dual core or not?

i am thinking of a new computer and was wandering if the new amd x2 dual cores cpu's would be better at gaming than the standard athlon 64 cpu's

i'm not good at maths but i would say two is greater then one....

well its not really delta...

having dual cores is like having two processors (but a tad faster)...

now, programs that are written to be used with two or more processors are called 'multithreaded'.. that means the program is written so that it can do two things at once...

Games are written to have only ONE cpu... so the other core will sit there idl, and do absolutely nothing, zip, zilch, zero, unless the game is written to support it...

So, instead of getting a dual core cpu, get an athlon FX and overclock the biach, then whip the shite outa the games that you will play...


Yeah.. I havnt slept in since yesterday morning, so if this makes NO sense, ill try and do it again in the morning or something.. Or someone else can fix it.. and make it make sense..

um. yes there will be a performence increase. check out tom's hardware for some stats.

yes and there arent many drivers out that support dual core

why would the drivers need to support dual core? it has nothing to do with it.

And delta, how about you check every other review site in the world and notice that in games the X2's are the same as an equally clocked A64 maybe a tad faster due to the way the core is structured..

found a thingy that explains what i said a few posts ago

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMTcwJnVybF9wYWdlPTU =

go down to the "Multi-Threading Discussion" bit..


And delta, THG is a shite site, they are more biased than Eddie is about the magpies.. go find yourself a new site that tells things properly..

i know the game is an old-assed fuck, but wasn't Quake 3 a multi-threaded app? im not really sure, it's only what i have heard. but feel free to correct me on that if you want

And delta, THG is a shite site, they are more biased than Eddie is about the magpies.. go find yourself a new site that tells things properly..

I beg to differ, i haven't seen them being biased in anyway whatsoever, for years i have relied on their CPU and graphics card benchmarks for deciding what hardware to buy and by my own comparisons they have been nothing but accurate. so im guessing by slagging damo for him saying there will be a performance increase because he saw stats at toms hardware that you assume they're a pack of intel nazis? that to me doesnt seem right. still, i guess you do have a point. if games are not written to take advantage of that 2nd core then we will see zero increase on performance, while i have not done any research on them, did you take into account on other factors, like maybe these cpu's having a bigger L1 or L2 cache or anything like that?

THG had a few moments a couple years ago where their figures seemed to be vastly different from everyone elses. Some public outcry and retraction of articles later, and things seem to be more legit now. That being said, I find their VGA charts to be very handy in video card decision making. ;)

Just because a game isn't designed to handle dual core, doesn't mean it's not going to run faster. The game, in theory, could use one dedicated core, whereas all the background functions can use the 2nd core to do their thing which, in turn, will give the game that tiny little boost.

OS on one, Game on the Other?

Not quite that simple, but sort of.

Did you take into account on other factors, like maybe these cpu's having a bigger L1 or L2 cache or anything like that?
Yes, thats why I said there will probably be a small increase from other minor things, but still, at the moment, and likely for a while, your money is far better spent on a single core proc.

And as for THG being legit lately...

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=65291

For the money Single core will give you better gaming for your dollar however if you are looking at a powerful single CPU (like the FX 55) then you may want to spend the money on going dual core, while the CPU power in gaming won't be as high, the chip has better general use and a lot of upcoming games may take advantage of it.

I'm about to buy a new PC in the next 2 months. So far I'm looking at the AMD64 4400+ X2 CPU as the best bet for a high end rig

Don't bother with the 4200 as it's got just 512k of cache. go with the 1 MB 4400 its the best buy with dual core.

yeah from the sounds of it, dual core will be a tought one to pick, it might not be worth the money to upgrade yet, however it'll be worth the money now instead of later coz then when games are released with dual core you'll have the chip ready to go. the only downside will be if they go and make like a gen2 version really early, they do this occasionally, like the 64bits, one minute we have some the next minute its, "dont bother with the early ones, they were shit".

however, i do like the idea of being able to rip dvds and simealtaneously burn another on one cpu whilst playing bf2 on the other

Well, you wont QUITE be able to do that, as you dont have 2 systems, the rest of your system will still be bogged down doing the ripping part, while your trying to get stuff from teh hdd for battlefield..

SO yeah.. still a bit to go before you can do that kinda stuff..

Ummmmmmm.. No we are there now. We have been for the last 3 years. Dual Athlons have been able to game and do stuff like rip DVD's for ages. Most games do not use the hard drive much during play, only when Loading and unloading Maps/ textures and the like. Dual CPU's arn't new they been around for a long time. Dual core is new for PC's but most other CPU types have had them for ages.

If your going to spend more than $700 on a CPU don't look at Single core go straight to Dual. If you want Value for money gaming then stick with single.

No were not.. Your ripping a dvd.. 9.4 Gb?? its getting crunched by the cpu, and off to the RAM.. then itll be sent off to the Hard drive.. theres about a gig of ram gone..

now your playing BF2 maxxed out.. They say 2 GB recomended.. thats 3 gig of ram gone...

Because you have 3 gig of ram, your dual channel is not effective, therefore hampering performance.

But you have page file? yeah!! we only need 2 gig of ram!!

K, so now the hard drive is constantly being accessed for BF2 and the DVD ripping.

Your system is also running windows, andother 250Mb of ram, and other tasks that you have...

Our systems cannot keep up.. Dave, theres a reason that we dont all have dual CPU systems, and im sure its not price, as most avid gamers will spend anything on a system.

ripping DVDs, in most cases, will only use 100-200MB of RAM. It's more CPU intensive. BF2 plays fine on 1GB of RAM.

Multiple hard drives, on different channels / formats, can ease the HDD access problem. Plus pagefile shouldn't be used very often.

