dual core or not

[shawnlizzle =]]

hello there, its been awhile since i came to the cpu section of the forum =P

i'm not as up to date as i used to be and i just wanted to ask a simple question


do i need dual core to fully excavate the powers of vista and upcomming multi threaded games?

and would it be a necessity or more like give me +/- 5 frames on games in the next year or two.

my rig is in my sig so i would be looking at the 939 x2s right now.

ps. do you think the price would go down anymore? its kind of ridiculous how AM2s are less expensive

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

To dual core or not to dual core? that is the question!

 

[tyh]

i was thinking more of...
To Dual-Core or to Quad-Core later?

 

[paybax]

Hey Shawn,
Think of "to dual core or NOT to dual core" in another light.......
Do you like to listen to music while compose emials or msn chat or whatever chat box you use? And wouldn't it be nice to do virus scans so you don't have to run THAT app only while you wait for it to finish? How about rippping that live audio stream from the latest ESSENTIAL MIX from the BBC.CO.UK site? Oh and what about burning a cd while you get ready to go out for the night with your friends? Damn.....don't forget about that word doc you have to write for that school paper or meeting at work on Monday. And that site that you visit regularly to download DJ mixes....And just in case you want to play video games while your doing that .......ummmmm you can do that too.

Well................I can do all that with my rig.....and all it does is YAWN at me and say ..."is that ALL you want to do?" (sarcasitc text here)

Bottom line here Shawn is that on a regular basis we like to more than one thing at a time. It's human nature.....oh and we want to do it FAST too SOOOOO in comes the DUALIES. There are already many games such as Quake 4 that have an advanced tab where you can click on "OPTIMIZE FOR DUAL CORE CPU's" . .. And I'm sure you wil find many more games out there that are being optimized for dualies in the way of game patches that are being released.

Another nice thing about dual core is that if you want to dedicate "ONE CPU " to a particular process you are running for whatever reason, by bringing up task manager and selecting process, right lick the process you want and select AFFINITY, you can have one cpu core DEDICATED to that process while the other one runs all the other stuff. I tell ya man the possibilities are endless bro 8)

Multitasking is the way to go bro, I;m telling ya. Like I said earlier in my post, I had about 8 processes open once, I opened task manager and looked at the cpu % load and it was fluctuating from 15 to 25 % load !!!! 8O
In my view on dualies, they can help to REDUCE "bottlenecks" for info transfer and makes things alot smoother to run.

NUFF said right??? Now do you sef a fava an go score yo sef a DUALIE

RIG specs
Antec P180 PerformanceSeries Mid-Tower Case
SeaSonic S12 600 watt power supply
Asus A8N32 SLI mobo AMD N-Force 4 SLIX16 (bios 1103 V02.58)
RealTek 97 onboard digital 5.1 Surround
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Toledo Core, 2 X 1mb L2 cache (AMD driver 1.3.1.0 w/MS hotfix)
2 gigs of Corsair TwinX3500LL Pro @ 437Mhz 2-3-2-6-1T
2- BFG Tech 7900 GT OC 256mb in SLI (nvidia driver 91.31)
Western Digital RAPTOR 74.3 gig 10-K rpm HDD for XP & Apps
Maxtor SATA II 250 G HDD for gaming, movies, MP3's
Maxtor SATA II 250 G HDD for document backup (unplugged)
Sony CD rom 52X
Plextor 708-A DVD/CD rom
Logitech Z-5500 digital 5.1 THX Surround 500watts

 

[paybax]

Hi Prozac,
all kidding aside....you can't ALWAYS be waiting for ...this ....or that....Otherwise you'll NEVER buy ANYTHING>......I mean let's face it. ....it all boils down to what you want, and how much your willing to spend....not JUST Dual core, and or quad core.....Ohterwise one can just say ..."I will wait 10 years and THEN I will buy my comp and blow you all away"....Is a ridiculous statement don't you think?
Quad core schmade core. ......get what you want when you want it and start gaming....PIRIOD!!!!!!!!!!!!! that's what it's all about right bro?
RIG specs
Antec P180 PerformanceSeries Mid-Tower Case
SeaSonic S12 600 watt power supply
Asus A8N32 SLI mobo AMD N-Force 4 SLIX16 (bios 1103 V02.58)
RealTek 97 onboard digital 5.1 Surround
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Toledo Core, 2 X 1mb L2 cache (AMD driver 1.3.1.0 w/MS hotfix)
2 gigs of Corsair TwinX3500LL Pro @ 437Mhz 2-3-2-6-1T
2- BFG Tech 7900 GT OC 256mb in SLI (nvidia driver 91.31)
Western Digital RAPTOR 74.3 gig 10-K rpm HDD for XP & Apps
Maxtor SATA II 250 G HDD for gaming, movies, MP3's
Maxtor SATA II 250 G HDD for document backup (unplugged)
Sony CD rom 52X
Plextor 708-A DVD/CD rom
Logitech Z-5500 digital 5.1 THX Surround 500watts

 

[lcandy]

Yes, its the way things are moving. Sooner or later just about everything will be optimized or even require dual core. You don't need it now, but it's going to be a benefit if you do.

 

[sirheck]

i have the same cpu and am pleased with it
but since the x2s have dropped in price
i am thinking about an upgrade.
but not until next year. if they <thex2s are still available>.

 

[asdasd123123]

Do note however that dual core causes errors in about 50% of all games.
You will need to tab out and force one core to a large amount of games.

Not that I care much, I love the massive amounts of processing power you get.

THG Taskassign doesn't work with a lot of games unfortunately. :/

 

[paybax]

YO asd,
I didn't know that , which games in particular do NOT have that ability? I'm a first person shooter so do you know of any so I can steer clear of?

 

[asdasd123123]

It isn't that bad, nearly all games survive an ALT-TAB these days, and you can just fire up the task manager and switch the game to one core, and it'll do just fine.

FPSes usually do much better than other genres.

I can take nearly all racing games for example, Toca RD3, the menu runs in ultraspeed, If I type ONE letter, it spews out like 5-10.
Ingame racing the cars run at 10x the speed, and then crashes to a sluggish 0,1x speed.
And goes up and down like that.

Flatout 1 same effect.

Farcry does it a bit, slow fps and uneven choppy fps with two, stable and high fps with one.

X3 Reunion appeared to have zero bugs, but kept crashing a lot for me, disabled one cpu and voila, never crashed again.

EQ2 does ultra speed and mesh distorsion.
Or just nothing, sometimes it doesn't bug out :S

Serious Sam 2 has vague issues, slightly better with one core.

The entire Source range of games has its own cpu detection thingy, so it'll run fine either way.

Etc, you'll find out while playing

Lamest part is, the fix is pretty easy, the game could easily detect a dual core and if it "knows" it doesn't work, just ask windows to not give it more than one. Hyper Threading and dual cores has been around a while now, why not include a walk-around for them in new games? :/