The Official PC building thread!

"and have fun on a huge HD tv or whatever you have" - so that'll be a standard CRT TV for me at the moment then. Gaming did start on consoles, that's absolutely true. Did i say otherwise?
I game single core and AGP GPU as you pointed out, and it's great, graphics are superb and there are plenty of games I find a lot easier to play with a keyboard thanks very much.
Funny how of all the people I end up having an argument with it turns out to be you.

 

Lol at least I've got some support!
Kidding, I should cut back myself too.

 

Sammorris
I was not aware that there were any games at this point that support dua core processors. Could you please enlighten me?
Btw the fastest cpu on the planet is recognised as being the Athlon FX57. This cpu is highly overclockable as the frequency is not locked as it on the other series of cpu.

 

To each his own, but consoles shoudl never get dissed, they are the bang for the buck.

Any high end engine is optimized to use dula core CPUs, like offloading sound processing to one core, and depending on, other tasks as well. Unreal 3 and Doom 3 (Game engines, not games) are definitely good for dual cores by now. Unreal 3 has been for awhile.

Actually the FX-57 starts at such a high clock speed it doesn't go as far, you can push the cheapers ones as hard or harder. With a few hundred bucks in cooling instead of a thousand dollar CPU you can make a $300-$500 AMD CPU scream to 3.0GHz+, if you do everythign right, make good choices, and know what you are doing, air cooling by the way.

 

Well let's see. I don't claim THG to be the fountain of all knowledge, but an A64 4000+ vs an X2 4800+ reveals:

UT2004

A64 4000: 170.4
X2 4800+: 164.5

Farcry
A64 4000: 199.4
X2 4800: 194.9

3DMark05
A64 4000: 5011
X2 4800: 5013

Wolfenstein 3D
A64 4000: 189.9
X2 4800+: 189.2

Quake 3
A64 4000+: 264.9
X2 4800+: 257.7

Doom 3
A64 4000: 81.7
X2 4800+: 83.2

I'm personally unconvinced by those results. Doom 3 shows that a £600 Dual core CPU can perform 2% faster than a £250 single core and in all the other games, the single core comes out on top.

 

Most of those games are a little outdated to be used in the ocmparison. And yes, you won't see super results, because all th eengines are doing now is offloadin gsome task, especially sound. If you were to do real time test (I don't like yours because I'm confident they are synthetic, most are form every site) using surround 5.1+ you'll yeild better results, but not by much.

Whether the game uses the engine or not, it's what version of the engine, how new, only the latest are good for comparison. Quake 4 is garunteed game optimized for dual core because of it's recent release date in the newest rendition of the engine.

I noticed Quake 4 was absent in place of the ancient, single core designed, Quake 3, hmmmm. BIAS????

I see it, these are sythetic, using older games, the newest one there is Doom 3 I think.

Dual core CPUs may now only benefit a littl ebit by offloading completely separate tasks like sound, but eventually you'll see a huge benefit, and then Dual core will be a minimum system requirement (Thats s few years away though)

Buy single core so you have to buy a Dual core later? And that comaprison with the super overpriced 4800+ is junk.

Buy a $350 3800+ X2, it's the absolute best investment right now. It'll overclock over 3GHz with a couple hundred bucks in the right air cooling set up. High end zalman heat pipe, front 5.25" bay induction, dual rear PCI exhaust along with the standard array of fans is somehting people tend to miss and buy too expensive a CPU.

 

Forgive me for thinking so, but that post was all about "he can't be right, he mustn't be right, anything he says is wrong". All the points you state are valid, but two of the games tested were the specific two you mentioned for comparisons. Overclocking is irrelevant at the present time in any case, as I'd imagine there are large groups of people who don't want to overclock their system.
If you're not happy with those results then get both processors, boards etc and run your own tests and come back with the results.
Oh, too much trouble and money?
There we go then.
Dual core processors will undoubtedly end up being better for gaming in the end, but there really is little advantage at present.

 

I mentioned the Doom 3 engine, and the Unreal Engine 3. I never mentioned a single game, even if the game used that engine, a change other than offloadin gan already separate task to another core does not call for a new engine. It's still the same name, but different than what the game 4 months ago used, you see what I'm saying? Wed be on Doom 837532 (feels good to just smack some num pad once in awhile) engine by now if we did it so everybody new when something moderate changed.

And unless the dual core CPUs each divide up half the tasks and increase performance significantly, they aren't goign to #4, and I doubt they woudl unless there was even more deeper changes.

Yep, thereis only a little advangtage right now in actual game performance, but there wil lbe more, and righ tnow a dual core is good because people don't just game.

