Is it worth going to dual core?

[ArcticFox]

Im half and half wether to get an Athlon 64 X2 dual core cpu and was wondering if anyone has any performance charts for encoding with an X2, i dont want to buy one and not see any worthwhile performance gains while encoding H.264.

[Drifterz]

If your like me and do 2 DVD rips with DVD Dycrpter at the same time, run a batch proccess of DVD Rebuilder, and then burn 2 DVD's at the same time, while using your computer for the usual gaming, websurfing, and such you will probally see a diference. Not a huge difference but a noticable one. Newer operating systems incorporate that function better such as updated XP and later. Also if a program was written to use multi-threading or dual core it will also recieve a significant boost over programs that were not coded to take advantage of this. But in the long run nothing beats out enormous memory in my opinion.

[Drifterz]

Oh sorry i guess i should read your full post before replying. I don't encode with that. However if you can open multiple instance of the prog your using then chances are you can take advantage of multi-threading. However if you can only open one instance or are only doing one project and the program was not written to use multi-threading then you won't recieve much of a boost. However you still will recieve some boost considering you PC is always running more than one program. I would suggest the dual core anyway, simply because if you multi task then it will benefit and it also seems to be the way of the future. Technology is simply going dual core and it can never hurt. Plus Always Overclock For A Good Time.

[Eretria-chan]

Yes indeedy, it is worth it. x264 can spawn more than one thread so it can take advantage of all your cores, should you want it for encoding. It makes everything more smooth also. You probably won't notice any lag switching between applications and such if you're a heavy multi-tasker. And what's best? If something is hogging down your system, then simply restrict it one core. Do so with everything else that might be hogging down your system and you'll get a nice non-lagging system. And as stated earlier, you can do more things at once, like playing games while doing other stuff ^_^
Yes, definetly worth it. But the question is: to wait or decide now? Conoroe is coming soon and there is rumored price drops on the AM2 X2 processors...