dual core

Can someone please give me reply of having a dual core AMD processor wil
work fine for SW?
I want to buy a dualcore AMD Athlon x2 4400 2mb
Quadro fx 3400
2 GB ram
Windowes XP 64 bit (driver problems?)
raptor 73 gb 10.000rpm
asus a8n-sli-nforce4

 

The dual core or even dual processors aren't going to buy you much if
you're pretty much running just SW. They might if you tend to run a
bunch of stuff on a single computer, or do a lot of Cosmos or
Photoworks.

I opted for a single core (FX57), and it seems to be cranking out some
decent benchmark times. Check out some of the threads on this NG, do a
search on fx57, benchmark, ship in a bottle, etc. I use my old computer
for internet and email, which it's well suited for, so using another
machine is my "dual processor".

Depending on what work you do, you might see more benefit from a pair of
graphics cards than a pair of CPUs.

matt

 

Let's put it this way. A dual core 4400 is competitive with the fastest
FX chips. Maybe not quite as fast, and not because of the dual core,
just because a single core is as fast. The dual core will help
tremendously if you do FEA, Photoworks rendering, large drawings or run
PDMW locally.

 

Paul,

I've been advocating dual processors for years for just these reasons, and
you've been discouraging them saying setting the CPU priority was just as
good (which it isn't)

What changed your tune.

Regards

Mark

 

Plain and simple cost and speed. A single core on the dual core AMD is
nearly as fast as the fast single core AMDs, Matt's FX57 excluded. In
the past people were paying big bucks for dual cpu motherboards and
having to cut back on the speed of the cpu to do so. With the new dual
cores you therefore don't give up much if anything with single tasking
SolidWorks, but you gain in the areas I mentioned. Previously the cost
differential to have two top of the line Xeons or Pentiums was just
plain silly. Now that FEA, PW and Drawings take advantage and the price
difference to have a fast single or dual core cpu is much smaller the
cost benefit is there.

Finally, in the past people were buying dual cpus primarily to speed up
SW. That still doesn't make sense if that is all you do.