AMD FX-55 vs X2 (4200-4800) and Dual Core Technology?

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Glamis

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In looking at a bunch of systems, one of the harder things to decide on is the FX-55 processor vs the various X2 processors.

Here is a bit of info from Alienware's site that shows an example of the price differences:

AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 Processor with HyperTransport Technology - $100 Instant Savings! [+$309]
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Processor with HyperTransport and Dual Core Technology - [+$556]
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Processor with HyperTransport and Dual Core Technology [+$319]
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Processor with HyperTransport and Dual Core Technology - [+$53]
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Processor with HyperTransport and Dual Core Technology
Click to expand...

When I compare two chips, for example the X2 4600 to the FX-55 (since they cost about the same), they stack up like this:

Code: 
FX-55 Specifications:
Processor Speed:   2.6 GHz
Bus Speed:         2000 MHz
Level 1 Cache:     128 KB
Level 2 Cache:     1 MB Advanced Transfer
Special Features:  3DNow!, SSE2, Cool'n'Quiet


X2 4600+ Specifications:
Processor Speed:   2.4 GHz
Bus Speed:         2000 MHz
Level 2 Cache:     2 x 512KB
Package Type:      939-pin
Special Features:  Dual-Core Technology, AMD64 Technology,
                   HyperTransport, Enhanced Virus Protection,
                   SSE3, Cool'n'Quiet

Now, with that information it would seem that the FX-55 would be the slight winner. It bothers me that the X2 4600+ does not seem to have a Level 1 cache (is that just something they left out in the information?).

But then there is this information about the dual-core technology which I cannot tell if it is accurate or just some kind of public relations sales-speak:

Dual Core Technology: AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors feature two processing cores instead of one, which allows the CPU to process multiple application data simultaneously and in less time. The key benefits to this technology are more efficient multitasking and running multiple processor-intensive tasks at the same time with minimal performance degradation. Play games while burning a DVD video and running a virus scan in the background - or process your latest 3D render while working on a DV timeline…with Dual Core technology, you can do more than you ever imagined in less time than you every thought possible.
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So basically, how does one make the decision between the FX-55 chip and one of the X2 chips?

Furthermore, how much power do you need from the CPU if you are planning to run dual NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT PCI Express 256MB cards in SLI?

Thanks for the help.
 
first... are you really planning on getting an alienware rig? i would advise against it unless you really don't want to build your own

second.. what will you do with it? the advantage of X2 is the dual core.. when you try to run a cpu intensive app, it will go on one core while the other is still free to do stuff. also, when multithreaded apps finally become mainstream, you'll see an even larger benefit of the extra core.
but, if you plan to do straight gaming.. something like a 3800+ may be a better deal ;)
 
I use my computers for gaming and work (I have been making online RPGs for about 10 years). Not only don't I have the time to build it myself, if something goes wrong or is done wrong with a machine, I don't want to be the one responsible. I am not stuck on Alienware though, and would love to hear suggestions of places like them who do custom gaming PCs.

second.. what will you do with it? the advantage of X2 is the dual core.. when you try to run a cpu intensive app, it will go on one core while the other is still free to do stuff. also, when multithreaded apps finally become mainstream, you'll see an even larger benefit of the extra core.
but, if you plan to do straight gaming.. something like a 3800+ may be a better deal
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The most system intensive thing I do is gaming.

I do two things, really, on my PC:

1) Programming (this is in a text editor, which would pretty much run on a 486 I bet).

2) Gaming.

Of those 2, only gaming really matters as far as PC performance.

I have been told that when you do SLI you really want to make sure you have a CPU powerful enough not to be the bottleneck. It is hard for me to figure out which chip between the FX-55 or the X2s (with the dual core technology) is really the superior processor.

Also, do the X2 chips really not have a level 1 cache?

Finally, I read somewhere that the 4400 has 2 megs of level 2 cache whereas the 4200, 4600, and 4800 only have 1 meg of level 2 cache. Is this right? That seems really crazy. Was that just an erroneous piece of information?

