why buy dual core?

[kfj]

Re: why buy dual core?

well technically if you have more then 2 programs open right now you would benefit from dual core, so people that have it right now are getting good use of it, mostly when encoding videos you can still use a pc with out it being bogged down

[Kraven]

Re: why buy dual core?

just having 2 programs open you will not notice any difference :p its only good when you are using 2 programs or more that suck up computer resources and are big programs

[kfj]

Re: why buy dual core?

thats why i said technically

[Eliminator]

Re: why buy dual core?

i myself almost always have at least 6 windows open. Anyway click Ctrl Alt Del and then go to the processes tab. Now look at how many programs are running in the background. You may try to shut most of them down but you cant turn them all off without crashing windows. This is why Dual cores would be better. I bet that it would be possible to allocate a core just for a game. And beside i'm sure that you dont only have Battlefield 2 installed on your computer. You will do stuff that will take advantage of the 2nd core at one point. And they dont even cost that much. The best one is x4800 (Intel suck) and its a bit over $800. thats about as much as FX55 single core costs and its only 200mhz faster. Same L2 except 4800 has just 200 pathetic MHZ slower but of cause it also has a whole extra core to more than make that up. thats what i'm going to get. i think the 4400 gives you the most bang for the buck. it also has 1m of L2 but its 200mhz slower than the 4800 and about $300 less. the 3800 is the budget version but still is pretty good. It is 200mhz slower than the 4400 and it only has 512 of L2 but if i remember right it actually has 1mb of L2 but its locked and somehow you can unlock it to get the extra 512. Nice. Go to the overclockers forums to learn more.

[DrunkenPirate]

Re: why buy dual core?

That's not true, an FX-57 (best single-core for gaming) is much more expensive than a 4800. So don't make it sound like dual core is double the money.

Can it outperform an FX57?
Not according to that chart no. :)

[Eliminator]

Re: why buy dual core?

those are benchmarks and dont really show real life performance. If your AV app will suddenly decide that its time to run an anti virus scan without you knowing then the difference between the two should become more visible. FX57 performance would drop really badly while the X2 wont care.

[bisley]

Re: why buy dual core?

x2 = Futureproof

[Kraven]

Re: why buy dual core?

wrong, x2 in the future yes like 2-3 years from now. Games with it enabled soon will see minimal performance boost. It wont be until like 2-3 years down the road where game coders have enhanced it and when amd release new versions of dual core to match the game developers.

[neo265]

Re: why buy dual core?

wrong, x2 in the future yes like 2-3 years from now. Games with it enabled soon will see minimal performance boost. It wont be until like 2-3 years down the road where game coders have enhanced it and when amd release new versions of dual core to match the game developers.

I agree. If your not a die hard video encoder then the X2 is hardly worth the extra cost, your basically looking at double the cost (and more) over a similar gaming performing singlecore. The only other reason to buy an X2 is if you want to encode music while gaming or video editing and even then it will need to access memory which will effect your fps.

It will be quite a while before fully fledged multithreaded games come out and even then I cant see it doing much as its all been done by the GPU more and more now.

How can Windows Vista do any more than Windows XP Pro? They are both capable of running multi processors.

[kfj]

Re: why buy dual core?

people that are buying dual core arent buying it for games

[Eddy01741]

Re: why buy dual core?

Ok, here's how it looks,
for X2:
3800+=3200/3500
4000+=3500
4200/4400=3700/3800
4600/4800=4000

THat's for gaming only, it's about double the price, wouldn't get one now yet.

[toxik]

Re: why buy dual core?

Can it outperform an FX57?
Not according to that chart no. :)

Yes, but you said save yourself some cash and buy a single core. Anyways, when new drivers come out using multi-threaded shader calculation, I bet those numbers will get closer.... and again were talking a 5fps diference here. If you buy a X2 4400 and another vid card for SLI, you still will spend less money than 1 FX-57.....

Hey menace and wtf are you talkin about game developers coding for multithreaded cpus..... Guess what Xbox 360 and PS3 are both multithreading systems. Plus how do you know how big or small the performance boost will be....? You work for amd or nvidia?

[Eddy01741]

Re: why buy dual core?

Ok, to all people, the difference between a FX-57, and a 3000+ is at most 5 fps in BF2. vid card matters a TON more, CPU is for other applications like internet browsing, or microsoft office, etc.

[Umi.Ryuuzaki]

Re: why buy dual core?

Ok, to all people, the difference between a FX-57, and a 3000+ is at most 5 fps in BF2. vid card matters a TON more, CPU is for other applications like internet browsing, or microsoft office, etc.

Not always true. For BF2, i'm not sure, but I know that CPU does matter in other games, as long as you got the ram and vid card to back it up; HL2 is still CPU-bottlenecked as far as we're concerned. But BF2's priority (until 1.03/1.1?) is RAM and/or Vid card, then CPU. One can benefit from a stronger CPU, but without the extra ram to backup the vid card (or vice versa), the ugprade is wasted.

[Kraven]

Re: why buy dual core?

Hey menace and wtf are you talkin about game developers coding for multithreaded cpus..... Guess what Xbox 360 and PS3 are both multithreading systems. Plus how do you know how big or small the performance boost will be....? You work for amd or nvidia?

Nope i dont work for amd or nvidia i heard it from the best game developer himself in a 2 hour speech about the future of games. Mr John Carmack, guy who made quake games and doom3 etc. He knows more than me and you :p so id believe him over anyone else as hes the one making the real next gen games.

As for the multithreaded consoles he talked about that to he said they are incredibly hard for game coders and thus wont have any big performance boost and the guy who made hl2 is also annoyed by the fact they have chosen to go multicore.