What's the deal with these, worth forking out for a new processor?

 

core 2 duo i think you mean, and yes its the fastest processor at the moment.
Im an AMD boy though(ive got an Athlon 64 x2 4200) does me for all my gaming and anything else i happen to throw at it

Depends what you do on the pc though, if its not hardcore gaming id get an AMD as its much cheaper, but if you do game then you will need to do some research or ask someone on here which is the best Core 2 to go for as theres some better than others(speed wise), and some that can over clock much better than others(if your into overclocking that is)

 

dual core means it can run two threads in parrallel rather than swapping liek the pentium 4 HT's so effectively you PC can do 2 things at once, they've just released a 4 core processor two.
Normally the dual cores / multi cores are slower than a single core processor...

now.. what's tricky is deciding if you need one or not... this depends on what you use it for...

If you only ever use a PC for MSN and internet, save your money and but a mid range processor... if you use it for gaming or something similar, try a old HT rather than a dual core. if you often play games while listenting to songs on Itunes, try a dual core...

 

I built a system for a work collegue a few weeks back with a dual core intel processor in it. MY honest opinion : It ran no faster / better then my AMD system.

 

Thats what i like to hear, big up AMD

Was it a core 2 duo though? sorry im not up on intel?

 

Yeah, it was, we spent ages browsing e-buyer for different cpu's and reading reviews.

We didn't get time to fully benchmark it, but, I will say this, I was converting some videos from avi to play on my Nokia N73 phone, which uses 100% of the cpu usage during the conversion, and I still managed to open up and play Fifa 2007, allbeit a little hesitant and judderish, it still ran

Someone on a Intel try it and tell me what you think

 

can i ask what the exact the processor was? and how much? they were expensive when i last looked

Im not turning back to intel after using a 2.8ghz celeron for 2 years it was great for just browsing the net and msn but games you could forget it, what with the old pci graphics(not express)

 

get yourself a core 2 duo if u know how to overclock u will piss 3.8ghz with it and blow any AMD cpu out the water (yes even the way over priced FX cpus) if anyone wants to compare benchmarks i will be glad to put u AMD boys to shame :P

To compare specs i have a

E6700 Core 2 duo @ 3.8Ghz
2 Gig DDR2 ram @ 900Mhz
ATi X1900xtx

to give u an idea of gaming power i get a constant 299fps on counter strike source with max detail and screen shots can be provided

 

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7-6389077-1.html

You may recall a few months back when AMD took out full-page newspaper ads to challenge Intel to a dual-core server duel. Intel declined to take up AMD on its offer

http://www.cnet.com.au/desktops/pcs/...0058761,00.htm

 

andy i thought you had an amd? or maybe im mixing you up with another chap? either way go ahead and post some screenshots

 

i did have amd mate but 3ghz overclock was nearly impossible without phase cooling (-250oC) its been proven that Intels new core duo chips completely out class the AMD's and now AMD have brought out there 4x4 cpu platform the quad core intel cpu again outclassed the AMD lol

 

 

 

In my honest geeky opinion you should pick yourself out from the following catagories.

1. If you dont know what a dual core processor is, then the chances are you dont need on. A single core will do just as good if not better (you can afford faster) and a good formatting of your system to get rid of the cack you've been installing for the past however long.

2. If your still unsure, ask yourself what you use your computer for? If you've always got 2-3 programs open at a time that are activly running ... eg a browser that your activly browsing on at the time, with you virus checker checkin for viruses and listening to winamp .... Then you probably want a dual core processer ... My opinion on these .. Buy what you can afford. Pentium will always come up top when your on the top end of a high budget, however if your on a 'dont wanna spend a fortune' budget, then buy the best amd you can afford.

3. If your using it purely for games and thats what you want the power for, your looking at the wrong thing ... Get a top pentium single core processor, as much ram as will fit in your machine and as xpensive a nvidia card as you can afford.


Whats it all mean????

Dual/Single core:- Think of each core as a new phisical processor as thats what in effect it is ..... 2 processors can do 2 things ... Simple really

HT = hyperthreading (pentium) or hypertransport (amd):- 2 threads that can run through a single core (see above) and therefore can do 2 things at once at half the speed of your processors capability...


So in effect ... If you get an HT dual core processor you should be able to run 4 things at once without a massive performance hit. Provided you have enough memory, and in theory of course ...