Thanks,
 
don't look at any of that info, as if you can come to the conclusion that one of the processors doesn't have L1 cache, something is very wrong. Both of those chips are cousins, if not brothers. They share close to the same performance when comparing single cores, however the X2 is a 2 core solution (means nothing yet for games, maybe something in the future, it certainly is far more horsepower though if it can be used).

The FX-55 is based on a older core revision than the X2. The X2 is a rev. e. CPU, equivalent to a "san diego/venice" except having two unique cores in one die package. Now the FX-55 is going to come in at a higher clock speed and with more cache than the 4200+, however the 4400+ will have increased cache coming in at 1mb. Personally the dual core is the way I would go, simply because you get more for your money in my opinion, and I would OC the X2 to FX speeds anyways. However, seeing as how you won't be OC'ing, and are wanting dual sli (only do this if it is going to be the "newest" 7800gtx, as any extra cash spent on a CPU would be better spent on video if you have lesser cards in mind, IE a 3700+ san diego+ dual 7800>FX/X2 + dual 6800) I would go with a fx-57 (newer core), as it will offer a much higher clock speed for less money than an equivalently clocked dual core. If you are looking for good overall system performance in heavy tasks such as encoding, or multitasking with intensive apps, and can afford to go with it, the 4800+ would be very killer. Otherwise I sadly must say, the FX-57 is the best bet.
 
mikelz85 said:
don't look at any of that info, as if you can come to the conclusion that one of the processors doesn't have L1 cache, something is very wrong. Both of those chips are cousins, if not brothers. They share close to the same performance when comparing single cores, however the X2 is a 2 core solution (means nothing yet for games, maybe something in the future, it certainly is far more horsepower though if it can be used).

The FX-55 is based on a older core revision than the X2. The X2 is a rev. e. CPU, equivalent to a "san diego/venice" except having two unique cores in one die package. Now the FX-55 is going to come in at a higher clock speed and with more cache than the 4200+, however the 4400+ will have increased cache coming in at 1mb. Personally the dual core is the way I would go, simply because you get more for your money in my opinion, and I would OC the X2 to FX speeds anyways. However, seeing as how you won't be OC'ing, and are wanting dual sli (only do this if it is going to be the "newest" 7800gtx, as any extra cash spent on a CPU would be better spent on video if you have lesser cards in mind, IE a 3700+ san diego+ dual 7800>FX/X2 + dual 6800) I would go with a fx-57 (newer core), as it will offer a much higher clock speed for less money than an equivalently clocked dual core. If you are looking for good overall system performance in heavy tasks such as encoding, or multitasking with intensive apps, and can afford to go with it, the 4800+ would be very killer. Otherwise I sadly must say, the FX-57 is the best bet.
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Cant help myself.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=1565

Thats out next week. Didnt take long did it. I promise you we'll be up to at least a dozen if not more titles by christmas :). Both (especially) intel and AMD are pushing dual core hard, game designers dont usually ignore this.
 
still without knowing what kind of performance increases the integration will offer, the FX-57 offers a much higher clockrate that a slower X2 just won't touch. Now if there were any benchmarks that would be one thing, but I'm not a fan of dropping $600 on something that might be faster in 6 months if developers use it. Frankly dual cpu solutions have been out for a while, so has hyper threading, so has 64bit. Until I see a real benchmark showing a slower dual core beating a single core FX, I just can't justify going with one for a gaming system. Though they are sweet, the tech just isn't used yet by game developers. If you are really concerned about the coming dual core utilized games, whatever they are, I'd go with a cheaper 3700+ san diego, and later down the road if dual core looks super spiffy (and it will be cheaper) you can buy a CPU and replace your san diego, they both take the same socket, and will switch without issue.
 
So is it true that the 4400+ for some unknown reason has more cache than 4200+, 4600+, and the 4800+? That is so strange.

