So is Core 2 Duo worth it for gaming over X2?

[RussianSensation]

37% performance advantage clock for clock (2.4ghz X6800 vs. 2.4ghz FX-60 at 1600x1200)

I remember how I started recommending A64 3000+ over P4 3.0ghz when it first came out and it makes me sad that the wonderful architecture which included groundbreaking features such as the internal memory controller, short and efficient pipeline and the first true 64-bit capable-processor (for mainstream) is now due for a full replacement.

Bring on K8L

 

[Markfw]

yes, I am sorry too. I am converting over. X2 wa good, P4 was crap, C2D is just better, X2 is still good.

 

[RussianSensation]

Mark nice overclocks on those E6300s.

 

[Hulk]

I don't understand why it would make you said that Conroe eclipsed X2?

X2 was amazing in it's day, that is before Conroe. Now Conroe is having it's day.

Without Conroe we'd be where we were a year ago. Maybe a 200MHz bump in X2 core speeds but that's about it. Intel scrambled and came up with the goods. Now it's AMD's turn to turn up the heat.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I have to say, after using my C2D and now using my X2 after my C2D basically crapped out (traced it down to memory as the main possibility). That I do miss my C2D alot. Games run fine on my 2.6Ghz X2 with 2GB DDR-500 and X1900XT on DFi Lanparty UT SLI-D, but they are much faster on my E6400.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: Hulk
I don't understand why it would make you said that Conroe eclipsed X2?

I am not sad literally. Of course I want technology to superceed older tech and perform better which is why I own Conroe. I just remember how great A64 was and how slow it has become all of a sudden.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: Hulk
I don't understand why it would make you said that Conroe eclipsed X2?

Mostly for reasons pertaining to platform and memory. X2s had some amazing OC boards, and you had a lot of options with memory thanks to dividers. Conroe, on the other hand, has a more limited selection of viable overclocking boards and a virtual requirement that you get good OC RAM if you're serious about pushing the cheaper chips as far as they can go.

So yeah, you might save $120 or so buying an E6300 now vs the X2-3800+ in its heyday, but you wind up spending that much and more getting an acceptable OC board and RAM to take the E6300 to its limit. That being said, all the Conroe chips are still amazing overclockers and great buys if you can stand the minimum cost of entry (which is basically an S3 and whatever RAM you get that can hit DDR2-1000 or better). The RAM requirement is a little less stringent for those OCing chips with higher multipliers, I suppose, and things will get better still when the E4300 launches . . . when the E4300 launches, I think Core 2 will really reach its full potential as a budget overclocking platform.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

oh please. there is definatly something wrong with that article.the max fps a core 2 extream can pump out at 3 ghz is 47. please. i bet it has more to do with the immature drivers for the 8800gtx.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: tanishalfelven
oh please. there is definatly something wrong with that article.the max fps a core 2 extream can pump out at 3 ghz is 47. please. i bet it has more to do with the immature drivers for the 8800gtx.

It's actually the average framerate, not the max framerate, but point taken. Since I haven't played the game I don't want to comment too much on it's performance - it may just be that the code is very inefficient, and the site does state it's not multithreaded, so that may be one of the core (excuse the pun) problems right there - developers trying to cram everything into one thread.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: tanishalfelven
oh please. there is definatly something wrong with that article.the max fps a core 2 extream can pump out at 3 ghz is 47. please. i bet it has more to do with the immature drivers for the 8800gtx.

Even if the drivers are immature and not efficient, the game is clearly cpu limited as well as gpu limited. Therefore, since both AMD and Intel platforms use a less than efficient 8800GTX (if we consider immature drivers), it is hardly imaginable that all of a sudden newly released Nvidia drivers 6 months from now will suddenly help A64 close the 37% gap. Logically, if the drivers and game updates introduce multi-threating and allow 8800GTX to stretch its wings, actually Core 2 Duo will probably have an even greater advantage since 8800GTX benefits from a faster cpu.

 

[biostud]

running on medium settings, the more you crank up the details the smaller is the difference, same story with the P4 vs A64.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Games run fine on my 2.6Ghz X2 with 2GB DDR-500 and X1900XT on DFi Lanparty UT SLI-D, but they are much faster on my E6400.

you need to quantify which games.....

