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.