Originally posted by: ElTorrente
FX proponents don't seem to understand a crucial thing with the X2s.
For one, benchmarks take place under perfect conditions and clean installs- with no other application running. I don't remember seeing any benchmarks where the machine is playing REAL games. I'd like to see some BF2 benchmarks with VOIP activated, where the CPU has to encode/decode voice information while rendering frames. How about the act of staying connected and communicating with TCP/IP with a 64 person server- hundreds or thousands (?) of packets every second. Which benchmark compares the performance under those conditions?!?! How about Game Spy/All Seeing Eye, Joysticks/controllers, anti-virus, firewall, anti-spyware, AIM, and all the other common utilities that people have while playing online?
The thing is, with dual core- games are as fast as they CAN be. You will never have to wait for a CPU cycle to come around for your task to be performed- there is always CPU cycles available for any program/app to perform its function without taking away from other programs/apps. What this means is that it is SMOOTHER- especially online where much more is going on. Even under PERFECT conditions, the FX is ONLY a few frames a second faster- which is insignificant, and has nothing to do with REAL WORLD gaming!
Ever benchmark your own system?
When you do, do you move the mouse furiously around and press buttons, and send TCP packets, and encode/decode voices over internet? If not- WHY not?

Well- because it slows you down, right? Well, not the X2.

All that stuff happens while playing REAL GAMES.
LOL ever notice in SiSandra software how when you run a benchmark it says something like, "Benchmarking - DON'T move your mouse! OMFG be perfectly still while your system is being benchmarked!" ..

Last time I played a game I was like, moving my mouse and doing stuff.
Have fun with your FXs and benchmarking, and proving to YOURSELVES that you made a good purchase. Those of us with X2s will enjoy the fringe benefits right now - EVEN WITHOUT any software optimizations for dual cores - and in the coming months will see even more improvements.