AMD v P4 etc

timmy said:
Me 2001, Sorry to dump this on you. I am supposing that a dual core processor is better if not faster as it can accomplish more things at once. Also quickly reading that link, is HT and X2 the same. It seems that hyper threading is the passing of information between 2 processors, so if a PC is HT or X2 or just simply described as dual processor, then it will be all very similar per given manufacturer and generally a good thing. And am I right, the bus speed is the amount at which information is transferred, not neccessarily the speed at which it is transferred. If so, my search is for a dual processor AMD or Pentium at the highest numbers I can afford, but what does 2 x 1 Mb cache mean compared to 1 Mb. It seems obvious perhaps but I dont understand why some PCs with a high processor speed, etc only have 1Mb and other less highly specced PCs have 2 Mb.:confused:
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the dual core processors from AMD are called X2 processors because they have 2 physical processors on the chip, it says 2x 1MB cache because each CPU needs its own cache so thats 1MB for each processor

the meaning of HT is usually confused between intel and AMD processors, HT stands for Hypertransport which is used to connect various devices and as you said connect 2 processors together this is what is used on AMD processors to connect either the two processors or to the bus on the motherboard

HTT is Hyper-threading technology (which is abreaviated to HT technology but people forget the last bit and just use HT which is why they get confused) which is what most Pentium 4 processors use, this is when a virtual processor is created to run 2 instructions at the same time, because the physical processor is not as efficient as AMD processors it has gaps between instructions so the purpose of the virtual core is used to stick an instruction in the gaps to increase efficiency
 
Thank you all. Its definately AMD X2 then. Now what about the rest.........ATI or Nvidia graphics card for example. For gaming and video work I have heard the Nvidia used to be good, (my old FX5600 was OK for games anyway) so has that all changed now and ATI are better.

PSU, 350 looks about normal, but should I go as big as I can here, and is there a certain type of fan I need.

Motherboards, Asus etc have various ones it seems so which is considered to be best. If I was looking at off the shelf though, is there an easy way to find out what board is in a unit as it is never mentioned in the blurb and staff in the shops never know.

Monitors, I think I am OK here. Probably a Samsung or even a Sharp appear to clear and quick.
At this rate I am going to ask one of you to build it.
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Motherboards, Asus etc have various ones it seems so which is considered to be best. If I was looking at off the shelf though, is there an easy way to find out what board is in a unit as it is never mentioned in the blurb and staff in the shops never know.
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And there lies the failure of a propriety manufactured PC ... :D

Ask them, if they don't know, then you walk. ;)

The MB is the one most important component of a PC ... skimp on that, and you may as well pin the tail on a donkey with a blinfold.

A PSU will need to fit your requirements ... don't fall into the trap of just looking at the Wattage, get your 'wish list' of other components ready first.

Search this forum ... we have hundreds of threads, just like this one. ;)
 
Remember that Windows won't automatically set one core to do one thing and another core to do another. You have to do that manually. You won't get any performance boost if you're downloading something whilst you play solitaire, but if you wanted to run a big task like encode a video, you'll be able to set it to do that whilst you do other things at a regular speed.
 
tomsega, I would probably just want to know that the encoding is going on at a steady pace with no interuptions, so as long as that happens I will probably not be doing anything else at the same time. I presume that the cores will share a task (such as video editing) and increase the liklehood of it being done without running out of puff or being disturbed. From my limited experience, this is the biggest pain with video. I understand that 2 cores dont mean more speed but hopefully more grunt.
 
although windows isn't very good at assigning both cores when running a single threaded application it will try to, the good news is that most video editing programs are multithreaded so XP doesn't have to do it
 
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