Dual Core Reliability

S

Sacrifice

n00b
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Aug 2, 2005
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Hey, got a few question for you computer geniuses ;)

1.) Is it worth going to Dual Core yet? I've been doing a lot of searching/reasearch on the Dual-Cores from AMD/Intel and have read about A LOT of problems with them.

2.) At this point in time, what company has a more "stable" dual-core processor on the market between the socket 939 X2 3800 (Looking at 4400 also) and Intels leading competitor? (Pentium D)

3.) Would I be better off sticking with a single core processor. I have a P4 3.0Ghz in my one computer that runs fine, and reliable...

Basically, if you think I should try the Dual-Core, which one is more stable? After reading all the problems with the AMD X2's, I might just stick with Intel...

What I'm considering...
AMD X2 Socket 939 Manchester 3800
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard
EVGA nVIDIA GeForce 7900GT KO 256mb PCI Express x16
2 gb CORSAIR XMS RAM

Thanks!
-Sacrifice
 
What do you mean stable? Run Prime 95 overnight, and you can be sure of that.. I dont think AMD would be in the positions the company is in money wise with 'unstable' products..

AMD and intel both have stable products.. Look at price/performance ratios to choose basically along with OCing if you plan on.
 
Maybe "stable" wasn't neccessarily the word to use. I've just read about a whole bunch of things needing to be done to the AMD X2 to fix a multitude of errors that occur in various games and it made me second guess the "fairly new" dual-core technology. It's the feeling of not wanting "to buy that new car" because it JUST came out and it might have a bunch of problems. Are these Dual-Cores at the point where you install them and go along with what you intended to do (Gaming, Schoolwork, Image Editing, etc.)? Or will you continually run into problems that come along with anything "new"?
 
there were some problems early on, but newer drivers have fixed most of them. In any case, dual core is the future. Most current problems will eventually be fixed, but if you stay with the single core technology, your compatibility and performance will eventually suffer as programmers and developers adapt.
 
get a DC.... but if you have an intel setup now and DDR2 ram why not go conroe???
 
the people who have these massive problems are quite honestly generally inept. Theres no reason NOT to have dual core now with the pricing that they are at. Single core is yester-year. At most you have to set affinity, and that should be very rare.
 
Tutelary said:
the people who have these massive problems are quite honestly generally inept.
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Exactly, and for every one single post about a dual core problem, all the chicken littles run around and act like a thousand more people have the same problem.


Get yourself a dual core CPU.
 
The only thing you have to do if you have a timing issue with a game is run a patch, thats not nearly as big of a problem as your making it out to be. Stable, well, considering the Pentium D is two Prescott cores together and the x2 is two A64's, you decide. The earlier 800 series Pentium D's can get quite hot, and inhale quite a bit of power. If your to go the D route I would definately go with the 900 series. Any of the x2's are solid, and run much cooler. Gamer? x2.
 
I had no problems at all going from a single core Opteron 148 to a X2 4400+....I even forgot to reset my cmos and it booted right up at the overclocked settings that I had for my 148. I applied all the patches/hotfixes for dual core but for a few hours before I did that there were no problems that I could tell..
 
I had an opty 146 and went to an X2 3800+ and I see a big difference in multitasking.
All I did was remove the 146, andpop in the x2 3800+. I turned the computer on, and whala! instant speed.

Burning a DVD and playing F.E.A.R is quite orgasmic. :D
 
Thanks for the replies everyone. Looks like I will still be going the AMD X2 route. Is that mobo a good pick for the dual-core?
 
Adidas4275 said:
get a DC.... but if you have an intel setup now and DDR2 ram why not go conroe???
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Even if you have a Intel Socket 775 setup, most likely your motherboard will not support Conroe. So you still have to get a new MB and chip, which will run you more than an AMD setup anyhow.
 
To the OP:

I to have been questioning the 'small' problems with the X2 chips prior to my recent purchase of an X2 4800 (just bought, awaiting its arrival on 8/14). I have been running an A64 4000+ for over a year now and it has been stable, powerful, and completely problem free. So, I decidied it was time to upgrade! ;-)

I have downloaded the newest AMD dual core optimizer patch and the AMD X2 dual core driver (mainly as I'm told for BF2, which is important for me) and I will be doing a complete system reformat with WinXP Pro w/SP2. After installing the newet chipset, graphics, and audio card drivers, I will apply these new patches and get my games up and running. Again, I will not receive the X2 until 08/13/06.

As someone who can't stand when things don't work just right (I'm borderline OCD) I will keep you posted on how my experience goes. PROBABLY, we're making too big of a deal out of this and everything will work just fine with the X2. My hopes are that FEAR, BF2, Falcon 4.0, and Far Cry will all play like they should. And all will be green...

