ENOUGH!! Which pc is better??

Question

High end games?
here is my choice of 2 machines:

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz

or

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800(Dual-Core) 2GHz

Now as I understand it, the dual core means there are 2 1.9 ghz cpus in the chip. How is that faster than 1.9 ghz?

I am so confused.

Answer 1

Dual core, not dual chip

Dual core is just 2 processors inside one chip, its actully only a 70% porformance gain having dual core.

Id pick the dual core for sure, if your plannning on getting vista, the single core wouldnt run vista all that well.

As for the reason why dual core is better...

Think of it as this......

If you saw two cars...one had 2 engines under the hood, and the other had just 1, which would you choose?

Answer 2

Not sure about the math. Is dual core 2x1.9? I don't know. Your are talking to the right guy though. I just went through the same quandary. I WANTED the smaller chip so I could budget my cost over time. I was forced to getting the dual core because of availability problems. My dream machine stopped being offered. I think those chips work on the AM2 mother board. The dual core is faster. I think AM2 socket is newer than 939. Check this out for yourself. Get the newest socket (I think it will be AM2) and the best AMD chip you can afford. As I said I wanted a Compaq SR2038 with an AM2 mother board and a slow chip. I then could but some ram in it and upgrade the CPU later. This machine was sold out. I got an HP with a dual core AMD chip. The machine has the same guts as the Compaq but I was forced up in price because of the faster chip. All just a numbers game. Good luck.

Answer 3

The idea of having two engines under the hood is a good one. That's what "Dual-Core" is all about 2 processors on one CPU chip. In other words, it would take 2 of the AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPUs to equal the single Athlon 64 3800+ X2 Dual-Core. The AM2 platform is the newer technology. It supports DDR2 RAM. Socket 939 supports DDR RAM only. For gaming choose the dual core in AM2 and the ASUS socket AM2 mobo. Kingston, Centon, or Corsair DDR2 RAM.

Answer 4

The clock speed is the same, which means the amount of electrical pulses per second is the same, but with two cores, it can theoretically process twice as much information in a given time making your programs run alot faster. Clock speed is fast not matter what on both comps, so the dual core would be faster therefore better.

In response to the vista guy: I have vista ultimate, w/ every option gfx etc turned all the way up and works faster than XP did.

Answer 5

trust me from expericence the AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800(Dual-Core) 2GHz is faster that the AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz it is faster because it is more powered and runs better and cleaner than the AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz.

Answer 6

Advantages

* Proximity of multiple CPU cores on the same die have the advantage that the cache coherency circuitry can operate at a much higher clock rate than is possible if the signals have to travel off-chip, so combining equivalent CPUs on a single die significantly improves the performance of cache snoop (alternative: Bus snooping) operations. In simpler words, it means that because the signal between different chips has to travel a shorter distance, it does not degenerate as much, which allows more data to be sent at the same period of time - as individual signals can be shorter and do not need to be repeated as often.
* Assuming that the die can fit into the package, physically, the multi-core CPU designs require much less Printed Circuit Board (PCB) space than multi-chip SMP designs.
* A dual-core processor uses slightly less power than two coupled single-core processors, principally because of the increased power required to drive signals external to the chip and because the smaller silicon process geometry allows the cores to operate at lower voltages; such reduction reduces latency. Furthermore, the cores share some circuitry, like the L2 cache and the interface to the front side bus (FSB).
* In terms of competing technologies for the available silicon die area, multi-core design can make use of proven CPU core library designs and produce a product with lower risk of design error than devising a new wider core design. Also, adding more cache suffers from diminishing returns.

Disadvantages

* In addition to operating system (OS) support, adjustments to existing software are required to maximize utilization of the computing resources provided by multi-core processors. Also, the ability of multi-core processors to increase application performance depends on the use of multiple threads within applications. For example, most current (2006) video games will run faster on a 3 GHz single-core processor than on a 2GHz dual-core processor (of the same core architecture), despite the dual-core theoretically having more processing power, because they are incapable of efficiently using more than one core at a time.
* Integration of a multi-core chip drives production yields down and they are more difficult to manage thermally than lower-density single-chip designs.
* From an architectural point of view, ultimately, single CPU designs may make better use of the silicon surface area than multiprocessing cores, so a development commitment to this architecture may carry the risk of obsolescence.
* Raw processing power is not the only constraint on system performance. Two processing cores sharing the same system bus and memory bandwidth limits the real-world performance advantage. If a single core is close to being memory bandwidth limited, going to dual-core might only give 30% to 70% improvement. If memory-bandwidth is not a problem a 90% improvement can be expected. It would be possible for an application that used 2 CPUs to end up running faster on one dual-core if communication between the CPUs was the limiting factor, which would count as more than 100% improvement.

Answer 7

the dual core means there are two processors rather than one. two heads are better than one right? you can multitask and run heavy programs a lot easier. the two processors share the load. obviouisly 2*1.9 is a lot more processing power than 1.9. hope this helps!

Answer 8

The dual core is better as it is newer technology.

Answer 9

the second one

Answer 10

AMD DUEL CORE!!!