 

soniceffect you make it sound like AMDs are no good for gaming!! even mine(x2 4200) isnt the top of the line yet i can easily run all the top games(ive got a Geforce 7950GT 512mb by the way)

Andy, nice shots but the 3d mark 05 means nothing to me as ive never used it.
Download the 06 version as thats the one i have, and run it on whatever its set at when you have installed it but make sure the screen res is 1280x1024 as thats what mines on, then i can compare

 

Far from it ..... Amd's are good for gaming ... but if you asked which one I'd recommend for it then it would be a pentium .... End of the day it all depends on how much money ya got to spend on one... More to the point how much your willing to .... Personally, I'm an amd man

 

Sorry mate forgot add the 06 screeny but dont forget u basically have Sli configuration with the 7950 card i only have 1 x1900xtx atm

 

this link will help u choose which is best just select your program u want to compare it with

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.ht...=476&chart=177

 

Impressive 06 score you got about 1500 more points than me so thats probably about right

So come on then, what did you need to buy for your new rig? or did you buy it already made up and ready to go?
And lastly how much did it cost? i had a butchers on a couple of websites and i cant see your processor for under 300 notes

 

Yea mate just brought the bits and built it up... I did start with a E6600 and the MSI 975x powerup mobo but it was a shit mobo and it cooked the northbridge

2 gig SuperTalent ddr2 £200
Abit Aw9d-max motherboard £150
Intel E6700 £350
700w tagan psu £115

 

Nice one, fairplay

So you didnt really use anything out of your AMD? except maybe hard drive, graphics card?

 

yea kept the hd's and graphics card i was going to get the 8800GTX but i will wait and see what R600 (ATi) is like first as ATi do produce better quality graphics than nvidia

 

i wouldn't buy another ATI after having one of mine break and then when i got my new pc it had a ATI x1300pro in it, the fan on that was so noisey it was stupid, every time you start a game it was almost like a hair dryer sound, horrible thing it was then i got a geforce 7600GT after that which was quiet, then after that i got my 7950GT and thats not even audible, even when playing games

Now im not saying ATI cards are rubbish just because the x1300 pro was noisy, it might have been because it was a cheapo low end offering, but anyway i like nvidia

The 8800 looks like a beast by the way, i saw one that was watercooled aswell, but it required your pc to be kitted out with watercooling obviously, and it takes up 2 pci slots as its so big come to think of it i looked in my case the other day while dusting out and i cant fit anything in my pci slot next to it, oh well not that i need it for anything.

Any pics of your pc and the inside please?

 

Yea the 8800 is a very long card aswell wont fit into most tower cases

Sort u some pics out this weekend i need to do some cable management lol

 

lol b*stard cables

I got an ocz psu 2 weeks ago, that has really good cabling, and all the cables come seperatly so you only use what you actually need, looks quite neat

And see what i mean, nothing is going in there is it

 

heres what i mean by cable management im waiting on my new case so its just thrown in this crappy antec p180

 

Mate thats bloody awful, im sure theres a computer in there somewhere get that sorted asap in my opinion, it wont do your temps any favours

Dont forget some pics when its sorted out

 

mate i know im usually Mr neat and cable tied everything but jus couldnt be arsed with it as its all coming back out

 

Fair enough

 

Dual core suffers from the same issues as hyperthreading, real SMP machines and x86 64 that is that the processors require an application or OS to support it fully in order to take advantage of the processor which NO microsoft OS currently does.
Each processor has good and bad points, its not as simple to say that one is better than the other because they excell in different ways.

but what do I know being a moderator on one of the largest computing forums on the net

 

Theory is wrong because Hyperthreading simply works by allowing the operating system to schedule two threads or processes simultaneously it does not mean the processor is capable of processing these theads at the same time. The technology improves processor performance under certain workloads by providing useful work for execution units that would otherwise be idle, for example during a cache miss. It is not working all the time at best increases performance by 30% which is a lot less than the 70% performance yield gained by adding another physical processor. More recently Hyper-Threading has been branded as energy inefficient using 46% more power which explains why the P4's always run so hot.

