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This question might have been asked before and I just not have noticed it. I am building a gaming PC and I am trying to decide whether I want a single Pentium IV with HT or Dual Xeon Processors. Which do you think would provide the most power and flexibility for an intensive gaming PC?
best for gaming: AMD 64 3200 :D
backing to intel world, you must take a look if your games can take advantage of HT/SMP.
If you have patience, wait until you can afford
AMD Socket 939
MotherBoard that Support PCI-Express Card (Not Release Yet to the Mass but very soon)
PCI-Express Card from ATI or Nvidia.
With Dual Xeons (or even Dual Opterons), you would spend a lot of money that doesn't really affect gameplay that much. Games can't really take advantage of a second processor, so the second one would just sit idle while you gamed and only one would be fully loaded. It could be used to run a dedicated server with all of the AI and goodies turned on, but otherwise it is just a really expensive part of your system that drains money from you being able to buy faster stuff that might have more FPS impact.
Plus, when you buy two you usually have to sacrafice some speed to be able to afford it ;)
Athlon64 has been pretty good, but in reality the numbers are really quite close. It you look at AMD, Socket 939 is supposed to be what will be around longer than Socket 754, but until the prices come down the small performance increase from having dual channel memory access isn't enough to fork cash over for. Intel benefits much more from dual channel memory than AMD does. So Socket 754 Athlon64 if price is a concern (Socket 939 is rumored to come down in price soon). Or you can get Pentium 4 w/ HT, although in some cases the HT has acturally decreased performance in games. You can disable HT in the BIOS, btw...
Allright, so it sound like the AMD Athlon 64 is the best way to go. Thanks for your help.
AMD lower their prices today! Check it out!