are from the users themselves.

There seem to be enough good reasons for purchasing any of the dual core athlons. I'm not much of an overclocker myself either but if it is really easy to do like it sounds then I might be tempted to bump it up by just 10%. One point I did note from reading the reviews is that users said that the processors are very good but sometimes restricted even by 1gb of ram, so I'm tempted to go for a 4200X2 with 2gb of ram. However, wait a few more weeks until after xmas and who knows, dual core athlons might be cheaper still so a 4400 might be affordable. I'm also not sure if when buying a new dual core, any patches are required to be installed from the amd site and microsoft site (although there seem to be good links provided by another poster above about this)

i should have noted that im goint o be using 2gbs of ram as well...

and as for overclocking how easy would it be to squeeze an extra 200mhz out of any of these? as its afully tempting to go for the 4400+ and if i need a little more grunt try to up its clock spedd by 200mhz to match the 4800+  

but im not game enough to plann on doing this unless i can get some sort of opinion on it being easy to do with our requireing a hugly upgraded cooling system (although is i go a water system for a quiet system this wont matter either  )

I'm in a simliar position really deciding what new pc configuration to go with to replace my very aged p3-800. As things currently stand, my spec is:

Athlon 4200+ dual core
ASUS A8N-VM mother board (non-sli)
2gb ram
7800gtx (256)
mini tower (550psu)

should be enough to last a good few years. I'll wait until january and maybe get a better pc (eg. 4400X2) if component prices drop. A single fast graphics card should be enough for any game (past, present or future) based on screen resolution of 1280 X 1024.

I've enquired how easy it is to o/c the processor and apparently the asus motherboard has a feature in the bios that enables users to o/c by either 5, 10 or 20%. won't know exact details until I get manual with new pc. I don't think an o/c of 10% is really going to harm to these processors.

Save your self some money and get the 3800+ and a 7800 GT. You can OC the 3800+ and the GTX isn't worth the money, the GT performs within ~10fps of the GTX so it's hardly worth the extra $150.

10 fps can make all the difference.

I think you are just saying that because you have had to settle for 7800 gt's rather than gtx's. If you could have gtx's you'd be over the moon.