I'm not going 7800 because those cards are going to be crazy expensive for quite some time. I'll be getting dual 6800 GTs (256 megs of ram).

For me, upgrading a video card is easy, but upgrading a CPU is not something I want to do. Thus, I'd like to be prepred for any future video card upgrades with a CPU powerful enough not to become a real bottleneck.

It sounds like you are saying the X2 is a better choice than the older FX. It also sounds like of the ones I have listed, the 4400+ is the best one (even better than the 4600+, which is really strange).
 
mikelz85 said:
still without knowing what kind of performance increases the integration will offer, the FX-57 offers a much higher clockrate that a slower X2 just won't touch. Now if there were any benchmarks that would be one thing, but I'm not a fan of dropping $600 on something that might be faster in 6 months if developers use it. Frankly dual cpu solutions have been out for a while, so has hyper threading, so has 64bit. Until I see a real benchmark showing a slower dual core beating a single core FX, I just can't justify going with one for a gaming system. Though they are sweet, the tech just isn't used yet.
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But you are trying to justify a 1100 dollar processor? The FX series is simply a status symbol and nothing more. The price per performance on the other hand is the worst AMD offers. And lets be honost. Whats the FPS loss going to be from a 2.4 or 2.2 X2 compared to a 2.8FX. Are you going to be ripping your hair out from the slide show before you? Absolutly not. I wouldnt even bring up the FX. If you are suggesting higher clocks, thats fine, suggest a 4000+, but dont say the X2 is questionable because of price v performance and then say a 1100dollar processor is a safe bet. Doesnt make any sence.

Nvidia is also in the works on dual core drivers to offload GPU work between 2 different processors. ATI, im sure, will come with something as well. All in all Dual Core processors are being embraced just as fast in the gaming community as PCI Express was. And look at that now.

I'd go with an X2 as well.
 
Glamis said:
So is it true that the 4400+ for some unknown reason has more cache than 4200+, 4600+, and the 4800+? That is so strange.

I'm not going 7800 because those cards are going to be crazy expensive for quite some time. I'll be getting dual 6800 GTs (256 megs of ram).

For me, upgrading a video card is easy, but upgrading a CPU is not something I want to do. Thus, I'd like to be prepred for any future video card upgrades with a CPU powerful enough not to become a real bottleneck.

It sounds like you are saying the X2 is a better choice than the older FX. It also sounds like of the ones I have listed, the 4400+ is the best one (even better than the 4600+, which is really strange).
Click to expand...


4200= 2200mhz 512kb cache
4400= 2200mhz 1mb cache
4600= 2400mhz 512kb cache
4800= 2400mhz 1mb cache

All level 1 cache and what they support as well as the core they are based on are all identicle. What is listed above is level 2 cache. The Rev E are doing more work per clock then previous Athlon 64, this has been shown. So a 2.4 Rev E is cruising very closly to an older 2.6 proc in terms of performance in games, plus you get the multitasking regular Athlon lack completely.
 
Glamis said:
It sounds like you are saying the X2 is a better choice than the older FX. It also sounds like of the ones I have listed, the 4400+ is the best one (even better than the 4600+, which is really strange).
Click to expand...
The 4200+ is 2.2ghz with 512k cache x2
The 4400+ is 2.2ghz with 1mb cache x2
4600+ 2.4 512k x2
4800+ 2.4 1mb x2

I'd say that the 4400+ is going to be a good chip, but in your case seeing as how you won't be overclocking, I'd go with the highest frequency you can afford, dual core or otherwise. The extra cache really won't influence performance much, especially on the dual channel 939 boards, there's already tons of bandwidth, benchmarks show 512k vs. 1mb to be neglible in games. You're better off going with a 4600+ over a 4400+, or a cheaper 4200+ over a 4400+. The problem with dual core right now is that for games, it is all on paper. Until I see a preview of the tech from someone that actually has it in their hands, it's all talk. If you have the cash to drop, don't buy an X2, you will be far better off spending the money on a $200 CPU @ 2ghz (like a venice), and taking the other $600 and putting it towards SLI 7800GTX. That will own any dual core system, or FX system with 6800's, and it will cost close to the same price.

