OK, today I pulled my AMD 64 3000+ Winchester and plugged in my X2 3800+ in its place.
I don't have any synthetic benchmarks or the hot shooters like Half-Life 2 or Far Cry to test framerates. Anyway, my primary interest was in having a more stable, more responsive system.
I spent the afternoon cruising the web, playing around with Photoshop and Microsoft Office, and I played a quick game of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3.
All around, I'm very happy. I think the $329 was money well spent and I think I'm happier with this processor than I would have been with something like the 3700+.
The difference was immediately apparent when I booted up my system with the new CPU.
Previously, Windows popped up within 10 to 15 seconds after turning the computer on -- but there was another 15-second wait while all the minor little programs completed their start-up routines.
With the X2, there was no wait.
Windows came up within about 10 seconds and was ready to go. I clicked on the Taskbar and all the usual culprits were there (Real player, Winamp, Google Desktop search, Microsoft Antispyware Beta, my Norton security programs, anti-virus and firewall, Norton Go Back, etc.) They apparently loaded up while Windows was loading up. Once the desktop came up, windows was ready to go. That was a nice change.
I downloaded some photos from my digital camera, resized them in Photoshop and then created a test Powerpoint presentation in Microsoft Office. With the 3000+, Office had a tendency to stutter -- it never froze up the computer, but there was a definite hesitation. With the X2, it was very responsive and there was no "stutter."
Now, how much of that is due to the second core and how much is due to the fact that the X2's Manchester core has all the latest revisions and refinements, is a separate question.
I also uncompressed some RAR and Zipped files and the process seemed to be a little bit quicker.
Lastly, I loaded up Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, which I had quit playing some time ago because it was so slow and aggravating. Even the menus were slow to load up and navigate through.
Gameplay was noticeably quicker with the X2. I don't think the difference can be attributed to the 200 mhz speed bump. Improvements to the core might be reponsible for some of the improvement (there's about a year's worth of innovation between the Winchester and the Manchester cores), but it just "feels" like the extra core came into play.
I downloaded the latest version of CPU-Z and it properly identifies both my cores. My CPU is a Model B, Stepping 1, Family F, Ext. family F, Ext. model 2B, Revision BH-E4 (whatever all that means).
Oh, one other thing. I had several things running at one time, including working in Office while Norton Anti-virus was running a check in the background. When I've tried that before, there was noticeable lag and slowed performance. But with the X2, performance was smooth and trouble free.
OK, no revelations here. My experience pretty much parallels what all the reviews have said. If you have a game that isn't running quick enough and that's your priority, you should probably buy the fastest single core CPU you can afford.
But if multi-tasking is more important, then the X2 definitely won't disappoint.
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