CPU upgrade options

[jagabo]

After looking at that site, I see that the Athlon 64 3400+ Winchester (10:31) outperforms the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Toledo (13:28 ) in the CloneDVD Transcoding benchmark. What's up with that??

There's nothing strange about that. CloneDVD is a single threaded application and it is somehwat I/O limited. The X2 3800+ has two cores running at 2 GHz, the 3400+ has a single core running at 2.2 Ghz. (Each core of the X2 is very similar to the single core of the 3400+.) In cases like this the faster clocked single core will win.

Try running a second CPU hungry task while the CloneDVD is transcoding. See who wins then!

[Lul2x]

Ohh, ok. I see how it works now. So, on average, do most applications take advantage of both cores? Also, will running two instances of CloneDVD utilize one core each?

[jagabo]

I don't have CloneDVD -- I don't know if you can run two instances of it. But most video encoders are multithreaded and benifit from multiple cores or multiple CPUs. I use TMPGEnc Plus, CCE, Xvid, Divx -- all are multithreaded, some better than others. I know Sony Vegas, Mainconcept, Premiere, etc are also multithreaded. Most games aren't multithreaded, at least not to where they benifit much from multiple cores.

[Lul2x]

thanks for the reply. How do you find out if a program is multi-threaded? Sorry for my ignorance.

[jagabo]

If a program is multithreaded the developer's site will usually mention it as a feature.

[ken.bosley]

I can think of at least two possible explainations:
1) CloneDVD is single threaded so the second core doesn't matter and since the clock speed is higher on the 3400+ it performs better
2) It's a typo and someone entered the wrong time for the 3800+ x2 in this test

Looking at the rest of the results would seem to support #1 until you do some math and realize that the difference in clock speed isn't enough to explain the difference in results.

Perhaps both #1 and #2 are true.