BTW the notion that the A64 can't multitask just because it doesn't have 2 cores or hyperthreading is ridiculous. Maybe if "multitask" means video editing and half life 2 at the same time, but I don't see how people are equating this to "average" use.
 
If you're going to SLi a set of 6800GTs to save a few dollars but get maximum performance/dollar, then why spend the huge dollars on the FX? I mean, if you're making tons of money by all means go ahead. But, the FX's majesty is the fact that when overclocking, they're the primest of prime chips...and you don't plan on overclocking, so a 4000+ would be a good match to those 6800GTs (imo). Either that or a 4200+ or 4400+ if you just want two CPUs in one for kicks, and extra multitasking (which I find amusing because Intel people scream multitasking when half have never used AMD...I can run tons of crap on my claw and it hardly slows down at all).

I personally say buy a Dell for working, and put it side by side with your custom built computer...if you run everything at stock I have a hard time believeing it'll die. But that's my idea personally...keep work and fun seperate. ;)
 
FanATIc said:
I'd go with an X2 as well.
...
4200= 2200mhz 512kb cache
4400= 2200mhz 1mb cache
4600= 2400mhz 512kb cache
4800= 2400mhz 1mb cache

All level 1 cache and what they support as well as the core they are based on are all identicle.
Click to expand...


Ok. Level 1 cache is the same for all these chips so I don't have to worry about that. Cool. Got it. Thank you for solving that mystery. :)

When I first look at the above stats, it LOOKS like the 4400 is the best bang for the buck. But then when I read on:


mikelz85 said:
I'd say that the 4400+ is going to be a good chip, but in your case seeing as how you won't be overclocking, I'd go with the highest frequency you can afford, dual core or otherwise. The extra cache really won't influence performance much, especially on the dual channel 939 boards, there's already tons of bandwidth, benchmarks show 512k vs. 1mb to be neglible in games. You're better off going with a 4600+ over a 4400+, or a cheaper 4200+ over a 4400+.
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I see the logic behind what you are saying. This assumes that there is no significant difference between an L2 cache of 512kb x2 or 1mb x2, which means between 4200, 4400, and 4600, the 4200 is best for cost and the 4600 is the best for performance.

Am I understanding that correctly?

Also, everyone seems to agree that dual core doesn't do a lot for you right now. Will it do more in the future? I should mention that typically, even when gaming, I am usually running at least 10 different applications (some simple text editors, some more intensive). For example, if I am playing something like World of Warcraft I like to be able to work at the same time (downtime, travel time, etc.). I don't know if the dual core helps with that now or will help with it ever.

Thanks,
 
Glamis said:
Also, everyone seems to agree that dual core doesn't do a lot for you right now. Will it do more in the future?
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yes

I should mention that typically, even when gaming, I am usually running at least 10 different applications (some simple text editors, some more intensive). For example, if I am playing something like World of Warcraft I like to be able to work at the same time (downtime, travel time, etc.). I don't know if the dual core helps with that now or will help with it ever.

Thanks,
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People that havent used something with HT or a dual processor rig before will notice right away that the pauses are very noticably gone. Even just alt tabbing out of WoW to, say, check email, or something, will pause for a good 5-15 seconds on an Athlon 64. On a dual core basically all pauses and hitches where the processor would need to re-allocate for what you are currently doing are gone. Its really very nice. Everything runs liquid smooth and nothing takes any time to open or close no matter what you are doing. I CAN speak from experiance going from Pentium 4 no HT, Pentium HT, Athlon, and Athlon X2.

Basically to sum it up, an X2 will help you regaurdless if you are running something like 2 games at once, or simply running music while you game. There is a difference no matter how small or large, it is there.
 
if you REALY need a pre-built get a Falcon there so much better
www.falcon-nw.com

every alienware i have seen the inside of has had crapy parts
 
If you wanna build your own, I and a lot of forum members will be available for help :) And you also will save a ton....
 
