Dual Core and Core 2 Duo

[dwarfer]

I'm thinking of upgrading my pc with a new processor. In my local paper it was advertising PC's - some with 'Dual Core' processors and others with 'Core 2 Duo'

What is the difference? I thought core 2 duo was the same?

Also I was thinking of getting a 3Ghz core 2 duo but a friend says it would be better to get a 2.66ghz core 2.

Is this right?

Thanks

[nmX.Memnoch]

When they say "Dual Core" they're either talking about the Pentium D (P4 based) or Pentium E series (Conroe/Core based) CPUs.

I'm not sure why your friend would tell you that a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo is better than a 3GHz Core 2 Duo. The Core 2 Quad is a different matter though.

Before you go buying CPUs, what motherboard do you currently have?

[dwarfer]

I'm currently looking for a new motherboard, I've seen a few Asus and Gigabyte ones online that seem good but I wish to use my two existing hard drives which are IDE and I can't find a recent mobo that has one. Can you help please

Thanks

EDIT : This is a list of mobos I've looked at and this is the processor.

Edited August 28, 2007 by dwarfer

[puntoMX]

You could use the 2 drives on one PATA cable and go for a new optical drive on SATA.

In general the ASUS P5K would be a great motherboard for it’s price. The E6850 is a bit overpriced compared to the E6750 witch is just 12.5% max. slower at stock speeds. An other option would be the Quad cored Q6600, but I don’t know what applications you run. A good compare you can find here. They compare a Quad cored 2.4GHz CPU with a Dual cored 3.0GHz CPU.

[dwarfer]

Thanks for the reply and link puntoMX! On the web page you linked to its says the core 2 is better for games and the Quad core is better if you do a lot of encoding. I do a lot of both but after reading and looking at their graph I think I'll go with the Core 2 Duo instead of the quad (even though its only £3 more)

I'm going to have to buy another graphics card with the Asus P5K though I'm thinking of this...

Edited August 29, 2007 by dwarfer

[Zxian]

From what I understand, the limitations in almost all modern games is not the CPU, but your graphics card. I've got the Q6600, and multi-tasking is a breeeeze. I can encode two videos at the same time, and not have my overall game performance be degraded... I'd like to see the E6850 or E6750 do that...

Regarding the video card - ATI = crap. Their performance might be a bit higher in some cases, but driver headaches are reason enough to stick with nVidia. I'd suggest a 8600GT or something of the like.

[dwarfer]

On the website I'm buying from they have 2 nivdia cards I've looked at, a Sparkle GeForce 8500GT 512MB and a XpertVision GeForce 8500GT Super 512MB.

[puntoMX]

The nVidia 8500GT isn’t for real gaming; like Zxian said it’s better to go with an nVidia 8600GT and up. I would suggest an ATi x1950GT or a 7900GS, both 256MB GDDR3 or in some cases it’s just a few bucks more on the ATi x1950GT for 512MB witch could come in handy when games use to big textures.

I would go quad core by the way…

Check out these links:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/in...duct_uid=131050

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=103153

[Idontwantspam]

I see the OP is using Windows 2000. I believe Windows 2000 Professional has a 2 processor (dual core) limit. Therefore, a quad-core processor would violate the EULA. If it's Win2K Server, a quad-core processor would probably be allowed. I'm not sure how the processor limit works, but that's what I've heard...

[nmX.Memnoch]

One would hope that an OS upgrade would be in order with the hardware upgrade. Windows 2000 doesn't even properly support Hyperthreaded P4's, much less multi-core CPU's.

Also, having more than 2 CPUs (or cores in the case of Windows 2000) doesn't violate the EULA. Windows 2000 Professional just won't use more than 2 CPUs (cores). The other two will just be unused all the time.

Windows XP Professional will use as many cores as the system has...as long as they aren't on more than 2 physical CPUs.

Edited August 29, 2007 by nmX.Memnoch

[bonestonne]

just a couple of pennies from me, but isn't nVidia slightly more prone to frame tearing? for a gamer thats not exactly welcome. just what i read [and i have an nVidia card, which does tear frames even in very low requirement games].

in regards to Windows 2k, i never tried it on my new computer, but it has iffy performance with my dual Xeons [it tends to favor one core under load] so i don't think it was ever really meant for multi processors. could just be my computer though, it behaved the same with XP.

i'll stop there, i don't game so i can't say anything about that.

[Zxian]

I've never noticed any tearing so far with my 8600GT. Are you sure your problem doesn't arise from the lack of bandwidth on your PCI video card?

[dwarfer]

Actually I have Windows XP, I should have changed my OS status long ago. Sorry

I will look for cards later as I have to rush off to the dentist now

[nmX.Memnoch]

just a couple of pennies from me, but isn't nVidia slightly more prone to frame tearing? for a gamer thats not exactly welcome. just what i read [and i have an nVidia card, which does tear frames even in very low requirement games].

Any card can do this especially in lower requirement games. The frame tearing happens because the video card is pushing frames to the monitor faster than the monitor can display them. Enable vsync and the tearing will probably disappear.

Quake III (Q3) is really the only game where pushing the frame rates as fast as possible is desirable. The reason for this is that Q3 has a "bug" (put in on purpose) that allows you to move faster with a faster frame rate (a constant 125 FPS is the sweet spot). For any other game there's no reason to play with frames higher than your refresh rate. id Software (developer of Q3) has even limited every game they've made since DOOM 3 to 60 FPS no matter how fast your system can push the game.

[Idontwantspam]

About max CPU's. I thought that that it was a maximum of 2 cores, be they on one CPU or 2. I guess I was wrong... so it is legal to use a quad-core processor with Windows XP? Cool!