What I'm trying to get at, is that, what you are doign is discouraging dual core CPUs wiht your initial comments. And anyoen who buys a singl ecore nowadays, shoudl have only one excuse- they couldn't intergrate a $350 CPU into their system. Because there is almost no reaosn not to, because singles cores are goign out so fast if you want to keep up with gaming.

 

That's absolutely correct, and my next system will be an X2,bit I was just saying that at the moment there isn't a great use for them at present, but there definitely will be. AMD and intel aren't silly!

 

sammorris
you are entirely right. I must admit that the only "game" that I occasionally entertain on my system is MS Flight Simulator. My interest is centred around Photoshop and rendering RAW files from my digital camera as HQ JPGs or TIFFs as the need arises.
I am building a system around this requirement.
Gigabyte G8N Pro Sli
Athlon 64 x2 Manchester core (I may try overclocking)
2 gb RAM (I am going for quantity rather than the fastest latency etc
3 250 GB WD KS SATA2 HDDs
in Thermaltake Tsunami case
RX600 Pro HDTV Native PCI-Express(not in sli obviously as frame rates mean little to me
Adobe is one of the apps that natively supports multi-threading - not simply handling 2 operations simultaneously!
Ron

 

Wait for Vista, it's always good when we're this close to just wait it out for th eofficial requirements.

I never heard of fast latency before... you mean, you're goign for quanity instead of low latency

 

yes

 

Memory size is the most important, but once you're never going to exceed what memory size you have, using faster memory (lower latency) will yield significant further speed improvements.
If your maximum page size is 850MB, upgrading to 1GB RAM from 512MB will yield significant advantages. However, upgrading to 1GB Ultra low latency RAM over standard value RAM will make the performance advantage even greater. And then of course there's higher speed RAM too.

 

For a new systme at teh present, 2GB is suggested before you start upgrading that 2GB with speed and timing. 2GB makes desktop gamign and multitaskign so much mroe comfortable than 1GB and especially 512MB.

 

Ok heres my setup im making, please suggest if i should do antyhing different, it'll be mainly for gaming and burning dvds/cds:

Raidmax Ninja-918 ATX Mid-tower Case w/450W Power Supply
Cold Cathode Neon Light
Thermaltake Purepower 680 Watt Power Supply [SLI Ready]
[939-pin] AMD® Athlon-64 X2 3800+ CPU w/ Hyper Transport Technology
eVGA nForce-4 SLI Chipset Dual DDR w/7.1 Sound, Gb LAN, S-ATA Raid, USB 2.0, Dual PCI-E MB
Corsair-Value or Major Brand ( should i get the "heats speader" for 110 more?)
2x (pci-express 16x) Nvidia Geforce 7800gt 256 w/dvi +tv out video
WD Raptor wd3740 74.0GB 8M cahce HD
as my second hd:
[S-ATA] Maxtor 200 GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache Hard Drive
OR
[S-ATA] Western Digital 200 GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive
I dont know anything abour raid...
16x DVD-ROM Drive - Sony
NEC ND-3540A or Pioneer DVR-110 or Sony DWQ-28A for dvd writeR?
Creative Lab Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit 7.1
Logitech Z-5500 Dolby Digital + DTS 5.1
and no floppy or fax modem ...
so is the motherboard good enough?

 

For once I concur with reasons?as re the value of more RAM up to 2GB at any rate, although graphic arts professionals running dual CPU report that 3 and even 4 delivers benefits. Many of us do not simply run one app / game at a time.
All using dual cpu or SMP setups report that the gain in responsiveness is worth to cost alone.

 

I would suggest the Asus SLI premium board instead. Make sure your memory and CPU are ocmpatible as well and jump up to a quality 500-550W minimum CPU i fyou want to use SLI. The money you pay for the raptor could be used for more or better almost anything else see more eprformance gain.

Cross check all the specs and req, like a PCI-e SLI borad for SLI video cards, chipset that matches you video cards, and DDR memory and not DDR2 for that AMD CPU. Thso eare just a few things to consider. If you're a first timer don't forget to research the whole process wuite a bit.

That case look s sketchy, don't buy for looks, buy fo rreview and quality. Make sure the case is reglar ATX too, cause the baord i suggeste dis ATX, as your one you chose probably is.

 

thank you for ur suggestions, it is ddr memory, and i'm not sure abou the case, its from ibuypower.com the other cases that were aviable looked a lot more sketchy , and this one has liquid cooling built into it....

 

I'd stay away form liquid cooling if this si a first. Because that's a huge ocmlication if you akready have complications. Water cooling can end very bad if not odne right and tends to be a pain. I would only go with Koolance personally.