athlon dual core system?

punamulta

my daughter wants to buy an athlon dual-core based system, who does the best deals?, is it worth going for these yet, any ideas?

Mark_LJ

Dual core AMD systems are down to affordable levels now. I've seen them down as low as £700 inc good quality monitors. It all depends on budget and what the system is going to be used for. The last two machines I've built at work have both been dual core AMD's and I have to say I love them. I tend to use two different software programs to do the same job as they have different approaches to the same task. With the dual cores I can save a lot of time.
I still use a single core at home (opteron 146 and Intel 630) but if I had the choice and money wasn't a problem I'd go for the dual core.

DanW_3

Mark_LJ wrote:

Dual core AMD systems are down to affordable levels now. I've seen them down as low as £700 inc good quality monitors. It all depends on budget and what the system is going to be used for.

what speeds are we talking about here?

wolfman

punamulta wrote:

my daughter wants to buy an athlon dual-core based system, who does the best deals?, is it worth going for these yet, any ideas?

What kind of things will she be doing?

For multi-tasking (running lots of things at once), or video encoding, compiling, etc... dual core is beneficial.

If you're generally doing one thing at a time, a single core processor is fine and save you some cash. However, getting dual core would be future proofing yourself, as games/apps are starting to support it.

Mark_LJ

DanW wrote:

what speeds are we talking about here?

3800 X2 which is 2 x 2ghz cores (although they tend to be fairly 'clockable').

The deal was at Mesh and included a 19" monitor.

boogiemaster

Lots of people have complained about mesh computers so just be careful, look on the net for reliable companies before you rush in and buy one.
You can get some very good deals on the net if you look around, but you have to look around.
The dual core is good for having lots of programs open at once, my Athlon 3800+ can run a few programs at once as well, but it’s all about bragging rights at the moment lol.
I paid £467 for my 3800+ last year and it’s a granddad compared to the new cpus on the block 

DanW_3

Looks like a good pc, Id rather build my own, but with a price like that and with warranty that's a decent price (Id be tempted to put a better grapihcs card in there eventually as I play games, but you could get away without doing so).

punamulta

we were thinking about the mesh, we live close to them so could can go in and shout if we have probs. thanks guys, she wants it for video editing and stuff.