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: biostud
running on medium settings, the more you crank up the details the smaller is the difference, same story with the P4 vs A64.

And the more you crank up the details the lower the framerate. It's already running at 47fps on an X6800, theres not exactly a lot of headroom to crank up any more settings.

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: harpoon84

Originally posted by: biostud
running on medium settings, the more you crank up the details the smaller is the difference, same story with the P4 vs A64.

And the more you crank up the details the lower the framerate. It's already running at 47fps on an X6800, theres not exactly a lot of headroom to crank up any more settings.

usually the graphic settings are limited by the GPU, not the CPU

 

[BigDH01]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: Hulk
I don't understand why it would make you said that Conroe eclipsed X2?

I am not sad literally. Of course I want technology to superceed older tech and perform better which is why I own Conroe. I just remember how great A64 was and how slow it has become all of a sudden.

Why does everyone consider the A64 to be so great? The X2 was the clear winner over P-D but I think people are forgetting how close in performance the P4 and A64 were. When the A64 was released, the P4 3.2C was highly competitive.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1884&p=1

While the A64 generally performed better in gaming, the P4 and A64 exchanged wins in everything else. The A64 was certainly not the jump over P4 that the Core 2 was over the X2.

Here is Anandtech's final hardcore single core review before the Pentium D and X2 was released.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353

Here you'll see that the 3.8 GHz P4 was a pretty decent chip and was certainly competitive with the 3800+. If you were doing encoding, the P4 was the chip to have. That is, if you could live with the heat and power problems. And let's not forget that back in the early days, you could easily buy a 2.8C and overclock it to 3.5+. That's one fast and cheap Northwood. Bottom Line: A64 didn't come into its own until X2. The X2 was the only chip that could make me upgrade my Northwood and I loved the 3800+ X2. But let's face it, this A64 nostalgia is somewhat blown out of proportion. It was a cool, low power, fast running chip but certainly wasn't revolutionary when released and didn't really spread its wings until X2. Keep in mind, I'm referring purely to desktop performance and not discussing how AMD performaned in the server market.

Now the Core 2 has just destroyed the X2. That's right, destroyed. I don't see why we would feel sad or miss the A64. It simply wasn't *THAT* great. In the grand scheme of the things, the Core 2 has been much more revolutionary.

 

[Markfw]

The P4 (prescott especially) was so hot, that it negated any positives IMO. And they wouldn't OC much. The X2 OC'ed great the Conroe just OC's better. I think the P4 was far below the Athlon64, and the Conroe does not destroy and X2 (at least stock), but they are better, thats why I am converting over. So all in all, I think the different between the P4 and the X2 is the same as the X2 to Conroe.

But since we all agree on the order, how much better shouldn;t be that major of a contention point.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Until I got NWN2 I was completely happy with my overclocked single core A64. I game at 1650 x 1050, most games are GPU bound for me and I doubt I'd notice a huge difference in a faster processor. I'm sure I'd get something out of it, but I don't know that it'd be a big enough difference to justify an entire platform jump. But now with NWN2 if I leave task manager open and play I can actually see that my CPU utilization is at 100% throughout. I also only have 1 gig of memory. So, I'm not sure if it's worth getting more DDR memory since it's basically a dead technology. But, for games other then NWN2 I think most people would do fine on an A64 and benefit more from a better video card. Most games are still GPU bound, atleast at higher res.

 

[BigDH01]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
The P4 (prescott especially) was so hot, that it negated any positives IMO. And they wouldn't OC much. The X2 OC'ed great the Conroe just OC's better. I think the P4 was far below the Athlon64, and the Conroe does not destroy and X2 (at least stock), but they are better, thats why I am converting over. So all in all, I think the different between the P4 and the X2 is the same as the X2 to Conroe.

But since we all agree on the order, how much better shouldn;t be that major of a contention point.

My contention is that the difference between Conroe and X2 is greater than A64 over P4. The 3.2C beat the A64 on many benchmarks when the A64 was released while the FX-60 never came close to X6800. I didn't think the X2s were all the great when overclocking. My 3800+ needed quite a voltage bump to get anything past 2.5 and I wasn't willing to push it. The 2.8C hit 3.5 a little easier.

