Athlon 64 Dual Core: Question Answered

[The_Goonie]

For all of you that have said that the Athlon 64 dual core processors aren't good for gaming......well evidently you don't know what you are talking about. I picked up the Athlon 64 x2 4200 which is the "single core equal" in relation to the Athlon 64 3500 (which i also own).

 

 

Clock for clock the X2 spanks the 3500 in gaming.

 

 

 

Photoshop opens up almost twice as fast (with no other programs running)

 

Photoshop opens up exactly the same as standalone with Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Sony Vegas, CorelPaint, Teamspeak and 5 browser pages open.

 

X2

7800GTX

 

Gaming: Farcry gets about 146fps avg. at 1900x1200 max settings with fraps running

 

3500

7800GTX

 

Gaming: Farcry gets about 131fps avg. at 1900x1200 max settings with fraps running

 

 

 

 

 

Using Windows XP Professional 64-bit

[Kamikaze_Badger]

From your sig:

 

Athlon 64 X2 4200 Manchester + Asus Extreme N7800 GTX-2DHTV

24" Dell Widescreen LCD, 160gb x 2 SATA Raid 0

 

That may explain a speed increase, given the 4200+ performance. And also, was this an upgrade or a new build?

 

 

 

But, the fact is that some people are thinking that dual cores are good for gaming because of the fact there are two cores sitting on one chip. Working off of info from red, think of it this way:

 

Two cities must use one bridge. However, one of the cities only works when it's specifically told too.

 

In this case, the two cities represent the two cores. One does work all the time, the other only does work when told to. But, there's only one bridge. So when the other's told to do work, it has to share the bridge with the other city, creating a bottleneck and causing a mass pileup that results in 100+ people dead. The bridge of course represents the FSB.*

 

Right now, I would still say that you should of bought an FX-5x with the money or something, or a 4000+. The second core is just sitting there, the registers and such not doing any work unless told to by an application. But hey, it's your money, and I'm glad to hear you like your selection.

 

 

 

*Do I get a cookie for that metaphor?

[bigred]

a 3500+ newcastle though. the 3500+ that would rate the same as the X2 would have to be a venice.

[martymcfly]

the problem isn't that we believe it sucks for gaming, it is just WAY too expensive for gaming. Y&Ou say the 4200 is equivalent to a 3500+ is clock speed? But it is much more expensive.

[silkster]

^^ Good Point marty but for ppl where money isn't an issue, they must laugh when they hear ppl say "X2 sucks for gaming".

 

Honestly marty if u were a hardcore gamer when someone offered you a 3500+ or X2 4200+ for free, what would you go for?

[Guest FxXP]

I'd stick go with the 3500+ because what is the point of spending $500 on a processor when the M2 is coming out?

 

But, if it was free, yeeess I would take the X2....

[martymcfly]

well, yea, for free, but why buy, say, a 3800+ X2 rather than a 4000+ single?

[bigred]

another thing is did you do a fresh install of windows between benchmarks? drop an X2 in at install, then pull it, windows will keep looking for that second cpu that it no longer has (pull the second chip out of a dualie and it'll do it too).

[BionicSniper]

Why havent they released a version based on the sandiago core??

[r_target]

I don't think anybody ever meant that it was bad for gaming, everyone's beef was that it's the price of two CPU's for a 2%-10% performance increase. I think a gamer with the resources to score an X2 would do just as well (maybe better) with Athlon FX with a nice OC. Either way, nice fps figures with the X2.

[fire_storm]

I'd stick go with the 3500+ because what is the point of spending $500 on a processor when the M2 is coming out?

 

But, if it was free, yeeess I would take the X2....

532790[/snapback]

 

From what I rember bigred said socket m2 will not be out for another 18-24 months and some people can't wait that long.

[martymcfly]

yea, I wont buy any processors now, since quantum processing is coming out. (sarcastic)