FanATIc said:
dont be an idiot
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how so if you are going to get an overpriced pice of plastic get a dell

at lest falcon uses good parts
 
Seriously though, the best price/performance ratio of any part is going to be the video card, skimping on that by going with an expensive cpu and sli 6800s isn't as good as going with a cheaper cpu and dual 7800gtxs. Or even going with other less expensive options, but if you are spending enough for that kind of system, get the latest gaming hardware. It will outperform the dual 6800s even with a "lesser" cpu, which still packs more price/performance.
 
This is what I did...

CPU: 4000+ San Diego (only 200 mhz slower then the FX-55 San Diego...and about $400 LESS!). The 4000+ SD also has the same cache as the FX-55 SD, and from the reviews I saw, there was not a whole lot of difference in performance between the two.

Video Card : BFG 7800 GTX OC


What the guys said above is right. Don't put all the money on the processor and skimp on the video card. 1 7800GTX will beat the performance of 2 6800GTs in SLI, in fact it beats 2 Ultras in SLI in some of the latest games.

I choose the 4000+ San Diego because it is plenty fast for gaming, especially when you add in the video card I got. I don't plan to OC too much right now, but if I do I'll just OC it to FX-55 speed or a little higher. It's only 200 mhz slower but the savings of $400 more then makes up for that! I'd be willing to bet that my 4000+ will OC 200 mhz or more quite easily. Down the road, if I decide to upgrade then I know I only spent about $475 on the cpu...instead of closer to $850. The San Diegos all have 1mb of cache as well, IIRC.

If you don't want to go with the 4000+ because you'd also like to get a GTX card and the cost may be prohibitive, I would definatley look into the 3700 and 3800 chips. They are suppoosed to be really great performers and nice OC'ers.

If you are predominantly interested in gaming, I wouldn't choose a dual core right now. AFAIK, there aren't any games that anybody knows of yet that will utilize dual core technology (maybe the next UT?). By the time games start coming out that will actually utilize the dual core technology, the dual cores released right now will probably be considered inferior. lol Time will tell!

Hope this helps some.
 
How does the X2 compare to say a P4 at 4 gighertz? for multitasking????



People that havent used something with HT or a dual processor rig before will notice right away that the pauses are very noticably gone. Even just alt tabbing out of WoW to, say, check email, or something, will pause for a good 5-15 seconds on an Athlon 64. On a dual core basically all pauses and hitches where the processor would need to re-allocate for what you are currently doing are gone. Its really very nice. Everything runs liquid smooth and nothing takes any time to open or close no matter what you are doing. I CAN speak from experiance going from Pentium 4 no HT, Pentium HT, Athlon, and Athlon X2.

Basically to sum it up, an X2 will help you regaurdless if you are running something like 2 games at once, or simply running music while you game. There is a difference no matter how small or large, it is there.[/QUOTE]
 
I got 105k in aquamark see sig with my x850


Arklight said:
This is what I did...


CPU: 4000+ San Diego (only 200 mhz slower then the FX-55 San Diego...and about $400 LESS!). The 4000+ SD also has the same cache as the FX-55 SD, and from the reviews I saw, there was not a whole lot of difference in performance between the two.

Video Card : BFG 7800 GTX OC


What the guys said above is right. Don't put all the money on the processor and skimp on the video card. 1 7800GTX will beat the performance of 2 6800GTs in SLI, in fact it beats 2 Ultras in SLI in some of the latest games.

I choose the 4000+ San Diego because it is plenty fast for gaming, especially when you add in the video card I got. I don't plan to OC too much right now, but if I do I'll just OC it to FX-55 speed or a little higher. It's only 200 mhz slower but the savings of $400 more then makes up for that! I'd be willing to bet that my 4000+ will OC 200 mhz or more quite easily. Down the road, if I decide to upgrade then I know I only spent about $475 on the cpu...instead of closer to $850. The San Diegos all have 1mb of cache as well, IIRC.

