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PaperPlunger

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Hi, I was looking around for info on a question I had, and it looks as though I have come to the right place.

I have been under the impression for a long time, that dual-core processors are better in every way, shape and form than a single core is. You see, I'm a big gamer, and I'm building a aming rig that will last me until hopefully the end of college (Junior in Highschool right now). I thought Dual-Cores were great (and I know they are) but the more reviews I'm reading about products on websites (mostly newegg.com) say that people aren't getting a major increase in fps in games, and it's not making that much of a difference.

I'm building an AMD machine, 939, and I'm probably gonna go with a 2.4Ghz Athlon X2 4600+. But, before I buy it, beacuse it's my last part, I'd like to know if I should go for a single core.

Thanks for the help.

EDIT
By the way, I'd rather not spend more than $230-ish.
 
well duel core CPU's are mostly for running multiple applications, mostly for professional graphic designers, web designers etc. I don't believe they will help you in Games, just if you were running say, Photoshop and maby a HTML editor like Dreamweaver. It helps you switch quickly threw multiple applications.

That's about all I know, anyone else have any input?
 
PaperPlunger said:
Hi, I was looking around for info on a question I had, and it looks as though I have come to the right place.

I have been under the impression for a long time, that dual-core processors are better in every way, shape and form than a single core is. You see, I'm a big gamer, and I'm building a aming rig that will last me until hopefully the end of college (Junior in Highschool right now). I thought Dual-Cores were great (and I know they are) but the more reviews I'm reading about products on websites (mostly newegg.com) say that people aren't getting a major increase in fps in games, and it's not making that much of a difference.

I'm building an AMD machine, 939, and I'm probably gonna go with a 2.4Ghz Athlon X2 4600+. But, before I buy it, beacuse it's my last part, I'd like to know if I should go for a single core.

Thanks for the help.

EDIT
By the way, I'd rather not spend more than $230-ish.
go dual core
 
AMD RULES said:
go dual core

I was going to in the first place, but I was more interested in why exactly I should, or should not, instead of getting some monster 3.5+ Ghz cpu.

EDIT nevermind, from the looks of it, AMD doesn't have anything single core 939 above 2.8 ghz anyway.

I was pretty upset when I heard that Intel was winning, right after I bought an A8n Sli Premium and commenced on my build. Can't do anything about it now though... I'll just bite the bullet and pimp this sucker with that dual core.
 
yes, by all means, Ghz still mean a lot, when comparing apples to apples of course ;) But when compared to oranges, it doesnt mean squat. So...with the A8N-SLI you have in your hands, get yourself a nice dual core. Games are starting to utilize two cores and are becoming (did i say slowly?) multithreaded. So it helps there. Even if a program isnt multithreaded, you can then run two cpu intensive apps at the same time. Sounds like a win-win situation doesnt it? Cuz it is. You can't go wrong with a dual core. Good luck on the build!
 
dualcore definitely, i got one, and it kicks my p4 out of the park.. not that that's saying much.. lol.
 
You should still consider dual core because it's getting to the point where more and more programs are written to be used with multicore systems that will take advantage of the technology. Dual core as of now can still relieve a lot of congestion when multitasking, so that's a plus as compared to traditional single core processors. There's no doubt in my mind that dual core CPUs are the best right now.
 
I'm using a single core on my computer, and it's been blazing fast for everything I do. Even multitasking, believe it or not. CSS and BF2 run flawlessly on maxed out settings with a maxed out resolution, and keep in mind that I'm only using 1GB of RAM, and CoD2 runs nearly flawlessly on max at 1024x768, but that's not because of the dual-core; it's more of my graphics card. I have mine overclocked to 2.8 GHz, which is the equivalent of the FX-57...

But in a little while, I'm going to end up screwed. As soon as multithreaded games that utilize dual-core become standard, I'm going to have to get a new processor, and probably a whole new motherboard and RAM too. So you'll be wanting to get a dual-core now, especially since they're not too much more expensive than the single-cores. When I bought mine, the 4800+ was nearly $300 more than the 4000+, so I stuck with that. And just to clarify, those numbers don't mean anything. An X2 3800+ is not nearly as fast as a single-core 3800+ in everything that isn't multithreaded. E.g. SuperPi times will be much lower with the single-core 3800+ than the dual-core one. You can compare apples to apples within the Athlon series, dual-core or not. So 2.4GHz (single core 3800+) > 2.0GHz (X2 3800+).

So basically, it comes down to this: Good performance for today's and yesterday's games and no future-proofing whatsoever, or decent performance today and future-proofing for multithreaded applications; if you're comparing the dual 3800 and the single core 3800. The X2 4600 will give you the same results as the single-core 3800 in single-threaded apps and will be future-proofed for multi-threaded apps. It's a good processor if you've got the money. My final word: get the 4600+ if you've got the money; that was the limiting factor for me.

Sorry for the long post. :p
 
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