Dual core processors have the advantage that because the cache is shared between two closely located cores that the circuitry can operate at a much higher clock rate than is possible if the signals have to travel off-chip, however they still suffer from the same problems as generic multiple processing machine (SMP)... Other than demanding support from the Operating System (which Windows does not do fully) adjustments to existing software are required to maximize utilization of the computing resources provided by multi-core processors. Also, the ability of multi-core processors to increase application performance depends on the use of multiple threads within applications. For example, most current (2006) video games will run faster on a 3 GHz single-core processor than on a 2GHz dual-core processor (of the same core architecture), despite the dual-core theoretically having more processing power, because they are incapable of efficiently using more than one core at a time

I have a single core AMD overclocked in a Vapochill case with a 2gb Corsair XMS gigabyte iRAM drive and Geforce 8800 GTX SLI which would out benchmark most dual core gaming rigs simply because its strength and what is important for gaming is not raw power but bandwidth and I get this from the Geforce Graphic cards and the iRAM solid state drive

 

UnseenMenace, interesting read

i know i should know this already as i own one but what speed does each of my 2 processors run at? ive got Everest ultimate edition and on there its saying 2.2 ghz, surly its not 2.2ghz for each processor? that would make it 4.4ghz and then theres the fact my processor is called x2 4200, so what does the 4200 mean?

Im thinking each processor runs at 1.1ghz making a total of 2.2 ghz? sounds more like it?

EDIT, wouldnt mind seeing your 3Dmark 06 score UnseenMenace and some pics of your system with the mighty 8800 in it

 

Each processor core run at 2.2 ghz but they have a shared memory controller and bus.. it is this that can cause restriction compared to two single processors running at the same speed in a Symmetric Multi Processing system (SMP) in which case each processor would have its own bus and memory controller... The 4200x2 branding is a PR rating (Performance Rating) and the X2 indicates how many cores the processor has... these numbers are intended to give a better idea of true processor performance as for years, processor manufacturers have described CPUs based on clock speed, typically in megahertz (MHz) or gigahertz (GHz). These speeds provide a simple, straightforward number to rate performance and have been an easy way to rank and compare processors across the industry. But despite its simplicity, clock speed alone isn’t an accurate way to evaluate the overall performance of a computer processor. Processors have many variables – memory bandwidth, file system architecture, cache speed and size, and available headroom, as well as raw CPU power and more..... The processor PR numbers are meant to reflect this - Intel use a different method with the same ideal which actually allows NO comparission at all between processors for the general consumer.

the biggest issue that most people do not realise is that Windows and MS Office do not actually fully support the features offered by these processors... if you run Linux 64 with the correct kernel for your processor the performance hike is dramatic

Overall you generall see about a 30-60%. performance increase in real world terms over a single core processor in the Windows desktop depending upon application support... Its OS and application support thats really letting these processors down at the moment

 

Although Intel on paper has a much hyped processor its currently its worth remembering that AMD 64 was two years old by the time Intels Pentium Conroe was released.
in terms of power however the most powerfull dual-core x86 processor in terms of performance-per-watt is still the AMD and this is why Intel never took up AMD on the challenge they made
Although intel can compete on pure performance, they can not compete performance per watt which means that the Intels always require more power to run and create more heat !!

The latest Intel's however do overclock remarkably well even better than the latest from AMD and this has given people the impression its a vastly better processor simply because the geeks are very enthusiastic about it... Stright out the box the story is not the same.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7-6389077-1.html

 

Thanks for explaining

Can you tell me why battlefield 2142's system info programme tells me this............


If you cant see that it says 2502.1 processor speed, then i went on it agian a few seconds later and it said 2133.5 im thinking this programme is very inaccurate?
on Everest it says "CPU AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+, 2188 MHz"

I think that battlefield system info programme is rubbish!

 

Battlefield 2, BF2142 has not been programmed to take advantage of multi-threading. This means that the second core found in the latest dual-core CPUs sits basically unused in Battlefield 2142 which is why you get only a slight fluctuation of processor speed for a single processor shown.... This is currently the reality of dual core, the largest group of software supporting dual core is benchmarking.

Microsoft Office does not fully support it
Adobe Photoshop does not fully support it
Internet Explorer does not fully support it
And most games do not fully support it

Here is a interview with DICE programmer Marko Kylmamaa where he states in order to realize the real performance benefits a careful attention has to be paid into structuring the code for the correct granularity in mind, to make it suitable for multi-core execution.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/news...searchid=12014

 

whoops double post !!!

 

well fulling utilizing or not, i can run BF2142 at full settings, max screen resolution with decent FPS, and thats online multiplayer aswell, its great

Nice interview by the way

 

You do know that a standard clock E6600 (£220) will waste a AMD FX62 (£500) ?????? so where did u get that from

 

[quote="UnseenMenace"]
You really dont understand how much of a bottle neck your cpu is for that graphics card do u...?? id like to see some pics and benchmarks of that