Newbie questions - Athlon 64 4800 Dual Core?

[comcast]

Hello,

I may be building a new PC in the next few months. I have not put in an AMD
chip since my 386-40 (which worked very well). I need to get up to speed on
64 bit and dual core systems running on Microsoft XP 64 or Vista.

Some background on what I'll be using the system for so you can help me make
sure I'm not wasting my money on a dual core system.

I will always have Norton AV running in the background - possibly
bittorrent.

In the foreground (so to speak) I typically only open Outlook and word and
IE at the same time or I close those and have a game playing e.g. FEAR, Q4,
Halo. COD2 (of course those will change with time).
I will probably be going to Office 12 when it comes out - although there
isn't much improvement as far as I can see but I have to be able to support
it.


I will be going to Vista when it comes out - I have a copy of Windows XP 64
now.

Now I know I want a 64 bit processor for various reasons such as testing
Exchange 2006 etc and my equipment budget is limited so I typically just
change out Hard Drives when I test things.


So far I haven't seen much compelling evidence I'll get much performance
improvement by using a dual core processor for most games (office runs fast
enough on my old P4 2.8) which typically are the most hardware demanding
programs I run. I have no idea what game developers are working to get
performance improvements with the dual core processor. I figure people here
would know more than I what is coming out that might benefit from the dual
core processor for home use. I have not tested Vista yet so I don't know if
it helps either.

I'm not ruling out Intel but only if they make a dual core 64 bit processor
that competes with AMD in price and performance.

Thanks

 

[Cal Vanize]

Hello,

I may be building a new PC in the next few months. I have not put in an AMD
chip since my 386-40 (which worked very well). I need to get up to speed on
64 bit and dual core systems running on Microsoft XP 64 or Vista.

Some background on what I'll be using the system for so you can help me make
sure I'm not wasting my money on a dual core system.

I will always have Norton AV running in the background - possibly
bittorrent.

In the foreground (so to speak) I typically only open Outlook and word and
IE at the same time or I close those and have a game playing e.g. FEAR, Q4,
Halo. COD2 (of course those will change with time).
I will probably be going to Office 12 when it comes out - although there
isn't much improvement as far as I can see but I have to be able to support
it.


I will be going to Vista when it comes out - I have a copy of Windows XP 64
now.

Now I know I want a 64 bit processor for various reasons such as testing
Exchange 2006 etc and my equipment budget is limited so I typically just
change out Hard Drives when I test things.


So far I haven't seen much compelling evidence I'll get much performance
improvement by using a dual core processor for most games (office runs fast
enough on my old P4 2.8) which typically are the most hardware demanding
programs I run. I have no idea what game developers are working to get
performance improvements with the dual core processor. I figure people here
would know more than I what is coming out that might benefit from the dual
core processor for home use. I have not tested Vista yet so I don't know if
it helps either.

I'm not ruling out Intel but only if they make a dual core 64 bit processor
that competes with AMD in price and performance.

Thanks

From the description of your uses, I'm not sure dual core would provide
any advantaage over spending the same money of a fast single core
processor and good memory.

For less than the price of a X2 4800, you could get an Opteron 175
Denmark with 2mb of L2 and a couple of gb of good fast memory. Put it
on a good motherboard and overclock it 20% or so and you'll end up with
a powerhouse of a system. Should run a lot cooler than anything
competitive from Intel. But with your applications, it might be good to
figure in a couple of WD 160gb SATA II (SJ) drives in RAID0 to help
overcome what will be the biggest system bottleneck (disk I/O).

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Hello,

I may be building a new PC in the next few months. I have not put in an AMD
chip since my 386-40 (which worked very well). I need to get up to speed on
64 bit and dual core systems running on Microsoft XP 64 or Vista.

Some background on what I'll be using the system for so you can help me make
sure I'm not wasting my money on a dual core system.

I will always have Norton AV running in the background - possibly
bittorrent.