Still, I can't help but wonder why the new Conroe (not to mention the Pentium D) chips don't have any of these 'issues' and don't require dual core patches and optimizers??
 
For those of you wondering why I'm switching when I already have an Intel setup. I'm not switching, I'm building a whole new rig.

Brachy33, did you download those things via this post? http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=983781 Is everything in this post a neccessity, or just if you're having problems?

I've also heard of people getting negative FPS in games, is this an easy fix.

Can you post links to the optimizer and the dual-core driver? Thanks!
 
do you live in fear?

amd dual cores are great - get it, use it, if you have any issues post in the forum or google it

what are your expectations? do you expect games to run twice as fast? or are you expecting (hoping) that dvd rips will be half to 1/3 the time.
 
It seems like no games really utilize dual-cores to any great extent. Maybe 10% max benefit from experimental patches and optimizations, from what I recall of various benchmarks. Am I wrong? It seems like we're all buying dual-core "for the future" at 2x the price now.
 
I don't expect it to be twice as fast. I'm happy with my current computer, P4 3.0Ghz. I'm just building a rig from scratch so I'll have something for college. I do however expect it not to be such a big hassle just trying to keep it "efficient". I'm pretty much fixed on getting a Socket 939 AMD X2 Toledo 4400+ 89W with an ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Mobo.
 
Sacrifice said:
Thanks for the replies everyone. Looks like I will still be going the AMD X2 route. Is that mobo a good pick for the dual-core?
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Yes, I have the A8N-SLI deluxe and it's fine for dual core....Asus is very good about shipping the latest bios with their mobos and since they are so popular and the stock turns over quickly, you likely won't even have to update before popping in the X2. I noticed no difference before or after installing the DC optimizer and the MS hotfix but either way I haven't had any issues with games or apps.
 
Sacrifice said:
I don't expect it to be twice as fast. I'm happy with my current computer, P4 3.0Ghz. I'm just building a rig from scratch so I'll have something for college. I do however expect it not to be such a big hassle just trying to keep it "efficient". I'm pretty much fixed on getting a Socket 939 AMD X2 Toledo 4400+ 89W with an ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Mobo.
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Its not a hassle, XP does a nice job of balancing the load for most applications and as stated if you have an issue with a game (stuttering), a simple patch fixes that. DC offers redundancy, not twice the speed. It sounds like thats what your wanting, so you will be quite happy :) The 4400+ is a great cpu(s).
 
If you are buying today or after today, you really don't want anything LESS than dual core unless budget prohibits the choice. Sadly the next wave will be to build software that fully utilizes dual cores, which of course will put them back as if they were single cores again, but that is the cycle of things :(

What that cycle means is that software written to fully bring a dual core to its knees will bring a single core utterly to a crawl. A year from now while your "new" system is still feeling fresh, you wouldn't want some new software to bring it to a crawl...
 
Anemone said:
If you are buying today or after today, you really don't want anything LESS than dual core unless budget prohibits the choice. Sadly the next wave will be to build software that fully utilizes dual cores, which of course will put them back as if they were single cores again, but that is the cycle of things :(

What that cycle means is that software written to fully bring a dual core to its knees will bring a single core utterly to a crawl. A year from now while your "new" system is still feeling fresh, you wouldn't want some new software to bring it to a crawl...
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I'm trying to point out that we're paying twice as much for a processor that won't help any games today and may be obsolete when the game engines have been rewritten. Applications like photoshop and what-have-you is a different story.

Does anyone have any examples of where a dual-core helps in gaming? I'm seriously thinking of returning my X2 4000 and getting an "X1" 3800 for half the price until some decent apps come along.
 
It depends what games you play as to it's usefulness. I used to play Dark Age of Camelot and I had two accounts. A dual core was invaluable because I could run both accounts on the same computer without the background game lagging out. It can also help if you like to do things in the background while playing a game, such as encoding a dvd.
 
One more thing guys...... Socket 939 or Socket AM2? Which is the better choice? Was looking at the Socket AM2 Windsor X2 4200+ after a guy on another forum made these points about how AM2 is better: "It supports DDR2 Mem, supports more RAM, has faster I/O. AM2 is much better than 939."
 
AM2 isn't that much better than 939. There are precious few differences.

The draw to AM2 for me is that it uses DDR2, which offers marginal performance gains at higher frequencies, and the fact that 939 is on its way out. DDR2 is cheaper than DDR, so you can get 2 gigs for less.

