The zalman is working well enough to keep my brothers compy happy, OTOH the performance in 3dmark03 hasnt improved at all which probably means his processor (an AMD 3200+) is probably holding it back. Still its a very powerful rig.

Having looked at both the Gigabyte GA 965P-DS3 and Asus P5W DH Deluxe Im not sure I like either of them :/

Im having problems with C&C Generals/zero hour, seems its managing to use up all the cycles on my 2500+ Barton :shock:

Quote from: WalrusbonzoFor the extra Ã,£65~ go for the Core Duo CPU, regardless of the fact it has two cores, each core is still significantly faster than a 3500+.

Which funnily enough is more than double the price of a 3500+ at Ã,£60.

The core 2 duos maybe the better processor on the market atm overall but the bang for the buck argument is utter rubbish.  Even the 64 X2s are a bargain atm staring at Ã,£120.

but they have insane amounts of cache on the chip which is why they justify the price.

Thing being Im now looking beyond just peak performance to useability. Some games have issues with multi core CPUs, other issues are stability, compatability with a wide range of components, on board components and expansion potential.

Even though Intel has the speed advantage the costs have to include a suitable motherboard I like, which is more expensive for an intel system too.

ATM a 3500+ cpu is looking the better short to medium term option providing I buy an expandable motherboard.

So long as you go with AM2 you should be relatively safe.  They have allready stopped production of 939 chips and will be making no faster ones, and I thought I was safe with 939 for years to come only so long ago.

You can allways say "wait for this to come out, or this to get cheaper", but by that time there is something else to wait for.  If you need to upgrade, then you need to.

Its a safe bet that AM2 is the socket for the next couple of years with the next generation of AMD chips including the quad core so I dont think you would be taking a risk on  medium term (year or two).  

Also of course, as you mentioned there are the other costs involved with Intel AMD systems, right now a half decent AM2 system is relatively cheap to build with something like the Ã,£3500 at Ã,£60.  Its all to easy to get excited by specifications and benchmarks of the Core 2 Duo and overlook other costs, it all adds up.  Weve all had  a love affair with AMD since the XP chip becuase of the cheap system builds and benchmark results.

I built my brother a complete AM2 machine including case/ 19" DVI monitor/psu with 1GB of DDR2 and a 7600GS for under Ã,£600.  Thats an investment that will last him years.

There is a program available on AMD website which allows better operation of games on dual core cpus, I think its linked in the Defcon thread in Games.  

I would go for Core2 if you were doing lots of encoding, for real world gaming you wont see much difference between the cores.

the badge on the front would give it away