dual chip processors worht it?
 

So I was reading on CNET about how dual core processors can help when running multiple apps and really speed up the computer speed. Like the rest of you, I play 4 tables, mine 6 more, PT and PA-HUD are running and sometimes I try to make a video.

Right now I'm running this off of a laptop w/a 2001fp hooked up. My next step is to buy a tower and eventually get another 2001fp. The computer would pretty much be used exclusively for poker, w/occasional web surfing, and of course, iTunes so I have something to listen to when I play.

The chip I was looking at, after reading some of the other threads on this forum, was the AMD athlon 64 x2 4200. Is it worth it to spend this kind of $$ on a chip or should I just go bargain basement and get a 2 gigahertz celeron? What type of motherboard matches the athlon chip and will optimize its performance? I'm planning on going w/1 gig of ram, is there anything to take into consideration when buying ram or is it all pretty much the same. I prolly only need an 80 gig hard drive, recommendations appreciated. I doubt I need much in the way of video or sound cards and I'm sure I can find a cheap pair of speakers.

All recommendations are helpful and keep in mind that price is somewhat of a factor. I dont plan on skimping on anything but I don't want to spend excess $$ of stuff I won't utilize to the fullest. I'd like to save $$ where I can if possible.

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

For a hard drive I recommend 250 gb seagate

Or this one if you want to save some money 160 gb seagate

I don't think you will be doing anything that takes advantage of dual core, I'd recommend athlon 64 3700+

Ram is pretty much all the same, unless you are planning on overclocking, then you need high quality ram.

I'd recommend going to something like tech-forums.net, they can help you build what you want if you give them a budget and tell them what you will be using if for.

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

I have to agree with what was said, I dont think you will be doing anything that would see an advantage of a dual core processor. Your better off buying more ram with the saved $$. For ram, you might want to look at some low latency ram, but again I dont think youll need it.

I also have to agree that its probably more cost efficiant to get the bigger HD's. I mean you can probably get 150-150 gb for around 100 if you look for rebates and specials.

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

Why do I want a bigger hard drive if 80 gigs is plenty of space. I'm looking to mainly optimize the speed of the apps I'm running

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

I was looking at mainly the cost per gig for a bigger HD, but if 80gigs will do then go for it. If speed is a factor look at a HD with a bigger cache or the 10,000 rpm drives.

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

If you decide to get a dual core, then I recommend you get an X2 4400+ over the 4200+. It has 1MB of L2 cache rather than 512KB, which really helps when it comes to multitasking. If you don't want to spend that little bit extra for the 4400+, then just get the 3800+.

Also when it comes to RAM, AMD can not handle anything higher than PC3200 DDR400. They will be releasing a new motherboard around this summer that will be able to take DDR2 RAM, but until then you are limited to DDR1. If you plan on overclocking it then you could buy some higher RAM, but if not make sure you don't buy what you don't need.

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

It is my thoughts that the dual-core processors are perfect for us Internet poker players - we are often running multiple programs at the same time, and performance issues can cost us pots in the rarest of situations.

In your case, if I understand your post correctly, you will be running enough tasks to notice significant speeed improvements over a single core Athlon64 - performance compared to the cheapest of Celerons will be noticable whatever you are doing.

I am thinking you could be doing the following all at once:

- 10 tables open on Party (playing on 4)
- PokerTracker auto-importing regularly
- PA-HUD refreshing also regularly
- Music playing (possibly also downloading) with iTunes
- Video being recorded (of poker tables?)

The main CPU-bound program here is likely PT's auto import, although PA-HUD can quite some CPU if you have lots of hands on players and a few filters set up. The second core in an Athlon64 X2 allows CPU intensive applications to run with less impact on the responsiveness of other programs.

Only you can really decide if the price is worth it. If you do go for an X2 chip (or any socket 939 Athlon64):

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What type of motherboard matches the athlon chip and will optimize its performance?

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Anything based on the Nvidia nForce 4 chipset is recommended for top performance, currently a good one is this: ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe
This is a really expensive board, a cheaper alternative would be this one: ASUS A8N5X

Also, I have read that the new ATi chipset is supposed to be good. Not tried one yet, but will have done by next week: ASUS A8R-MVP

With motherboards, there are a vast number to choose from - I have linked only ASUS here, so as to compare like with like. Unless a design is horribly broken, it is the chipset + features that determine the performance of a motherboard. Also, when compared with the difference in CPUs, the performance difference between the slowest and the fastest motherboard is tiny.


It is always worth reading a few reviews when considering a potential new motherboard - a good site for this is www.anandtech.com They have many articles, and the forums there are kind of "the 2+2 of hardware".

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I'm planning on going w/1 gig of ram, is there anything to take into consideration when buying ram or is it all pretty much the same.

