yousillyGoose said:
what is the advantage of going the faster Dual core as opposed to a Quad core?
Good question. It all comes down to applications being designed as multi-threaded. Even now, many games and other apps only take advantage of one core. Recently, more programs have been designed to run on 2 cores instead of one, but there are VERY FEW programs that take advantage of more than two cores, especially relative to games. Thus, running 2 high speed cores at 3.16ghz with 6 mb total cache (3mb per core) will be faster than a quad core cpu at 2.4ghz with 8mb cache (2mb per core) in programs that aren’t designed to use more than 2 cores simultaneously. Of course there is always the flip side that programs designed to use more than 2 cores will be noticeably faster on the quad core, so that decision is up to you of course.
yousillyGoose said:
And what is the advantage of an ATI card?
Quite simply, the price vs performance ratio for the new ATI cards is unchallenged by nvidia’s current offerings.
yousillyGoose said:
Also, I run linux!!!! Big key part. Something makes me think I’ve heard Nvidia linux support > ATI but I could be crazy.
Hmmm… you may be right; I don’t have much experience with Linux so I can’t really comment on that, but make sure you do your homework (i.e. googling) first if this is a priority for you. An alternative to that ATI card would be something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx…N82E16814130376, which offers similar performance, albeit at a higher price.
yousillyGoose said:
I also am all for the dual boot when I have the pc to make life easier but I have some fun with my linux
Maybe you should get dual hard drives if that is the case? depending on your storage requirements, obviously, but using separate hard drives for installs is always a nice way to go (as opposed to partitions)
yousillyGoose said:
Thanks again for the hard work
You’re welcome.