In the foreground (so to speak) I typically only open Outlook and word and
IE at the same time or I close those and have a game playing e.g. FEAR, Q4,
Halo. COD2 (of course those will change with time).
I will probably be going to Office 12 when it comes out - although there
isn't much improvement as far as I can see but I have to be able to support
it.


I will be going to Vista when it comes out - I have a copy of Windows XP 64
now.

Now I know I want a 64 bit processor for various reasons such as testing
Exchange 2006 etc and my equipment budget is limited so I typically just
change out Hard Drives when I test things.


So far I haven't seen much compelling evidence I'll get much performance
improvement by using a dual core processor for most games (office runs fast
enough on my old P4 2.8) which typically are the most hardware demanding
programs I run. I have no idea what game developers are working to get
performance improvements with the dual core processor. I figure people here
would know more than I what is coming out that might benefit from the dual
core processor for home use. I have not tested Vista yet so I don't know if
it helps either.

I'm not ruling out Intel but only if they make a dual core 64 bit processor
that competes with AMD in price and performance.

Thanks

Forget the 4800+ it's overpriced, the 4400+ is the right choice for people
who have high performance computing needs. The 4400+ has the same size
caches as the 4800+, 1M per processor, but has a slightly slower clock
and a much lower price. In you case I don't think you need a 4400+ since
you don't do any heavy duty computing. The X2 3800+ is probably good
enough for your needs, the X2 3800+ is a couple of hundred dollars cheaper
than the 4400+. You could also consider a single core processor since you
won't get a whole lot of benefit from dual cores yet. The 4000+ is the
same price as an X2 3800+ but has a faster clock and a bigger cache.

 

[comcast]

Thanks, you think that would be better than the performance of a NCQ drive
(with an ncq controller)?

 

[comcast]

Thanks, I realize there are no games that really take advantage of the dual
core now - are there any ones that are known to be coming out that will?

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Thanks, I realize there are no games that really take advantage of the dual
core now - are there any ones that are known to be coming out that will?

Not true, I saw an article on one of the hardware sites, I think it was
Anand but it could have been another site, that said that there are
already a few games that are multithreaded. The latest Nvidia drivers also
take advantage of multiple cores. Given that the trend is towards multiple
cores, and that the race for higher clock rates is pretty much over for
now, you can expect that there will be more and more applications that
will become multithreaded in the next few years. The game guys are already
doing it, which is not surprising since games are the only compute
intensive application that the average consumer uses. I would guess that
many if not most of the new games that come out in the next two years will
be multithreaded. A dual core processor is a good way to future proof your
system. The clock rates are only slightly lower then the single core
processors so you won't be giving up much in the short term and you'll see
a big benefit in the long term.

As I said in the earlier post, the X2 4400+ is the choice for a high
performance system, the X2 3800+ for those on a budget. I wouldn't by a
4800+ until after AMD comes out with a faster CPU. As a general rule of
thumb you never ever buy the fastest speed grade part available because
the price/performance on the highest speed part always suck. Generally you
want to go two steps down from the top, which for dual cores is the 4400+,
because that's where the sweet spot for pricing is. In the case of dual
cores the 4400+ is an even better bargain then usual because it has 1M
caches. The more expensive 4600+ only has 1/2M caches and only a 10%
faster clock speed then the 4400+. Bigger caches are worth at least 10% so
the performance of a 4400+ should almost always be equal to a 4600+. In
some cases the effect of cache size is much greater. I do Verilog
simulation on my machines, NCVerilog runs twice as fast on a machine with
1M caches as it does on a machine with 1/2M caches. This is an extreme
case and chances are that you won't have any applications that exhibit
that degree of cache sensitivity, but almost everything sees some benefit
from bigger caches.

 

[comcast]

Thanks - I agree about buying the fastest being too expensive. I typically
buy 2 below the top. I'm hoping AMD comes out with a few new ones soon so
that I could possibly get something even faster than the 4800 for less
money. I'm hoping to see some reviews on NCQ controllers soon so I can see
if that will give me a perfomance increase as well. Perhaps by the time I
build my system there will be some good ones built onto the motherboard
already.

