Athlon64 dual cores: CHEAPER!!

[Dr Mordrid]

Know those $$ A64 X2's you've been drooling over but couldn't afford?

Well....AMD just lowered their prices;

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2484

A64 X2 3800+: $354 list

Not only that but the power consumption for the 3800+ is down to 89w.

Sounds like they're going in the right direction

Dr. Mordrid

[Claymonkey]

yeah I was drooling over them myself. If only I had the funds for a new rig.

[The PIT]

At the moment unless you're doing something that uses dual processing they're not worth the extra outlay.
Go and check out the benchmarks. Maybe in a year when games are written for Dual procs it will be worth it.

[Claymonkey]

It's not all about benchmarks. I'd enjoy having the 'buttery smoothness' of an smp box. Especially for things like antivirus and antispyware progs. Still I haven't spent more than a $100 on a proc in a LONG time. I'd like to stay close to that trend for the time being.

[Nowhere]

Yeah, look at my sig. One detail is missing - it's dual.
Not that pathetic as one would think...

[ZokesPro]

I'd love to own a dualie (for bragging amonst other things), but I wouldn't know how to seriously take advantage of it, unless I was running some sort of server (db, web server, etc.) cause with regular usage my XP2100+ does the job nicely.

[Nowhere]

You would take advantage. Somehow it never happened that one process hogged down the machine. Well...there's simply always some power left to keep things going...

[The PIT]

Well I can run half life2 1600 x 1200 maxed with a virus checker running in the background doing a fuill system check and I hardly notice.

[Nowhere]

But in some cases of badly written program/process taking up 100% of CPU, you have to reset.
I simply go to process manager and kill it...because explorer etc. is responsive as normall.

[GNEP]

Hmmm just before I left Shell we were having problems running my models on the server... I thought it was the usual corporate standard server machine with a duallie and a few gigs of ram. Turns out it was an 8-way machine with plenty of everything. And still it ran like a dog. Maybe this will encourage whatever company I work for next to give me some decent power

[[GDI]Raptor]

Not only that but the power consumption for the 3800+ is down to 89w.

Sounds like they're going in the right direction

Well, I'm sitting here with my Atlhon 64 X2 4400+ now. Using standard clockspeed and wathercooling I'm having 28 degrees C on my CPU.

I'm very satisfied with my dual-core processor, system feels very responsive, even when working with many programs.

[Nowhere]

A little fellow up: recently I started ressurecting my main machine, AXP 1700+ with 256mb, win XP & 2k3. As I said...dodgy version of ffdshow took the Athlon 1700 on its knees...100% CPU utilisation and mouse lag of several seconds; at one occasion winamp also freaked out in the same way; none of this ever happened on this dual p2 266mhz. Trying to acces data from hdd with badblocks also causes less disturbance in the system.
Yeah, in the normal operation AXP is much more responsive...I'm just pointing out certain situations when dual comes out on top...

[Mehen]

intel dual cores are dirt cheap, check out the 2.8ghz one. scored pretty decently too, especially for the price

[borat]

intel dual cores are dirt cheap, check out the 2.8ghz one. scored pretty decently too, especially for the price

i was thinking the same thing, just stubled accross some xeon 550Mhz on ebay for 99p (actually selling for that price), went and searched and found you can get the 2+Gig xeons for as little as 40 quid. Now get a dual proccesor mobo and some cheap ram and you have yourself a pretty beefy budget cost machine. Whether you actually use both chips is another issue.

[Jammrock]

intel dual cores are dirt cheap, check out the 2.8ghz one. scored pretty decently too, especially for the price

release way too much heat/power. amd all the way for me. Plus people have been able to overclock the x2's with ease.