Which S939 cpu for gaming. $350 spending limit.

[96s10]

Looking at these:

3700+
3800+
4000+

It's for my uncles new system. Not going to be overclocked any, he just wants the best out of the box gaming performance. Anything else to consider?

 

[gplracer]

Shame he is not going to overclock because a opteron would most likely overclock to 2.4ghz at stock voltage with the stock heatsink. Heck I got a 3200+ ther other day for $180 that did that.

 

[[email protected]]

X2-3800 is the one you should consider the most

 

[darksparkz]

Dual cores are a great choice, for $350, you can get a Opteron 165, but it might be quite hard to find one that OCs really well anymore, depends on luck.

 

[EvilCloudStrife]

i wouldn't recommend dualcore for gaming. no current games support it yet and it would be slower then a single core in game. your not gunna overclock? geeze.. well, get the A64 4000+

 

[Special7]

Dual core is well worth it, an X2 3800+ performs just as good as a 3200+ in games infact probably slightly better, dual core games will be here soon so why buy into something your going to have to upgrade again come early/mid 2006? I was using single cores for way too long, infact my 3000+ at 2.7GHz feels dirt slow compared to my X2 3800+ at 2GHz, I can just feel the bottleneck when using a single core for anything, dual core or bust.

 

[chris64]

Dual core is well worth it, an X2 3800+ performs just as good as a 3200+ in games infact probably slightly better, dual core games will be here soon so why buy into something your going to have to upgrade again come early/mid 2006? I was using single cores for way too long, infact my 3000+ at 2.7GHz feels dirt slow compared to my X2 3800+ at 2GHz, I can just feel the bottleneck when using a single core for anything, dual core or bust.

Thats it im sold i want one. I can feel the sluggishness of my cpu when I think about having dual core.

 

[96s10]

Ok I'm kinda lost when it comes to dual cores. Can both cores process the same game at the same time? I mean isnt it more for multiprocessing, ie several programs?

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[WingsofGOD]

Think of it like this 96s10... One core can run the OS, while the other is used for the game/app being used.

 

[jcw122]

I'd say dual core.

Reasons being that 1 core works on the game, the second on backround stuff/OS.

AND, once time rolls on(soon), Games WILL support DC, and he'll be ready.

 

[apu318]

Dual Core. Some games can use dual cores ATM. F.E.A.R. can use it, Doom 3 and I think HL2 can use it. I know it's supposed to be able to use 64bit. The lesser performance from dual core over single core is extremely minimal, and it's probably evened out and possible surpassed because one core will have 100% of the game work on it, and the other core can deal with the OS and other background apps. Plus, audio/video encoding flies on an X2.