[Miscguy]

It actually seems as if AMD will yet again trump Intel in proformance on these dual chips. Intel cut fairly deep into there clock speeds on there dual offerings which will hurt single thread proformance. While AMD has given up considerably less clock speed. The down side to this is of course that price for the AMD's is a fair bit higher than the Intel versions. The first entry level AMD dual offering coming in at $537 (4200+ 64 x2, 2.2ghz). Compaired to Intels entry level offering at $241 (Pentium D 2.8ghz no HT) Even the fastest intel (3.2ghz) is cheaper than the lowest priced AMD. The AMD does outproform the intel offerings even the EE, (ht enable pentium d's) but the price is fairly high.

Also the benefits from dual cores is not just for "when programmers use it". It does have an effect on every day computing. Most decernably in encoding, and MULTITASKING. Proformance advantages can be seen by simply leaving your Mp3 player run while running a game, and still having virus software running in the background. All those background processes no longer have to be turned off to play a game without proformance loss. Heavy multitasking also benfits, such as decompressing .RARS while still surfing the web, or watching a DVD/windows media. I know my AMD 3200+ 64 doesnt like doing that since WMP is a freaking resource hog.

The key to this all is that AMD plans to switch all CPU production to dual core EVENTUALLY. So price drops will come as they continue to go on with the buisness plan. Intels outlook still has single core options up through 2007.

I would really sit and wait on this, AMD hasnt released any x2's for review and the stats ive seen are from a "rigged" workstation version of the 4400+, the Opteron x75 which is dual core at 2.2ghz and is a decent referance. The date im hearing is June for AMD releases of PC dual cores.

I would put off upgrading until the next set of vid cards come out. I say this for a few reasons. AMD's dual solution has bandwitdh issues since its backwards compatible with 939/940. That will be fixed with DDR2 and a new socket later on. Also, by the time of the next vid cards price drops will have likly come for the x2's making them a better option. I do feel AMD will be the better option in dual cores though, once the price comes down a bit.