One dual core or two single cores?

[draiko4]

I'm planning a new system setup for my apt and I was wondering which route to go...

Descrips are not very specific so all fellow enthusiasts, please forgive the lack of detail...

Current setup:

Server/gaming machine - AthlonXP 2400+ OCed , 1GB DDR333 in dual channel mode (a 266 FSB CPU is a bottleneck, I know), Geforce 6600GT 128MB AGP, SB live! gamer 5.1, 1x PVR 500, All harddrives are EIDE ATA133... DVDRW and DVDR

Client - HP DV1040

future loadout 1)

Livingroom machine - Athlon64 X2 3800, 1 Gig DDR400 in dual channel, Geforce 6800 or 7800, PVR 500 (not going HD yet)

Client 1 - dv1040

Client 2 - beefy tablet pc with a DX9 vid card

future loadout 2)

gaming machine - Athlon64 single core, 1 gig of DDR400 in dual channel, Geforce 6800 or 7800

TV server - Athlon 64 sckt 754 single core, 1 gig of DDR400 dual channel, AGP 6600GT, PVR 500

Client 1 - dv1040

Client 2 - not so beefy tablet pc with a DX9 vid card (toshiba M200 or something)

I was thinking of going with an xbox 360/media center pc but I'd loose the cool BTV link abilities and I'm more of a PC gamer, I hate consoles. Plus it's not as cost-effective.

What do you guys think?

[merrypig]

Wouldn't you want a quieter machine in your living room? (re the 3800 with the geforce 6800/7800 ?


Also, what is a dv1040?

[draiko4]

Originally Posted by merrypig

Wouldn't you want a quieter machine in your living room? (re the 3800 with the geforce 6800/7800 ?


Also, what is a dv1040?

Not really... I have a few places in the livingroom that would muffle a good bit of noise.

The hp DV1040 is a centrino notebook computer... Hp's dv1000 line

great little system but the lack of a good gpu bogs it down a bit

[karhill]

Socket 754 motherboards are going away. I'd recommend a socket 939 motherboard over a socket 754. That said, in most games a faster single core will perform better than a slower dual core. So for gaming, the most bang for your buck will generally come from the faster single core.

On the other hand, a dual core machine is great. It will generally run much "smoother" than a single cpu machine. And many video tasks are well suited for dual core machines...e.g. video transcoding is something that supports parallelization well.

[draiko4]

I'm thinking I might build a cheap socket 754 machine for now and recycle my 2400 into a tv server. Once Socket M2 comes out, I'll build a beefier dual core system and recycle my 754 into the tv server role.

[DonK]

My main game box is a dual core 3800+ amd.

I highly recommend a dual core, simply because the responsiveness of a multiprocessor box is soooo nice, plus it's insanely fast...
AMD64 X2 3800+, 1 gig ram, 300gig hdd, Nvidia 6600GT PCI-X, gigabit ethernet, 16x DVD writer... ohhhhhyeah baby...

To give you some comparison... one of the machines I have is a p3 1ghz that I process server logs on for SnapStream.Com. 4 months of logs takes 3 days (72 hours) solid to process on that. It takes 4 hours on my dual core.

[jbalanca]

Originally Posted by DonK

My main game box is a dual core 3800+ amd.

I highly recommend a dual core, simply because the responsiveness of a multiprocessor box is soooo nice, plus it's insanely fast...
AMD64 X2 3800+, 1 gig ram, 300gig hdd, Nvidia 6600GT PCI-X, gigabit ethernet, 16x DVD writer... ohhhhhyeah baby...

To give you some comparison... one of the machines I have is a p3 1ghz that I process server logs on for SnapStream.Com. 4 months of logs takes 3 days (72 hours) solid to process on that. It takes 4 hours on my dual core.

WOW but the Dual Core is more then 3 X faster then the P3 if not 4X faster -200. No wonder it is 4 hours to process but I wonder on a comparable non Dual core how much faster the Dual core would be.

JB

[merrypig]

my parser just rebooted.

[draiko4]

Originally Posted by jbalanca

WOW but the Dual Core is more then 3 X faster then the P3 if not 4X faster -200. No wonder it is 4 hours to process but I wonder on a comparable non Dual core how much faster the Dual core would be.

JB

In most of the articles I've read, dual core systesm are faster when it comes to multi-tasking. A Top of the line Athlon FX processor still slightly outperforms a top of the line Athlon X2 when not multitasking, but who doesn't multitask these days?! It never hurts to have an extra core... I just don't want to pay the price it's selling for right now because in 6 months, it'll be outdated anyway. I'd rather be a year behind and save hundreds of dollars.

Socket 939 is already being retired in favor of socket M2... the new True DDR2 processors - Athlon FX-62 and Athlon X2 5000+ are coming out plus a slew of other tech improvements are going to hit the mainstream this year (SATA 300, hybrid harddrives, Better HDTV cards, 802.11n, Windows Vista, etc...)

I'm keeping money in my pocket for now

[jbalanca]

[QUOTE=Socket 939 is already being retired in favor of socket M2... the new True DDR2 processors - Athlon FX-62 and Athlon X2 5000+ are coming out plus a slew of other tech improvements are going to hit the mainstream this year (SATA 300, hybrid harddrives, Better HDTV cards, 802.11n, Windows Vista, etc...)

I'm keeping money in my pocket for now[/QUOTE]

Hybrid Hard drives Looks cool that's the new thing that Windows Vista will support Unfortunately I think it will only be for Vista.

Hybrid Hard drive: This is the merging of a Hard drive with some type of flash memory most probably COmpact flash but any can be used this will alow for quicker access better battery usage for laptops as most quick serches will be from the flash memory and allow the Hard drive to be powered down. Less chance of Hard drive damage as the heads will be parked more often. Faster seek times...many crazy benefits.....

JB

[draiko4]

Originally Posted by jbalanca

Hybrid Hard drives Looks cool that's the new thing that Windows Vista will support Unfortunately I think it will only be for Vista.

Hybrid Hard drive: This is the merging of a Hard drive with some type of flash memory most probably COmpact flash but any can be used this will alow for quicker access better battery usage for laptops as most quick serches will be from the flash memory and allow the Hard drive to be powered down. Less chance of Hard drive damage as the heads will be parked more often. Faster seek times...many crazy benefits.....

JB

I can't wait until we just go solid state or start seeing IBM's Millipede.

Well, M$ is still trying to make vista a "must have" OS upgrade... $200 for a prettier operating system is not very compelling to most people.

[btvfreak]

Well, M$ is still trying to make vista a "must have" OS upgrade... $200 for a prettier operating system is not very compelling to most people.

To be fair it's more than a prettier UI. For HTPC enthusiets it's the cableCARD support and recording HD directly from an STB that is exciting even if it is DRM'd. I just want to be able to do it and stream it around my home.

[EL_]

get the opteron 165 same as 3800 but two cores at 1.8ghz also has 1mb of l2 per core!

I might know very little about beyond tv but AMD is my area of knowledge. also I like having two gigs of ram too.