im looking to build a new computer and im need to know if spending the extra money for the dual core chips is worth it? im mostly going to use it for games. also for a mother board is the amd 939 dead and is the am2 going to be around for a while?

AM2 is AMD'* current socket fpor now, 939 isn't completely dead but not worth investing in now. As for dual core, I'd invest is SLI over dual core for a gaming rig but if you can do both, go for it.

i planned on going with SLI. i forgot to add that.

Yes if your going to be gaming then get a AMD X2

The AM2 is the new Socket thats taking the 939 over


I would go with the X2 4400+ 2x 1mb L2 cache

Intel Core 2 Duo processors are the fastest mainstream processors at the moment.... for a gaming rig, this is the way to go. Pair one with a decent motherboard and you can overclock the @$%% out of it.

AMD has a little catching up to do.

What kind of video setup are you looking at? 7900 or 8800 Geforce series cards(DirectX 10 ready!)? ATI Crossfire?

well im not looking to build the most expensive system but something under 1000. im looking for a fps im just looking for a middle range gaming computer for low cost. for a video im thinking nvidia 7600 or 7800 but dual of those in time. just some affordable.

well.....

You can throw a decent gaming rig together for that, or at least close to it.

A socket 939 system will be fine for gaming..... throw a GB of decent RAM in it, 250gb hard drive, DVD burner, 400W power supply, and spend whatever'* left on the best video card you can get. You may have enough to get in the 7900 series, but you'll most likely have to settle for a 7800 of some sorts. Dont go any lower than the 7800 series..... otherwise games like Oblivion, FEAR and HL2 will bog out bigtime unless you play them at 640 x 480!

Naw, I run a 6800GS on a 3800 X2 system, and it runs Quake 4 and HL2 at fairly high settings with good results. I have 2 gigs of memory though.

The price of dual cores have gone down a lot. It'* worth it.

most games are not multi-threaded so you're not going to get any gain by going dual core.

Two GB'* of RAM will help with certain games like Battlefield 2...... but since he'* not wanting to break the bank, I'd consider the extra GB of ram a nicety, but not necesary.

As for the 6800 series vs. the 7800 series, since I own both cards, I've seen the difference and it'* a big one. When I watch my son playing games on his PC(I gave him my BFG 6800 OC)...... let me just say that it'* not pretty compared to the 7800 GT.

But on a budget, it works, and it looks fine for the most part.

Sure, some software doesn't take full advantage of the multithreading, but watch the CPU usage when running a game. It is using both cores. A lot of games out now do use multi cores to its advantage, ie. Quake 4.