My win installation, with all the shit I have running, is currently using 259395KB of RAM... So there's plenty more to spare.

BF2 plays fine on 1GB of RAM.

now jump in a 64 player server and go screaming round in a jet, and have someone fire a few missiles at ya.. you should notice your ram running a tad low...

But what I was trying to get across is that you wont be able to 'truely' multitask with big system hogging apps without one or the other suffering...

Actually, I'm usually in one of the GA 64 player ranked servers... but I'm not a jet person. :) But yeah, I can see your point. Nothing is perfect, and true multitasking / multiprocessor / multicore work is never going to work exactly like that. Overheads are a nasty thing...

I am a jet person an BF ain't lagging on my machine and thats with Winamp, Asurus, and winAVI (converting a 200MB avi file to DVD with the CPU priority set to low which meant it took ages compared to normal.) running in the background. No i was only playing on a 32 player server and I did take a hit on frame rate, grahics settings and loading times for the Maps but I was still at 35 to 50 FPS and the game played fine.

Now my machine has a seprate PCI sata contoller for the HDD where WinAVI and the files I was converting reside which give it a slight advantage and I do have a gig of ram an a Ati 9800Pro but i must say if my machine can do that then a dual core PC must be capable of so much more.


While you may take a little longer in loading maps and may have to tone down the graphics there is no reason why it cannot be done. The question is WHY ???? Who the fuck is that desprate to rip a DVD and play a game ?

By the way Using BF2 as an exsample is pretty exstreem. Of course the lastest and greatest game is going to push a system to the max where most people are stuggling to play the game.

So yes you will take a performace hit. dual core is not as good as 2 PC's but you can do things with it that would chug a normal single CPU machine with similar power.

EDIT : A small performance hit for dual core

Well, actually if you read your posts from before, you said we could do it now...

And toning down the graphics shows that you cant keep up with what your throwing at it.. Which is what im trying to say, you cant realy do 2 big things at once..

And with winamp using a whole.. umm 2 % and azureus using.. ummm 0% on my box atm... I dont think they realy count as intensive background tasks..

And mind you, winamp is using 2% while UNDERCLOCKED to 1.6 ghz... at 2.3ghz its using a whole 1%!!! Damn these intensive background tasks!! Damn them to hell!!

Well, actually if you read your posts from before, you said we could do it now...I know. I have a habit of jumping to the opposite extreme of an argument.

In terms of background apps though, there's more than the obvious apps, like music, P2P, IM programs, etc. I know my PC at home has multiple servers running 24/7, virus scanners, raid controller software, hardware monitoring software, etc.... Stuff that does add up. On a dual core system they could be delegated to run on a different core to a primary application, such as a game. This is also where process priority comes into play. Give a couple things high priority and they can take a core each, with leftover processes taking the remainder from each core...

BL said it best earlier. If you really wanna splurge out and spend $700+ on a CPU, then go dual core. In the long run it'll be better off. However, if you want value for money, as a gamer, then a single core is the better option.

Sorry about my last post. It was a little incomplete when i hit post.

I'm buying a new PC....

4400 X2 AMD
2 GIG RAM
and hopefully if I play my cards right a 7800GTX.

This machine I would exspect to do some pretty amazing shit

Why Dual core ???? Cause I can

lol, thats about the only reason Id expect anyone to get a dual core, cause they have money to waste..

And beefy, whit that comment, I was refering to BL... :P

We can do it Now but not with normal home PC's. U have to get Athlon MP's or dual Xeon/Opertrons and that hardware is not exsactly the type of stuff that gamers want/afford.

I've seen it done with quake 3 and DVD burning (back in the day when Quake 3 was state of the art an DVD burning took an hour and if u were lucky you had a Geforce 3) So it was done with the equivalant hardware/software of the day. You could do it with modern hardware/software if u had $7k to spend. But with the advent of dual core in the AMD and Intel Home PC lines it means that we can get this technology at a price level that is more in our reach

all this talk about dual core, i recommend a read of this article, it really covers things well
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-x2.html

Im running
Windows Xp Pro 64bit
Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe nFORCE4 SLI
Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz Dual Core
CORSAIR 2x512mb PC5400 DDR2 RAM CAS3
Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition PCI Express 256mb

With no problems at the moment. Had some power supply issus but that was because a local shop sells sh1t! damo knows wich one ;)
Got a few minor driver issues but bf2 runns heaps better than b4 on winxp 32 bit

i dicided not to go dual core i already have a athlon 4000 siting right next to me

I decided to go Dual Core (AMD 4400 X2) I'll be able to tell you what i think of them ONCE THE BLOODY THING ARIVES (aparently there a little popular right now and unless you wanna pay through the nose for one there are none availilbe in Australia at a resonable price.) The rest of the crap arrived but it's a little useless without a CPU.

Had some power supply issus but that was because a local shop sells sh1t! damo knows wich one ;)

boo - if you mean my work then... lol your fault for buying it - we sell what? 350w?

lol ...It was only a temp fix and it was a 550W!

oh it was temp orite

I ended up buying a Modual 500w power supply

wow me too, u must have copied me, i got the x-connect titanium one, goddamn the mirror finish is sweet!!

although the MODULAR-ness of the psu has been negated by the fact i used every single connection cable that came with the psu!

Heh, just takes away from the whole concept.. :)

BTW i got my new PC

AMD4800X2
2 GB RAM

Fuck tis very fast AND YES I CAN RIP DVD'S AND PLAY BF2 and it dosent affect my framerate.


And i got heaps of points on the powersupply left over

god damit, and i thought my comp was gonna be fast. look on the windows x64 thread for the specs