 

[Cal Vanize]

(CAUTION: long rambling discussion on hard drive performance and set-up
follows)

Drive speed won't be limited to the bandwidth or efficiency of the
interface as much the speed of the drive during read or write. The
sustained read speed of hard drives pretty much maxes out at around
80mbs for the fastest drives (not even to the potential of IDE100 or
IDE133) regardless of the interface. NCQ may help a little but drive
speed tests and practical experience don't show much real-world
difference (sometimes it actually slows the drive a little).

Some of the higher capacity drives are faster due to the fact that they
don't have as much mechanical movement of the heads and can read more
data from a given position of the arm. Bigger buffers help in data
burst read and write rates, but the drive still has to position the
physical heads at the correct point to read or write the data.

I've tested a number of modern drives for speed in real-world computers.
The best bang for my buck seems to be two WD1600JS in RAID0. Better
performance can be realized using two SE16 WD2500KS, WD360GD Raptor or
WD3600 (either IDE or SATA) drives in RAID0.

Motherboard architecture can impact drive transfer rates for RAID0 if
there are bandwidth limitations on the drive controller subsystem and
the system data transfer bus. Sometimes this limitation puts a cap on a
RAID0 array so that adding more drives (more than two in RAID0) doesn't
improve performance. I don't use more than two drives because the
performance improvement doesn't justify the cost.

When setting up any hard drive or RAID0 array for performance,
partitioning for high-performance i/o is critical to the overall system
performance. Try to keep the head movement to a minimum by setting up a
small operating system partition (less than 20gig) as the first
partition followed by a second small partition (five time RAM size) for
nothing but the pagefile. The "beginning" of the drive is typically
faster than "farther out" toward the end of the drive.

The third partition ("farther out") should be for storage of data,
infrequently used programs, email files, etc. In this way, the fastest
part of the drive will be used for operating system and applications,
the pagefile will be on a separate partition and won't be fragmented
(and won't fragment applications or data). Data will be on a third
partition in areas that have slower access. The first and third
partitions can be defragmented to help speed access.

The speed difference in the third partition can vary, but o/s and
application program load time is usually what is most noticeable when
discussing system business performance.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Thanks - I agree about buying the fastest being too expensive. I typically
buy 2 below the top. I'm hoping AMD comes out with a few new ones soon so
that I could possibly get something even faster than the 4800 for less
money. I'm hoping to see some reviews on NCQ controllers soon so I can see
if that will give me a perfomance increase as well. Perhaps by the time I
build my system there will be some good ones built onto the motherboard
already.

NCQ is helpful for file servers but it won't make any difference to a
desktop system. If your desktop is doing a lot of disk accesses then you
don't have enough RAM. On your next system you'll want a minimum of 1G, 2G
if you can afford it. With 2G of RAM everything will be cached and you'll
never see any disk accesses except when you first boot up and the first
time you access an application after the boot.

 

[Unk]

Just be aware that -some- games now don't seem to run well with -some-
hardware configurations that have dual core AMD's. Lots of info at the AMD
forums. I can't run Serious Sam 2, FS2004, or HL2. Tried lots of solutions
but so far none work yet. Civ4 does run though.

 

[Ed]

Just be aware that -some- games now don't seem to run well with -some-
hardware configurations that have dual core AMD's. Lots of info at the AMD
forums. I can't run Serious Sam 2, FS2004, or HL2. Tried lots of solutions
but so far none work yet. Civ4 does run though.

Haven't played many games on my X2 yet, but I had CnQ enabled, fired up
Madden 05, was all normal except the FB players are like 5 times faster
then normally, the receivers must of been running 50 MPH down the
sidelines, it was funny!

I guess the game adjusts for CPU speed and got tricked by CnQ on start
up or something? Well at least I know my grafix card has no problem
keeping up.

Ed