Intel used to be better but today i'd have to say AMD all the way EDIT: dual core AMD 64 at the highest clock speed you can afford
Dual core is really for multi-tasking, because there's 2 physical processing cores you can run more apps at the same time with less lag / slowdown. For gaming a fast single core will generally win but if the game can take advantage of multiple cores then a dual core processor will win. I'd go for a dual core AMD CPU as unless you're looking to get every last FPS out of that game they'll run it fine with a decent GPU as well.
im afraid you got that all wrong bro... dual core is mainly for multi threaded apps like adobe premier. as for gaming, an AMD Athlon 64 FX dual core is the best for gaming at the moment, but they cost a bomb. so i suggest you get a athlon 64 3500 if you don't wanna break the bank. I know, it seems logical for a dual core to be good for multi tasking, but it isnt. correct me if im wrong.
No - those apps can take advantage of both cores simultaneously, doesn't mean it's only for them. Both cores can be working but only apps that have been designed to take avantage of both cores will use both at the same time. Having a second core in gaming won't make much difference unless the game is designed to use multiple cores or you're running other apps at the same time.
I'm saying is that, it does not do much difference for multi-tasking, but is somewhat optimized for mult-threaded apps. As for gaming, im with you.
For multi-tasking it does make a difference, as there's 2 cores processing you can run more apps without lag / slowdown. It doesnt just benefit multi-threaded apps, yes an app that isn't designed to take advantage of both cores won't, but that doesnt mean that only 1 core will work unless an multi-threaded app is running. EG: You're running a virus scan, with a single core doing other things will slow down your computer as the virs scanning software is using the CPU. With a dual core CPU the virus scanning software will use one core and when doing something else the other app will use the other core.
Matt, your very persistent, i like that. one more question for you though, "how does your computer know when to split up the two cores?" EG: You wanna play doom 3, and you want to run nav 2006, how will the computer know it's gonna use one program on one core and the other app on the other core? ps: don't think of me as hard-headed, i just want the real info while i'm young...
Now that I'm really not sure, it's probably all down to the Motherboard and Processor, like if one core is being heavily used then maybe as the process gets sent to the CPU the CPU decides to use the other core... I'm really not sure on that one, sorry.
Depends on the operating system. I believe XP has some basic SMP capabilities, mostly it tries to evenly split the processing load with 2 high CPU threads. But this doesn't always work, and most of the time one core is being used the most while the other core doesn't get utilized as much. A Linux kernel with SMP support compiled in would take advantage of both cores better. But it doesn't always have to be up to the OS to split load. Multi-threading support applications can spawn multiple processing threads and get the OS to distribute them among multiple cores. Its quite useful in rendering applications like 3dsmax.
We were answering your question, it's already been established that AMD beats Intel, donkey pointed that out already in this thread if you'd read it.
Yeah but it's always a suggestion, I know someone though even AMD has been tested to perform better just can't accept that Intel loses. We're advising AMD, but ultimately it's up to the person what they choose.
we cool.... do you game or do you just stick with graphics arts? coz dual-core would do ya good (no im not starting anything here )
[ot]I don't game, I'm not a big gamer, I do like my graphics/web design though. Believe me I'd love to do a masive upgrade on this pile o' crap but I haven't got the money and there's no point because in a few months I'll be off to University hopefully using a laptop. [/ot]
Well i tested the whole thread stuff with games. My friend upstairs has a pentium 4 3.0 ghz and i have an amd athlon 64 [email protected] ghz. we both ran Guild Wars and went into the task manager. His cpu has hyper threading, not exactly dual core but there are two logical cpu's detected. His ran the cpu at 50% load and mine was at 100%. all other crap was closed. we're both running windows xp sp2. hope that means something. What that means i'm not positive at all about, but it seems that b/c of his hyper threading he can run a game on one thread, and windows knew what to do. eh, whatever get AMD, one of them really expensive ass chips, they're always good.