I would say that if you ignored heat and power considerations and examined all applications and multitasking that A64 was roughly equal to P4. I tried an A64 back when 3.2Cs were popular and I must say that I often appreciated hyperthreading. It was annoying to have your system slow to a crawl when doing something that drew 100% CPU power (although this has more to do with windows scheduler than A64). However, despite the performance "near-parity" the Prescott left a bad taste in peoples' mouths for other obvious reasons. Then the X2 came along and ended any debate about performance. However, that was to be expected in programs that were multithreaded. The X2 was able to scale two A64 cores far better than the P-D could scale two Prescott cores. The X2 did it faster, with less power, and while producing less heat. It also made dual core popular on the desktop. However, when looking at competing products, the Core 2's leap over the X2 is still greater than the A64s leap over the P4. The A64 really depended on performance-per-watt to be named a clear winner. The Core 2 clearly wins in every regard.

 

[StopSign]

Originally posted by: BigDH01
Why does everyone consider the A64 to be so great? The X2 was the clear winner over P-D but I think people are forgetting how close in performance the P4 and A64 were. When the A64 was released, the P4 3.2C was highly competitive.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1884&p=1

While the A64 generally performed better in gaming, the P4 and A64 exchanged wins in everything else. The A64 was certainly not the jump over P4 that the Core 2 was over the X2.

Here is Anandtech's final hardcore single core review before the Pentium D and X2 was released.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353

Here you'll see that the 3.8 GHz P4 was a pretty decent chip and was certainly competitive with the 3800+. If you were doing encoding, the P4 was the chip to have. That is, if you could live with the heat and power problems. And let's not forget that back in the early days, you could easily buy a 2.8C and overclock it to 3.5+. That's one fast and cheap Northwood. Bottom Line: A64 didn't come into its own until X2. The X2 was the only chip that could make me upgrade my Northwood and I loved the 3800+ X2. But let's face it, this A64 nostalgia is somewhat blown out of proportion. It was a cool, low power, fast running chip but certainly wasn't revolutionary when released and didn't really spread its wings until X2. Keep in mind, I'm referring purely to desktop performance and not discussing how AMD performaned in the server market.

Yeah the Northwoods were decent, but were still inferior to the Clawhammer/Newcastle generation of A64. Then, for some unknown reason, Intel decided to replace Northwood with Prescott which is a piece of crap. And then later, they even decided to cram two Prescotts on a single die. Essentially, P4 got worse and worse while the K8 got better and better. You can say the P4 was competitive in the earlier days of K8, but up till a year ago, I don't think anybody in their right mind would take a Prescott over a Venice.

 

[BigDH01]

Originally posted by: StopSign

Originally posted by: BigDH01
Why does everyone consider the A64 to be so great? The X2 was the clear winner over P-D but I think people are forgetting how close in performance the P4 and A64 were. When the A64 was released, the P4 3.2C was highly competitive.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1884&p=1

While the A64 generally performed better in gaming, the P4 and A64 exchanged wins in everything else. The A64 was certainly not the jump over P4 that the Core 2 was over the X2.

Here is Anandtech's final hardcore single core review before the Pentium D and X2 was released.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353

Here you'll see that the 3.8 GHz P4 was a pretty decent chip and was certainly competitive with the 3800+. If you were doing encoding, the P4 was the chip to have. That is, if you could live with the heat and power problems. And let's not forget that back in the early days, you could easily buy a 2.8C and overclock it to 3.5+. That's one fast and cheap Northwood. Bottom Line: A64 didn't come into its own until X2. The X2 was the only chip that could make me upgrade my Northwood and I loved the 3800+ X2. But let's face it, this A64 nostalgia is somewhat blown out of proportion. It was a cool, low power, fast running chip but certainly wasn't revolutionary when released and didn't really spread its wings until X2. Keep in mind, I'm referring purely to desktop performance and not discussing how AMD performaned in the server market.

