Opteron 146 or X2 4200+?

[xSeongminx]

I was wondering which CPU will net me better performance. I have both CPU's and haven't gotten to overclocking the Opteron yet (the X2 only runs at 2.4 GhZ) but am guessing that I'll be able to get 2.9 out of it. Which one would you guys go with for sole gaming purposes? Thanks.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Right now, maybe the Opteron, but eventually the X2 will come into its own as a gaming processor.

And honestly, I don't think there are many games out there right now that will show you an appreciable performance difference going from a 2.4 ghz X2 to a 2.9 ghz Opteron 146. Your vid card will probably be the main bottleneck.

 

[deadseasquirrel]

For sole gaming purposes, what monitor do you use, and what resolution do you play at?

At this point, dual-core CPUs offer little performance enhancement over their single-core counterparts. And, in some cases, users have reports issues with the dual-core chips (though, usually setting the app to only use 1 core seems to fix most of these). That being said, the future will probably bring more performance advantages from dual-core gaming. How much will likely depend on what resolution you play at-- with 1280x1024 probably showing increases, whereas 1600x1200 not showing much (i.e. more GPU-limited).

Since you already have both, I'd keep the X2, even though the Opty might clock higher. It has more future upside to with regards to gaming (and the added benefit of being able to game while doing something else CPU-intensive like video encoding). And, in these times of graphic-intensive games, we're seeing games like Oblivion not care whether you have a 2.8ghz CPU or a 2.0ghz CPU at anything 1280x1024 and higher.