If you don't want to go with the 4000+ because you'd also like to get a GTX card and the cost may be prohibitive, I would definatley look into the 3700 and 3800 chips. They are suppoosed to be really great performers and nice OC'ers.

If you are predominantly interested in gaming, I wouldn't choose a dual core right now. AFAIK, there aren't any games that anybody knows of yet that will utilize dual core technology (maybe the next UT?). By the time games start coming out that will actually utilize the dual core technology, the dual cores released right now will probably be considered inferior. lol Time will tell!

Hope this helps some.
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UnrealCpu said:
I got 105k in aquamark see sig with my x850
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Good for you, but what does that have to do with anything? lol

He is taking about not wanting to oc, IIRC.
 
great, so you just spent $600 extra dollars on a CPU so you could ALT TAB out of a game faster? Geez, people are starting to make the lamest justifications for dual core setups. Why didn't all of this talk and hype ever go on about dual cpu setups? They've been around for years. My guess is marketing. Somebody mentions driver utilization and everyone shits their diapers. I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm saying that I don't pick what those performance increases will be at random, or when they will be. I wait for the benchmarks. Sure a dual core would be "better" for alt tabbing, etc, but the notion that because it is "better" that another CPU would be "shit" is absurd. The money in this users case is best spent on the video card(s), as that offers the most real world performance increase, and it offers it now, not maybe, not "really cool super duper dual core utilization" by flight simulators 6 months down the road, but right here right now. The day when going dual core offers more performance with 6800gts, than single core with 7800gtxs is far longer off than 6 months, unless you know something the whole industry doesn't.
 
mikelz85 said:
great, so you just spent $600 extra dollars on a CPU so you could ALT TAB out of a game faster? Geez, people are starting to make the lamest justifications for dual core setups. Why didn't all of this talk and hype ever go on about dual cpu setups? They've been around for years. My guess is marketing. Somebody mentions driver utilization and everyone shits their diapers. I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm saying that I don't pick what those performance increases will be at random, or when they will be. I wait for the benchmarks. Sure a dual core would be "better" for alt tabbing, etc, but the notion that because it is "better" that another CPU would be "shit" is absurd. The money in this users case is best spent on the video card(s), as that offers the most real world performance increase, and it offers it now, not maybe, not "really cool super duper dual core utilization" by flight simulators 6 months down the road, but right here right now. The day when going dual core offers more performance with 6800gts, than single core with 7800gtxs is far longer off than 6 months, unless you know something the whole industry doesn't.
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It was an example, but hey if you're going to be retarded about it. Im sure hes going to love the 40 extra unnoticable FPS a 7800gtx will give. Apparently one fact totally eludes you. GAMES ARE PROCESSOR BOTTLENECKED. Which is why Nvidia is doing this:

I spoke recently with Ben de Waal, NVIDIA's Vice President of GPU software, and he revealed that NVIDIA has plans to produce multithreaded ForceWare graphics drivers for its GeForce graphics products. Multithreading in the video driver should allow performance increases when running 3D games and applications on dual-core CPUs and multiprocessor PCs. De Waal estimated that dual-core processors could see performance boosts somewhere between five and 30% with these drivers.
Most imminent on the horizon right now is ForceWare release 75, which will bring a number of improvements for SLI performance and 64-bit Windows, among other things, but release 75 will not be multithreaded. The next major iteration of the driver, release 80, is slated to bring support for multiple threads. We may not see this version for a few months; NVIDIA hasn't given an exact timetable for the completion of release 80.

Out of curiosity, I asked de Waal why NVIDIA's drivers don't already take advantage of a second CPU. After all, the driver is a separate task from the application calling it, and Hyper-Threaded and SMP systems are rather common. He explained that drivers in Windows normally run synchronously with the applications making API calls, so that they must return an answer before the API call is complete. On top of that, Windows drivers run in kernel mode, so the OS isn't particularly amenable to multithreaded drivers. NVIDIA has apparently been working on multithreaded drivers for some time now, and they've found a way to fudge around the OS limitations.

