Dual Core or Not to Dual Core, That is the question

OK, I gotcha.
Thanks for differentiating the pipes and buses.

 

Do the Asus A8N SLI base, deluxe and premium have the same pipelines in them?

 

Pipelines are only dependent on what card you get, not what motherboard. They all support PCIe 16x is that's what you mean. You won't notice any difference in graphical performance between anyone of those boards.

 

I was assuming that was the case but wanted to make sure, since I have seen either the Deluxe or Premium described as x8 x8 in SLI mode and of course the A8N32 being described as full x16 x16.

Since I won't be buying the A8N32, I wanted to make sure that my assumption was correct and that they ran at x8 x8 in SLI.

Thanks Exfo, I have my list of parts almost complete and hopefully in the next week or two I will order it all. I will let you guys know what I'm getting soon, since many have influenced my decisions.

 

I just worked on a client's system which was a dual-core rig, and from what I saw dual-core is no faster in Windows than a single core. Maybe Vista's SMP scalability will be an improvement?

 

Anti,
That's what I've been hearing also, on this board and elsewhere in reviews.
I'm sure it is no better at gaming, but you would think it would be better in running multiple apps at once. Were you running multiple apps at once?

Now if running just 1 app, I still would think a single core is as fast. I'm going to get a single core I believe (AMD +3800 S.D.).

I don't do enough multi-app work at once to justify the $100+.

 

Yes, we ran multiple apps at once. Judging from the CPU usage graphs, it harkens back to Windows' problems with multithreading. I believe Linux would make good use of a dual-core, but if you are intending on using Windows it honestly does look like a waste of money for most people.

 

No prob man, glad you've got things all sorted out. Keep us posted

 

Anti-Trend,
Of course you are an unbiased source, correct?

Just joking with you there. But that is very interesting, if that is the case. I think that has me leaning to the single core a lot more now.

But like I said earlier, I really don't think I will be running much at one time. I may fool around in Photoshop more, now that I will have a faster system, but I don't think this would justify the high cost of a dual core.

 

Yeah go single, can't beat the price of a 3800+, great chip that.

 

[ot]

I've used Windows since Windows 1.0, of course I'm biased! I think Windows is a pile of crap. I converted to Linux recently and never looked back. But just because I prefer one OS over another doesn't mean I don't know Windows very well. On the contrary, the reason I don't like it is because I know it so well.[/ot]