Quinton McLeod said:
I would recommend you disable it unless you plan on using a program that utilizes it... And I mean a program that you really really need.
Anyway, I haven't heard much about Intel's announcement about Quad Core, but if they do decide to do that, I agree with you. They should at least listen to AMD when they tell Intel to have the cores communicate directly to each other (as well as several other things).
As far as the AM2... I hear people are saying to stay away from it for at least 6 months to a year. Reason why is because when the first generation of motherboards are released, they will be buggy and cause problems. Also, DDR 2 doesn't overclock well. Even though DDR 2 is cheaper and I'm interested in migrating to DDR 2 in the future, it just isn't the correct solution right now. AM2 will have many many benefits, and I know this, but the market has yet to catch up and a lot of people just don't know what they should do right now. I mean, they just released the FX-60 and just because the AM2 was announced, people are recommending against it (including I) due to the simple fact that something "better" is coming out soon that will phase it out.
AMD and Intel are really fighting for the throne right now... We the consumer are indeed winning in this war... But at the same time, we are being flooded with too much of a good thing... In return, we end up not buying and instead waiting...
Very true!
The consumers are being flooded with to many good things. We have new dual and double cores, as well as the first dual-core gaming processor, the FX-60, and a very awesome and extremly powerful CPU, as well as a really nice and mega CPU, the 955XE. Both companies are making very nice processors, it's just there's to much of a selection, not to mention with a new Socket coming out, as well as both are making DDR2 the standard memory choice, it's just to much. Most peopel are still using 32-bit chips, so when you introduce 64 bit along with dual cores and even make the mention of Quad-Cores, it's just overwhelming.
I bet businesses right now are having a hay day over it. Of course most businesses choose intel over AMD, but ultimately when it comes to running a business, servers are what you need, and the new Dual-Core 170 Denmark Opteron is the thing to beat! Infact, I'd liek to see a triathlon of the Opteron VS the X2 VS the 955XE. That would be intersting to see who comes out on top, in terms of multitasking, gaming, and most importantly, overclocking. Because it seems as though more and more people who purchase a PC are starting to discover how benefiting overclocking can be! Not just in terms of performance, but in terms of how cost effective the desicion is. Because you can buy a lower priced product and overclock it to the higher priced one and still achieve the same relative performance, and at a significantly lower cost!
We also need to find ways to utilize these new technologies, specificaly in gaming, as those are the programs that more often then not, truly use the PCs hardware. The RAM, processor, and video card are really targeted towards one specific thing, and that is gaming. If the people who design games could possibly be funded by these companies who make the hardware, then maybe we can see better games, and by better I mean in terms of utilizing the hardware. Because games at the moment can't fully utilize the dual-core CPUs yet, along with the new powerhouse GPUs, such as the brand new 48 pixel pipelines X1900XTX and the 512MB of memory 7800GTX. No game can fully access those specifications. So maybe companies need to start thinking out side the box. They could try to help the programs use the hardware, instead of throwing out new hardware and leaving the programmers wondering how they can use all of it.