Yeah the Northwoods were decent, but were still inferior to the Clawhammer/Newcastle generation of A64. Then, for some unknown reason, Intel decided to replace Northwood with Prescott which is a piece of crap. And then later, they even decided to cram two Prescotts on a single die. Essentially, P4 got worse and worse while the K8 got better and better. You can say the P4 was competitive in the earlier days of K8, but up till a year ago, I don't think anybody in their right mind would take a Prescott over a Venice.

Well, I wasn't going to upgrade my Northwood to a Prescott because, although I do a great deal of encoding work, I didn't want something that was so hot in my machine. I'm just saying that if you only look at performance and you include every benchmark (encoding, rendering, multitasking) that the A64 and P4 were pretty close in performance. The P4 lost in gaming but won in many encoding and multitasking benchmarks. At the time, the A64 defined performance-per-watt but performance was not revolutionary. The Core 2 revolutionized performance and redefined performance-per-watt. This is why I think that the Core 2 is a larger leap forward than the K8 was. The X2 is debateable. The X2 clearly had no serious competition from Intel when it was released. I would even say that X2 was a better release for AMD than the A64 was.

 

[Avalon]

Quite a few games get a sizable boost in framerate all the way up to 16x12. If you're building a new rig, I say go for it. If you're just looking to make a simple upgrade to increase gaming perf, then you already know I'm going to say to jump for a faster GPU

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: BigDH01

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: Hulk
I don't understand why it would make you said that Conroe eclipsed X2?

I am not sad literally. Of course I want technology to superceed older tech and perform better which is why I own Conroe. I just remember how great A64 was and how slow it has become all of a sudden.

Why does everyone consider the A64 to be so great? The X2 was the clear winner over P-D but I think people are forgetting how close in performance the P4 and A64 were. When the A64 was released, the P4 3.2C was highly competitive.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1884&p=1

While the A64 generally performed better in gaming, the P4 and A64 exchanged wins in everything else. The A64 was certainly not the jump over P4 that the Core 2 was over the X2.

Here is Anandtech's final hardcore single core review before the Pentium D and X2 was released.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353

Here you'll see that the 3.8 GHz P4 was a pretty decent chip and was certainly competitive with the 3800+. If you were doing encoding, the P4 was the chip to have. That is, if you could live with the heat and power problems. And let's not forget that back in the early days, you could easily buy a 2.8C and overclock it to 3.5+. That's one fast and cheap Northwood. Bottom Line: A64 didn't come into its own until X2. The X2 was the only chip that could make me upgrade my Northwood and I loved the 3800+ X2. But let's face it, this A64 nostalgia is somewhat blown out of proportion. It was a cool, low power, fast running chip but certainly wasn't revolutionary when released and didn't really spread its wings until X2. Keep in mind, I'm referring purely to desktop performance and not discussing how AMD performaned in the server market.

Now the Core 2 has just destroyed the X2. That's right, destroyed. I don't see why we would feel sad or miss the A64. It simply wasn't *THAT* great. In the grand scheme of the things, the Core 2 has been much more revolutionary.

Don't forget that gaming has always been predominantly GPU limited as well, even in the P4 vs A64 days. Yet AMD fans kept saying how A64 'killed P4' in gaming, when in reality it was like a 5 - 10fps difference at most once the resolution and graphics settings were cranked up.

I remember pointing this out a few years ago and people kept telling me to 'shut up and look at the gaming benchmarks n00b'.

 

[GetMedieval]

It depends on the clocks of your X2... if you have a 2.4ghz or higher clocked model.. then yes, its enough and you dont need a Conroe.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Games run fine on my 2.6Ghz X2 with 2GB DDR-500 and X1900XT on DFi Lanparty UT SLI-D, but they are much faster on my E6400.

you need to quantify which games.....

No I don't...since it applies to every single game in existance

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: StopSign

Essentially, P4 got worse and worse while the K8 got better and better. You can say the P4 was competitive in the earlier days of K8, but up till a year ago, I don't think anybody in their right mind would take a Prescott over a Venice.

Agreed. For most users, particularly overclockers, the P4 never got any better than the 3.2c and 3.4c. Prescott was a total bomb, and Cedar Mill was too little, too late.

Once people were getting cheap OCs to 2.6-2.7ghz on their A64s and Semprons, the P4's goose was cooked.