Cores vs clock speed (1 Viewer)

[tony72]

Hi folks, simple question - which is better for MP use, more cores or more clock speed? I currently have a socket AM2 Athlon 2.6GHz 5050e, I'm going to replace my mobo with a socket AM3 board that has better on-board graphics (current board can't do 1080p), so I need to buy a new CPU. I want to stick to one of the "Energy Efficient" Athlons so I can keep my current case and cooler (MSI Media Live barebones), so these are my choices;

1) 2.8GHz Athlon II X2 240e (£64)
2) 2.3GHz Athlon II X3 405e (£75)
3) 2.3GHz Athlon II X4 605e (£112)

I'm tending towards the 240e, from what I gather I won't see much benefit beyond 2 cores, is that right?

 

[tourettes]

#1

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Hi Tony

Remember reading, if ATI onboard graphics, then they benefit from a quadcore processor, there is a function that will only work correctly with that setup, could be inverse telecine, will try and find where I got that from, if using a seperate ATI graphic card then there is no problem aparently.

The other advantage is if you do any video encoding, it flies through the process.

Of course if the mobo your thinking of has a nvidia 930\940gpu, you can use any of the above.

 

[tony72]

Thanks guys, I'm glad I asked now. The board is the Asus M4A785TD-M EVO, and it does indeed have ATI onboard graphics (Radeon HD 4200), so that's something I'll have to look into. Don't plan on doing much encoding on that machine. I do want to upscale SD video/DVDs and TV channels though. I also just saw that ffdshow has a new multi-threaded h.264 decoder, maybe that would benefit. Maybe the choice isn't a simple as I thought.