Opinions please...

[Celador]

Am finally getting closer to the big spend and swapping my 32-bit 3.2Gb rig for a bright shiny new 939 board and (hopefully) dual-core CPU.

The question I have is this: in light of the news that the AM2 boards are on their way, if the now the right time to upgrade? If so, are dual or single core chips the answer?

I have read that dual-core chips aren't necessarily what they're cracked up to be and that some single core CPUs outperform them??

Anybody got any light to shed please??

cheers,
Cel

 

[Celador]

Cheers Jimbo - mainly gaming although I do use some fairly hefty spreadhseets for work stuff.

Have had the 3.2athlon for approx 18 months - 2 years now and have been busily upgrading everything to match so all is now cool but am starting to see some performance drop off with the recent batch of games hence the move to 64-bit.

So far, 3.8 dual core and 3.7 single core have been what I've looked at but am open to other considerations!

 

[Celador]

OK - Looks like the 3.8 dual core is probably the way forward then - thanks for the advice guys.

One last quickie though; I have noticed that going upwards through the 64-bit range, in both single as well as dual core, the level 2 cache memory goes up to 1mb (e.g. d/c 4400) but then the next jump upwards, the 4600 is back down to 512k cache.

Question is - I know that level 2 cache is important but how much importance would it have in this scenario? Am asking cos I may be able to bump up from the 3800 dual core and am wondering which one would be the better value re bang-per-buck..?