If you are building a system from the ground up and want AMD, AM2 is the way to go. 939 is a dead end. AM2 has at least a little time left on it.
 
Yes, go with AM2 if you're building new. The new energy efficient (65 watt) versions of the X2s are only for socket AM2. While these CPUs aren't really of interest to overclockers, they're better for just about everyone else.

Another advantage to DDR2 is that it's compatible with Intel should you want to reuse the RAM in the future for a Conroe build.
 
the "problems" were actually not that severe and not nearly as common as you might think.
Nearly everyone I know who built a dual core system who loaded a fresh copy of windows SP2 needed NO special drivers to run any games. No hotfix, nothing.
As far as the rest of it goes I've been running a X2 4400+ exactly 1 year yesterday and it's been flawless. It's been overclocked a few times and gamed quite a bit. Not one hiccup.
Perhaps the difference for me is I do not use CnQ but I've played CoD2, FEAR, BF2, Q4, GUN, and Oblivion without need for special software(beyond making sure the game is properly patched.

I think the dual core glitches were exaggerated greatly
 
venm11 said:
I'm trying to point out that we're paying twice as much for a processor that won't help any games today and may be obsolete when the game engines have been rewritten. Applications like photoshop and what-have-you is a different story.

Does anyone have any examples of where a dual-core helps in gaming? I'm seriously thinking of returning my X2 4000 and getting an "X1" 3800 for half the price until some decent apps come along.
Click to expand...

guess what? some people think beyond gaming for their computer needs.
 
Will the Socket AM2 Windsor 4400+ (65W) have similiar performance to that of the Socket 939 Toledo 4400+ (89W)? Sounds like the Socket 939 is the choice for overclockers, but im not really looking to overclock it...
 
Sacrifice said:
Will the Socket AM2 Windsor 4400+ (65W) have similiar performance to that of the Socket 939 Toledo 4400+ (89W)? Sounds like the Socket 939 is the choice for overclockers, but im not really looking to overclock it...
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other way around
frist thay should be dead even as thay have the same PR 4400+ and are both X2s

the lower wattage chip should OC better since its useing less power to get the same core speed giving you more head room to bring the vcore back up and thus more clockspeed
 
brachy33 said:
To the OP:


I have downloaded the newest AMD dual core optimizer patch and the AMD X2 dual core driver
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Skip the optimizer patch, it is buggy as hell and it will make zero difference for any game that is not old. All it does is make some games that are coded wrong work right, which the same thing can be had by setting the affinity for the executable yourself and avoiding the hangs and crashes that that patch brings.

Here is a thread on that subject.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1071861&highlight=patch

Lot's of people had no problems after installing it, lots of people did including myself.
 
Met-AL said:
Skip the optimizer patch, it is buggy as hell and it will make zero difference for any game that is not old. All it does is make some games that are coded wrong work right, which the same thing can be had by setting the affinity for the executable yourself and avoiding the hangs and crashes that that patch brings.

Here is a thread on that subject.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1071861&highlight=patch
Lot's of people had no problems after installing it, lots of people did including myself.
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Thanks for the info. Also, from what I have been reading at other forums, many people with E6 based chips (the Toledo core in most cases) were able to just do a complete reformat with the X2 chip installed, as well as making sure the proper BIOS settings were changed (ie. 123 errata enabled or auto) and everything worked fine! No patches or fixes needed for games. I was reading that info here:

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22682&highlight=gaming+fix

Once I actually get the X2 4800 from UPS today, I will do a complete reformat with WinXP Pro w/SP2 and do all my usual install steps and see how games play. If everything is green I obviously won't have to bother with any patches and fixes.
 
Elios said:
other way around
frist thay should be dead even as thay have the same PR 4400+ and are both X2s

the lower wattage chip should OC better since its useing less power to get the same core speed giving you more head room to bring the vcore back up and thus more clockspeed
Click to expand...

Will a stock (not-overclocked) 69W Socket AM2 X2 4400 still perform as well as a stock Socket 939 X2 4400?
 
Sacrifice said:
Will a stock (not-overclocked) 69W Socket AM2 X2 4400 still perform as well as a stock Socket 939 X2 4400?
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yes it should as thay both have the same PR number with in 2% to 3%
 
L2 isnt that big of a deal in my mind some ppl will say other wise
that CPU looks good to me if i had the cash id get that and the ram i just linked
have you thought about what mobo your going to use?
 
I'll probably be going with this one. ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce SPP 100 ATX AMD Motherboard . Is there a Wocket AM2 version of this, or is the Socket 939 the socket of the motherboard itself? I just dont know if I want the premium (heatpipe) or the deluxe (fan).
 
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