De Waal cited several opportunities for driver performance gains with multithreading. Among them: vertex processing. He noted that NVIDIA's drivers currently do load balancing for vertex processing, offloading some work to the CPU when the GPU is busy. This sort of vertex processing load could be spun off into a separate thread and processed in parallel.

Some of the driver's other functions don't lend themselves so readily to parallel threading, so NVIDIA will use a combination of fully parallel threads and linear pipelining. We've seen the benefits of linear pipelining in our LAME audio encoding tests; this technique uses a simple buffering scheme to split work between two threads without creating the synchronization headaches of more parallel threading techniques.

Despite the apparent gains offered by multithreading, de Waal expressed some skepticism about the prospects for thread-level parallelism for CPUs. He was concerned that multithreaded games could blunt the impact of multithreaded graphics drivers, among other things.
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according to Lead Pursuit, the developers of “Falcon 4: Allied Force”, performance gains of up to 30 per cent. A massive step forward compared to the minuscule increases seen when running current titles on dual core processors.
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Ensemble has said as much about AOEIII.

Dual core proc, X2, 8XX Pentium, have been out for less then a month and already this is popping up. Are you blind or just pretending to be ignorant to where the game industry is going? Single core processors are going to less and less appealing over time as developers code for dual thread since its now affordable and being pushed by the two bigest CPU developers in the world. If you cared to read his posts, he wants a CPU thats going to last him a couple years, he can do graphic card upgrades himself when he wants to. As soon as an extremely expensive toy is released people keep spinning that its the best thing ever. Its not. Let the guy pick what he wants but do not knock potential of dual core CPUs. Hell of alot more futureproof then the next Nvidia or ATI card thats obsoleted in 8months according to your thinking of "if its new i must need it". I mean jesus didnt you see the specs of the 8800 Ultra? Whos gonna want a 7800POS. And the ancient 6800, LOL. /rant off
 
Just give us the benchmarks......With X2 4800 and FX55 SD overclocked to the max :)

Whos going to try...first, anyone????...Its all theory..Lets put it in real world and stop the flamming war, ok? ;)
 
Ok then...heres my max FX55 SD with single stage phase, I dont have X2 yet. In a few days I will try it with dual phase and if I can shoot it for 4Ghz..

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Play BF2 with 2Gb. memory and its so smooth... :D
 
The thing I'm knocking is the use of "potential" performance increases as a reason to go with a far more expensive processor. Notice that he said 5%-30%, that's a pretty big range. I would personally never buy 2 7800gtxs, but hey, it's going to get you a far bigger performance increase on games than a dual core will, and that's my point. The extra FPS can always be traded for better IQ settings. Given what I've seen you posting around, I don't think you really have a good clue as to what's what in hardware, probably just enough information to lead someone astray. If there's one thing I've learned in suggesting upgrades it is understanding what a users needs and wants are, and suggested the best buy for their budget, in this case dual core makes little sense. He won't be overclocking #1, which means the dual cores clock speed will stay relatively low. #2 He is already dropping a ton of cash with an SLI 6800gt setup, clearly this user is looking for high end graphics. You want to talk about a bottlenecked CPU, what do you think a lower clocked dual core will do without optimizations? Surely it will be just the same as a 2.2ghz venice/san diego. Maybe hypothetical guesses as to what will be "hot" in 6 months is what you go by, which explains the dual r520s in your sig, and the crossfire mobo, which haven't been released, let alone reviewed, or even previewed (unless you are counting the paper launch of xfire). Surely a 7800gtx offers more than 40fps over a 6800gt, it offers more features and better IQ options. You certainly can't say the same for a reasonably clocked dual core cpu, which WILL run about the same price with 2x6800gts as a lesser CPU with 2x7800gtx. Anyways I'm not looking to start a flame war, just suggest the best options for the end user.
 
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