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As others have said, cheap memory is fine unless you plan on overclocking.
For a socket 939 Athlon64, it is always worthwhile to make use of the "dual-channel" memory controller, as this will improve performance, especially if you have an X2. This means you should buy 2x 512MB (1GB) instead of a single 1GB stick, unless you plan on adding another 1GB soon.

I hope this helps,

dave.

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

Dave,

That post was awesome and just what I was looking for. Thank you so much for the time and info. I don't plan on overclocking the comp so the standard ram will be fine. I still have a Q on motherboards. Will I notice much of a difference between the cheaper motherboards vs the more expensive ones or will the dif be pretty negligable?

I'm also hearing conflicting points of views on the X2 4400 vs the 4200. I read in another thread on this site that 4200 was the way to go but another poster said the 4400 is much better. Any opinons on this matter?

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

Do you notice much a difference between a 7500rpm drive and 10k rpm drive? How big a cache is optimal? I think the big thing with this comp is that I want to find the right balance between price and speed. I'm looking to find the point where everything is pretty much close to optimum w/out blowing the price outta the water. I'm willing to spend the $$ as long as there are significant speed advantage and my apps run significantly smoother

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

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I still have a Q on motherboards. Will I notice much of a difference between the cheaper motherboards vs the more expensive ones or will the dif be pretty negligable?


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As far as performance goes, there is very little difference between the cheapest and the most expensive motherboards. Unless you are overclocking, which you have already stated you will not be. The main factor in the performance of a motherboard is the memory controller, which is irrelevant to the AMD K8 series CPU - it is built in to the CPU. With an older CPU such as the AthlonXP, Pentium4, Celeron etc. the memory controller is in the chipset - amotherboard component, and differences between boards can be quite pronounced.
There is a small amount of chipset based variation in the speed of AMD64 boards, but at standard clock speeds the performance of any board will be hard to differentiate from another.

The main differences between variously priced motherboards are the features & extras offered: the most expensive of boards will offer the full complement of the latest connections and expandability options - SATA 2 ports, FireWire ports, 10 USB 2.0 ports, 8 channel sound, Gigabit LAN (maybe two GB LAN ports) and so on. An expensive board wil usually come with a generous complement of cables, power adapters and software also. The cheaper options have less available - Firewire is usually the first to go, maybe only 6 USB 2.0 ports (probably still more than enough), 5.1 sound, 10/100 LAN etc. Maybe only 2 PCI slots rather than the usual 3 (or 5 on an older AGP based board). The package probably includes only a few cables - a floppy cable, 1 IDE and 1 SATA (if the board supports SATA). Software will be minimal - A Driver CD is certain, anything else is an unexpected bonus.


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I'm also hearing conflicting points of views on the X2 4400 vs the 4200. I read in another thread on this site that 4200 was the way to go but another poster said the 4400 is much better. Any opinons on this matter?

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This is purely a matter of the price you are willing to pay, obviously 4400+ > 4200+ > 3800+.

It is worth comparing the stats for these CPUs - I am quoting prices from newegg - being from the UK, I have no idea if this is good or not, newegg seems to be an often recommended US shop.

3800+ 2 * 2.0GHz / 512KB cache/core - $295*
4200+ 2 * 2.2GHz / 512KB cache/core - $362
4400+ 2 * 2.2GHz / 1024KB cache/core - $460

* ATM, this 3800+ is listed as "one-day-sale" on newegg, I don't know how much more the 3800+ X2 normally retails for.

Looking at this, here is what I'm thinking. 3800+ - the cheapest X2 processor. Probably enough, but it's only $60 more for the 4200+, which has an extra 10% clock speed. Then 4200+ -> 4400+, $100 extra, same clock speed, for double the cache memory - that's quite a jump in price. I'd really need to know how much the increased cache improves performance to decide if this is worth it.

I really do not know how much the extra chache helps It is widely known that more is better, but I do not know by how much. I am of the opinion that it matters more for applications such as 3D games, and heavy-duty math type programs. It is certainly better when the entire application+data can fit inside the cache. In this case, the CPU that can contain the entire program in it's cache will seriously outperform one that can't, but this situation is very rare. It is most often seen with benchmarking programs. More commonly, data will have to be stored in RAM, and even more commonly, data will not fit in RAM and will have to be stored on hard disk. I am ill informed on this though, and have never used such a CPU, so have no real world experience. I have built many 3800+ systems, and a few 4200+ - They are always impressively smooth, and I need to get one for myself [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Soon enough I will...



dave.

