PCA Forums

Seen a lot of bench marks, what do you think?

probably until more proggies can use both cores, single core makes more sense, although the ht capabilities in the current ibm chips do seem to make it smoother when you are doing lots of stuff

3200+ or 3500+ and Overclock it. Not cost justified to get the X2 yet.

1 core I think until maybe late next year.

Greg

Dual core isn't happening for gaming yet. Some games down't work properly under dual core and there's a utility floating around to turn off one core while gaming.

We'll all be running dual core next year but it's not ready for prime time yet.

Wow what are these horrible games that break because you have two processors? Anyway I agree if your going to be gaming a lot a single core is much better than dual.

But if you want to do 2 things even remotely cpu intensive at the same time dual core would be a better choice. I don't know about you but when I'm not gaming I usually have about 5 programs open and I would love to have a dual core. I have no money at the moment so I'll have to wait.

Yeah, was thinking dual core for gaming would be a waste of money. Also, wouldnt it be kind of hard to devote certian in game work cycles for each core for a game and how would they be brought back togeter without having another bottle neck? Kind of like when Alienware tried to devote half the screen to on vid card and half to the other(there version of sli), there was always the annoying line in the middle of the monitor. Would there be more mobo noise generated by more cpu cores?(more lanes in use @ one time?) So much for onboard sound if there is. Also, for the ones still running older machines, will there be dual core only software? If so the low budget man would suffer.

Originally posted by Key Keeper
Also, wouldnt it be kind of hard to devote certian in game work cycles for each core for a game and how would they be brought back togeter without having another bottle neck? Kind of like when Alienware tried to devote half the screen to on vid card and half to the other(there version of sli), there was always the annoying line in the middle of the monitor.

A game would have to be written with multithreading in mind before it would even use the second core on the cpu. For instance, the audio/game engine could run on one core while the physics engine ran on other. Or, everything could be split evenly between the two cores. This is NOT at all similar to SLI, and there is no real bottleneck when splitting processes between two cpu's (cores).

Originally posted by Key Keeper
Would there be more mobo noise generated by more cpu cores?(more lanes in use @ one time?) So much for onboard sound if there is. Also, for the ones still running older machines, will there be dual core only software? If so the low budget man would suffer.

Theres no such thing as "mobo noise" brought on by running more CPU cores, for more cores would simply require a better and more effective filter for the power input stage. Remember, this is pretty much equivalent to running a motherboard with dual cpu's, and such motherboards and chipsets have been around for a long, long time with no such issues. With regards to dual core only software, there would be no such thing. No developer would ever write a program that only ran on 2 cpu's/cores, unless it was some kind of custom software for a proprietary hardware setup.

Opteron 939 single core for the win.

Running a 3700+ myself... but got my paws on a 4400+... the last we have in our shop... and me wants it... but do me needs it?

Originally posted by Buzz
Running a 3700+ myself... but got my paws on a 4400+... the last we have in our shop... and me wants it... but do me needs it?

If it's an X2 I'd say you certainly need it..

Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.2GHz 2x1MB L2 :chug arty

Originally posted by rogue
With regards to dual core only software, there would be no such thing. No developer would ever write a program that only ran on 2 cpu's/cores, unless it was some kind of custom software for a proprietary hardware setup.

Software will be writen to use more then one core soon, but it will still run on a single core

I'm not an expert on this field... but we had a customer with a Wildcat something graphics card wich were to be used in some sort of drawing proggie...3D modelling.
The program stuttered awfully.. making it impossible to work with, wich was the problem... and the reason for him to show up at our place with it.

Turned out that he only had 1x P4 3.2GHz in his box... and that, according to support for this program, this were an issufficient setup. He needed dual CPU setup for this to work properly.

So in other words... there are progs written for multi CPU use only.