athlon 64 or dual core?

[velocci]

hi there, i'm building a new machine and i'm not sure if i should get the Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4 ghz L2 1mb or the Athlon dual core 4200+ / 2.2 GHz L2 1 MB. can you play games on the dual core as good as you can on the 64? is the dual core at 2.2ghz faster than a 64 at 2.4ghz?

 

[Admiral_Cecil]

Hello,

In most cases the less expensive AMD64 4000+/ and it's cousin the 3800+ outperforms the dual core 4400/ 4600 in most areas primarily Direct X and Open GL. Dual cores tend to perform better in rendering, encoding, winrar, etc applications.

Take a look at this CPU chart to help you better gauge the 2 CPU's:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/21/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts_2005/page24.html

 

[mpjesse]

The Athlon 64 4000+ outperforms the x2 4200+ in most game benchmarks... So if you're looking for a gaming system look no futher than the 4000+.

However, if do other things like video encoding or use programs like WinRAR, the 4200+ is going to be a better choice.

I personally have a 4200+. I game, encode, decode, WinRAR, BitTorrent, etc. I love it!

-mpjesse

 

[bhendin]

I'm in the same situation and thinking about going with the X2 as I am not really a gamer (and the X2 with a good graphics card should still be an above average performer when it comes to games).

My question is that as stated originally, the AMD64s do better with OpenGL and DirectX. Is it that these interfaces are not optimized for Dual-core yet?

I would think that eventually they will be and come closer to the single core chips. Is there any truth or insight into that possibility?

 

[K8MAN]

I'm in the same situation and thinking about going with the X2 as I am not really a gamer (and the X2 with a good graphics card should still be an above average performer when it comes to games).

My question is that as stated originally, the AMD64s do better with OpenGL and DirectX. Is it that these interfaces are not optimized for Dual-core yet?

I would think that eventually they will be and come closer to the single core chips. Is there any truth or insight into that possibility?

Absolutly and dont let anyone tell your differently. The differences people are talking about in games are not as great as they are made out to be. The improvement that 200mhz can give is not worth giving up a dual CPU system. Get the dual core and enjoy exceptional multitasking today and faster performance in multi-threaded games already out and coming out in the future. UE 3 will be much faster on dual core than single thread. Also make sure u get 2gigs of RAM.

 

[apache_lives]

Id be buying the X2 dual core - you loose the few mhz but you gain a whole second core and if the game designers get to work the extra core will be used in future games, otherwise get a cheaper cpu (around 3200) and wait for the X2 to drop in price and sell your old cpu on ebay later and get a fast X2.

In a year or so it will pay off when games use the 2nd core fully then you will be laughing, and it will help XP right now, i got a P4c with HT and it gives windows a nice kick when im encoding video - dont notice the performance drop (and reaction times) compared to HT disabled, a real 2nd core would be even better for even heaver use, heck i can play UT2004 pretty well while encoding video with HT and intels arnt all impressive either.