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

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Why do I want a bigger hard drive if 80 gigs is plenty of space. I'm looking to mainly optimize the speed of the apps I'm running

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Then get a raptor (150GB faster than the 75) or a gigabyte I-ram (overkill)

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

I doubt I'll be doing much expanding. I need enough USBs to hook up a mouse, keyboard, 2 monitors, and an occasional ipod. I don't plan on overclocking so it looks like I'll prolly go w/the 4200+ and the ASUS A8N5X motherboard. I found a 74g Raptor hard drive for $100 which is definatly affordable and prolly worth the price. I think I can find a decent video card taht can power 2 monitors w/out much problem and the sound card shouldn't be much of a problem either. Anything else I need?

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

FWIW, I have a 3800+ and I love it. I haven't compared it with the other X2 chips or even a good single core, but it's nice to be able to run a ton of programs and not see any hit to the usability. I can easily datamine 40 tables on 1 XP user account (while not importing those hands until later) and have two or three different poker sites running on my main user account with several tables up, PT auto-importing every minute, PAHUD running, music playing, several Firefox windows open, etc. Even when doing all of that, it is rare that I experience any noticible delays. Even when I do, it's usually when I've been datamining for 2 or 3 days without rebooting. It's also nice that I can import 20k hands or more datamined hands without impacting what I am working on. I guess you've already decided on a dual core processor though, so maybe there wasn't much point to this part of my post.

The only other thing I wanted to add was a case recommendation. I got the Antec Sonata II, and I love it. It was pretty easy to work with and the quality was top-notch. I like the look of it too. Most importantly, though, it's super quiet. I keep it running more often than not, and it is sitting about three feet from my head when I'm on the couch watching TV. I never notice it unless I'm specifically listening for it with the TV off, and that's on the back side of the case, which is louder than the front.

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

Looks good. The reviewer said something about problems w/overheating due to lack of fan power or something to that extent. Do you have this problem?

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

Your question is very broad and difficult to answer. With what you've provided, Dave has answered great. I'd trust his advice.

You're probably better off suggesting an amount you'd like to spend. Once you've posted that, people can mix and match components to get you the best bank for your buck.

Heres how the setup is looking so far, thanx for the advice guys
 

I think Dave has given me a great start and I've been doing some more research on the issues. I'd like to spend under 1k on the system and I think its very possible

X2 4200+ - 352
ASUS A8R MVP - 97
Raptor 10k HD - 99 after rebate

Total = 552

The rest is the easy stuff to fill in

2 512 DDR ram

I think I'm going to go with the Sonanta case that Nomad recommended, a cordless mouse/keyboard combo, cheap video card, just needs to be handle the 1600x1200 res. I'm sure I've got a spare pair of speakers I can hook up so all is good. Should be good enough to handle my poker programs for years to come.

What do you guys all think

Re: Heres how the setup is looking so far, thanx for the advice guys
 

Excellent choices. You have done your homework and it shows.

If only those guys in the "help me choose a Dell" threads were as willing to take expert advice as you are.

Build v1.0.....Thanx to all who helped out
 

X2 4200+ - 362
ASUS A8R-MVP - 87
Antec Sonata 2 case - 100
Corsair Value ram 1g - 78
Geforce fx5500 128mb ddr video card - 62
Raptor 10k rpm 74g hard drive - 100

Final price ~$850 including shipping and handling, can't beat that price and the performance should kick a$$.

Re: dual chip processors worht it?
 

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Looks good. The reviewer said something about problems w/overheating due to lack of fan power or something to that extent. Do you have this problem?

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I've had no overheating problems, but I haven't been monitoring my actual temperatures. I tried to install MotherboardMonitor when I first built the computer, but I couldn't find my mobo in it's list and I never bothered to try to sort it out and make it work. I am using the Asus A8N-SLI Premium mobo. It doesn't have a chipset fan, so that also helps with the noise, I guess, but I don't have any real reference to compare it to. As far as overheating goes, I'm pretty sure there are people that overclock with the factory heatsink and fan, but mine is not OCed. I wouldn't mind trying a mild OC later though.

Regarding video cards: When I built my computer, I pretty much just went with one of the cheapest DVI+VGA PCI-express x16 video cards since I was just planning to run 2 CRTs for a while. I ran into a problem when I figured out that there are different types of DVI. I had DVI-D, which cannot be converted for use with a CRT monitor. If you won't be running a CRT, then this won't apply to you, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up. I am constrained to 1 CRT right now, even though I have a spare in my closet. For converting DVI to VGA, you need a DVI-I port. If it doesn't say in the description, you may be able to tell from the pics, but this isn't 100% reliable. The pics can confirm that it is DVI-D, but they can't show for sure that it is DVI-I. Apparently, some manufacturers use DVI-I connectors but only have DVI-D support. The opposite is not true. You can google for a site that has pics of both connectors, but basically, DVI-I will have holes above and below the long flat hole, and DVI-D will not.