Performance Difference (Single/Dual Core)

Hello All,

Seeing as there are going to potentially be hefty price cuts coming soon on the AMD X2 series, due to Conroe etc, I have been tempted by the buying bug and been justifying it with the "It'll be a good chip for the money"

What I want to know is if there will be much noticable difference between what i have now and an X2. I mean this mainly in terms of gaming, as although i use it for other things, this is where i want the machine to excel.

Will the jump from my opteron, which is at 2.5Ghz, to say an equivalent X2 improve things much? I dont know the pricing but i think that i would only be willing to part with 150 quid tops to warrant it a good deal, so I'm comparing with the best that you could get for that price.

I'm thinking that games will mostly be GPU-limited, but there seems to be more utilisation of dual core now...

Opinions welcome

JP

PS. System is on the left

Very few of the current games on the market right now actually utilise both cores, so I'd say no at the moment.

whats limiting your overclock at the moment?

you should get a decent clock out of a 3800 x2 (2.4ghz is a fair bet) that should mean you wont lose performance anywhere (staying at 2.0ghz will slow stuff down)

framerate etc wont go up compared to what you have now, youll just have less interference in everything you do, no lockups when your unzipping, editting etc

we will have to see how multithreaded gaming fares before the real value of them is known

I'm buying a 4600/4800 next week. Most likely the 4600. 2.4 as standard, so it's almost as fast as your opty already :P

The 4600+ will be going for just over £150, you should get 2.8 maybe even 3.0 (if you're very lucky/live in a fridge). Gaming will be more controlled by your clockspeed than cores.

Newer games are becoming more multithreaded and the rest of your computer usage will be much nicer.

If you have the cash go for it and flog your opty.

any one know what games are X2 cores at this time. quake 4 is one so they say.

What about when it comes to digital video, working with RAW photos, audio etc.? Would encoding a video on dual core be noticeably quicker than single core (for example my Opty 146 at 2.8)?

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Originally Posted by JimNastics

What about when it comes to digital video, working with RAW photos, audio etc.? Would encoding a video on dual core be noticeably quicker than single core (for example my Opty 146 at 2.8)?

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Depends on the program you encode with, but quite a few have multi-threaded versions now.

I ordered my 4600+ this morning. (scan has the new low prices, if you aint heard yet).

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Originally Posted by chuckskull

Depends on the program you encode with, but quite a few have multi-threaded versions now.

I ordered my 4600+ this morning. (scan has the new low prices, if you aint heard yet).

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Just bought Adobe Production Studio Premium, so now using Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 and After Effects 7.0 - I imagine they wold definitely support it but will check first!

Well, its my mobo limiting my overclock at the monment - The Asrock Dual Sata II doesnt give much in the way of voltage adjustments. I think that i may be sensible and leave it. It seems that the X2 wont give me too much in the way of improvement or future proofing, so it seems that i will stick to my good old opty...

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Originally Posted by jonathan_phang

Well, its my mobo limiting my overclock at the monment - The Asrock Dual Sata II doesnt give much in the way of voltage adjustments. I think that i may be sensible and leave it. It seems that the X2 wont give me too much in the way of improvement or future proofing, so it seems that i will stick to my good old opty...

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You can voltmod those boards, or spend an extra £60ish on a more clockable board.