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which processer should i buy?

Discussion in 'PC Hardware' started by slugshead, 2005/08/28.

  1. 2005/08/28
    slugshead

    slugshead Inactive Thread Starter

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    im after a new processer, upgrading from athlon 64 3200+ (its just not fast enough)

    im looking at 2

    the athlon fx-57 and the athlon 64 x2 4800+

    which one??/

    i understand there is an fx 59 and 5000+ coming out soon so i think ill wait for that

    but which do you think would suit my needs more (the price difference doesnt matter)

    i do a lot of audio recording/editing, photo manipulation, video editing, dvd authoring, web design and occasional gaming

    i think the dual core would suit me better but im just unsure, what does everything think?
     
    slugshead,
    #1
  2. 2005/08/28
    jaylach

    jaylach Inactive

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    Ahhhhhh, Personally I would leave it alone as it is. Right now there is no real way to tell how fast what you have is until, at least, Longhorn is released as retail, to at least, take some advantage of the 64bit processor you now have.

    In a nutshell, right now you are running tomorrow's processor on yesterday's OS.
     
    jaylach,
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  4. 2005/08/29
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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    I suggest you look at some reviews. I saw some reviews(for 64 bit "mono" processors) and there were lot of mixed results. Intels were better on some applications, AMD others. Semprons and Celerons were better than Athlons and P4s in some cases. Running in 64 bit did not make a great deal of difference on some applications (some were better in 32 bit).

    Do a web search for the model and "review ", you might see what I mean. Tom's Hardware website is good for reviews and comparisons.

    Don't neglect the rest of your system. "Editing" is mainly dependent on RAM and HDDs, so it may depend on the size and speed of the RAM. Getting data onto and off HDDs is still slow compared to the speed of processing. Do you have a lot of high frequency (dual) RAM and SATAII drives? I am not sure that many of your applications are extremely CPU dependent. Run your system monitors and see how much burden is on the CPU. Everest and Sandra in my signature have some benchmarks. Do the benchmarks at PCpitstop.

    Don't forget the motherboard and chipset, they feed the data to the CPU. You won't get any improvement if there is a bottleneck before or after the CPU. Even updating the chipset drivers may make a big difference.

    I tend to agree with Jay. There seems to be too much "flux" at the moment. Closer to the release of Longhorn, manufacturers of software and hardware (drivers) should have...hopefully... gotten their act together.

    Matt
     
    mattman,
    #3
  5. 2005/08/29
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff

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    A similar thread here in which I discussed the pros and cons.

    Low end or high end processors doesn't matter, the basic differences between single core and dual core are the same. Follow the link in post #7.

    My conclusion was/is:

    There are currently not many (no?) applications which, on its own, utilize the dual core.

    Everyone is multitasking, running AntiVirus, FireWall, E-mail program, listening to music and a lot of other stuff in the background. This means that we would benefit from dual core even without applications specifically designed for dual core.

    I would go for dual core without hesitation but gamers would probably be of a different opinion.

    Christer

    Edited:

    To analyze differences between single core and dual core Athlon64, the same performance number must be compared. That is what that article does. It also includes corresponding Intel Pentium processors of comparable performance.
     
    Last edited: 2005/08/29
    Christer,
    #4

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