What CPU to pair with a 7800GTX?

[Geo]

Thanks. So my recent gridlock of indecisiveness only deepens. A strategy of "f*ck it, XB360 for me and check back next summer" begins to look even more attractive.

 

[Tim Murray]

Thanks. So my recent gridlock of indecisiveness only deepens. A strategy of "f*ck it, XB360 for me and check back next summer" begins to look even more attractive.

Considering the cheapest XB360 "bundle" with a hard drive you can buy at Gamestop is $700... yeaaaah... don't know about that.

Waiting till Christmas to build myself a new box. Hoping that all the new mid-end cards will be out by then... well, RV530 should be.

 

[Gubbi]

I recently won a 7800GTX, and I'm trying to figure out what kind of MB/CPU it should be paired with to not be horribly cpu bound. What do you guys think? My current system is AGP, so I'll be purchaing a new motherboard and CPU to go with it.

If you only play games, get a fast unicore. If you do actual work, get a dual core.

Also I've got two sticks of Geil PC3200 value ram (whatever the stuff with the blue heat spreader is). Is that fairly reasonable stuff to put in a athlon 64 MB?

That's the shite (1GB modules) I have in my X4400+ system, runs fine @200MHz with 1T command rate. The new A64s (and X2s) all have improved DRAM controllers (could only get the modules to run at 166MHz with my old 3500+).

I haven't had any problems whatsoever with my dual core, but then again I don't play EQ2.

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[Geo]

Ish. "pout and mutter for 8 months" as a strategy then? :smile: Could be, I guess. Let's see what XB360 street prices look like after the first few weeks land rush.

 

[SugarCoat]

No, I didn't, though with the overall performance disparity I wouldn't recommend Intel's dual cores to my worst enemy. Not unless you're a programmer and just want a cheap Pentium D to experiment with code on. Morever, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the compatibility issues aren't due to the X2 design but those games' code and I'm pretty confident I would've had the same issues on a dual core Intel part.

I'v been using an 820 for a few weeks now at ~3.4Gig. EQ2 hasnt given me one issue and i have not disabled anything. I did do a clean install of windows. Not sure what to tell you. Obviously something about the game doesnt like the way the cores are wired to share load, Intel's approach was half assed having two cores simply ontop of eachother, so maybe that has something to do with it. Only other issue i'v seen with the X2 is some memory controller problems keeping high mounts in 1T, but that doesnt shock me, and to care that much about 2T kinda seems like an OCD thing. I can run 2T or 1T and not tell a difference. Benchmarks differ, but my gaming experiance is not weakened.

 

[wireframe]

I'v been using an 820 for a few weeks now at ~3.4Gig. EQ2 hasnt given me one issue and i have not disabled anything. I did do a clean install of windows. Not sure what to tell you. Obviously something about the game doesnt like the way the cores are wired to share load, Intel's approach was half assed having two cores simply ontop of eachother, so maybe that has something to do with it. Only other issue i'v seen with the X2 is some memory controller problems keeping high mounts in 1T, but that doesnt shock me, and to care that much about 2T kinda seems like an OCD thing. I can run 2T or 1T and not tell a difference. Benchmarks differ, but my gaming experiance is not weakened.

This needs some serious investigation. I can't believe how mum AMD (and affiliated sites) have been on this issue when I see it all the time on forums across the Net.

Now that you mention it, I have not seen reports of problems with Intel's dual core CPUs. I wonder why that is. I am beginning to suspect this has something to do with how Athlon X2 reports HYperThreading and how it supports the scheduling for that. I believe this flag was a bit hackish in that Both Intel and AMD wanted dual core processors to work with programs that detect and use HyperThreading. The only problem with this is that I have seen reports of older games, that shoudl be distinclty single threaded, flipping out, but then again we see how games like UT react when your processor and video card are "too fast" and especially if you have Cool n' Quiet enabled.

Do you have lots of games available to you? I'm thinking I should compile a list of games I have seen associated with dual core problems. Perhaps its own thread (as in the forum) where people with various dual core (and even single) can report their experience.

I am definitely holding off buying a dual core until I know it won't mess gaming too badly.