Building/Upgrading a PC for TS2

[Hegelian]

UPDATE, 16 January 2008:  As I am sure is apparent, I am not inclined to keep this thread current. Much has changed since the last update (Sept. 2006), so there is a lot of out-of-date information here. If someone else wants to do something along these lines and keep it current, perhaps a new pinned thread should be started and this one unpinned and left to sink down the list on its own.

One development I will mention here is the move toward greater energy efficiency. We can see this in the latest generation of Intel's Core 2 duo and quad-core CPUs, some video boards (ATI's HD3000 series, for example), the 80 PLUS initiative for high-efficiency power supplies (such as the units manufactured by SeaSonic and marketed under both its own name and others like Corsair and Antec's Earthwatts series), and even hard drives (Western Digital's GP series). I find this a welcome development.

There have been a lot of questions recently about building or upgrading a PC to (at least in part) make TS2 run better. Here are a few resouces folks might find helpful.

Added 08 September 2006:  ATI's New High End and Mid Range: Radeon X1950 XTX & X1900 XT 256MB

With five new cards being introduced, ATI is hoping to slowly phase out all of its other offerings to simplify its product lineup.  Unfortunately, it will take some time for all inventory to dry up, but when it does ATI hopes to have the following cards in its lineup:

Enthusiast:
ATI Radeon X1950 XTX           $449
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB  $279

Performance:  ATI Radeon X1900 GT  $249

Mainstream:
ATI Radeon X1650 Pro  $99
ATI Radeon X1300 XT   $89

Value:
ATI Radeon X1300 Pro      $79
ATI Radeon X1300 256     $59
ATI Radeon X1300 64-bit  $49

Note the absence of the X1800 series. It may be that over the next few months, X1800 prices could become quite attractive as the remaining stock is liquidated.

Mid Range GPU Roundup - Summer 2006


Update, 29 August 2006:  Core 2 notebooks ("Merom") are about to hit the market. Given how closely these new CPUs match the performance of their desktop equivalents, these new laptops should outperform by a wide margin current models that use "mobile" processors.

Dell, others roll out Core 2 Duo notebooks
Core 2 Duo notebooks offered from $850
Mobile Core2 Duo: Performance at a Cost 

Also, Tom's Hardware Guide has updated its interactive VGA charts to include the latest boards from nVidia (7900 GTX) and ATI (X1900 XTX). See how your current or anticipated graphics board stacks up:

Red Hot VGA Charts! (explains the charts)
Interactive VGA Charts


Update, 14 July 2006:  Core 2 is almost here, and the first independent lab tests are starting to appear.

The Core 2: Intel Goes for the Jugular 
Intel's Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors:  Conroe at last 

Update, 15 June 2006: For those considering building/buying a new machine in the next few months, Intel looks positioned to retake the performance lead from AMD with its Core 2 dual-core processors (aka "Conroe"), at competitive prices; scheduled release date is 24 July. The word for today is "wait"!

Intel Core versus AMD's K8 architecture
Hot Summer for CPU Companies
Benchmarking Conroe: First Look at Core 2 Extreme Edition
Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Preview from Taiwan

At least two Web sites have recent articles on building a sub-1000 USD gaming PC, Tom's Hardware (500 & 720 USD) and Extreme Tech (800 USD):

The $500 Gaming Machine
Build It: $800 Gaming PC
Your DIY 4 GHz Dual Core Gaming Rig For $720

In print, the June 2006 issue of the American magazine Maximum PC features a DIY gaming rig for 1000 USD:


For more general useful information, try these:

Power supplies (the oft-overlooked heart of your PC):

Pumping Out the Juice: Power Supplies Explained
Power Consumption and the Modern Geek
Stress Test: Power Supplies Under Full Load
5 Power Supplies Get the Full Juice Treatment

PCI, AGP, PCI-E, Firewire, etc.:  What are they?

PC Interfaces 101


All about RAM:

Don't Forget the Memory—RAM Explained
Navigating the Memory Upgrade Jungle
How Much RAM Do You Really Need?
Ups and Downs: Memory Timings Put to the Test

Navigating the BIOS:  How to set up your PC to run right using its Setup utility

BIOS from A to Z


Which Graphics Board Should I Buy?

Graphics Card Buyer's Guide Spring 2006, Part 1
ATI Graphics Card Buyers Guide 2006, Part II
ATI Buyers Guide, Part III: All Graphics Cards!

For the TS2 Gamer on a budget:

Don't Throw Out Your ATI Radeon X800 Yet


And charts for performance tests that include TS2:

VGA Charts VI: PCI Express Update Summer 2005
VGA Charts VII: AGP Update Summer 2005

Install, Clean Up, and Otherwise Tweak Your Video Drivers

ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide
Nvidia Forceware Tweak Guide

Hope this helps!


Credits and Thanks to these sites:





www.anandtech.com/

LOSTCIRCUITS

[BlueSoup]

It's very helpful so I am going to pin this topic, thank you Hegelian!

[witch]

I recently upgraded my PC - well, built a new one - and I found Tom's Hardware was a brilliant resource. They have interactive charts where you can compare the performance of a variety of hardware in a number of ways - very helpful.

[Jabberdau]

Toms is good but if you really want to dig into it there is really only one site to visit and thats www.hardforum.com

[witch]

Toms is good but if you really want to dig into it there is really only one site to visit and thats www.hardforum.com

I just get a database error with that link.

[Hegelian]

Since there has been a lot of talk here recently about hardware, I thought I would post a couple links to news from AMD that affects anyone contemplating upgrading or buying an Athlon-based PC. In brief, AMD is rolling out a line of new CPUs that use the (relatively) new DDR2 RAM, and also a new 940-pin socket called AM2. Current Athlon CPUs will be migrated to the new socket, and new CPUs will be released only for Socket 940 as near as I can tell. It appears AMD intends to phase out its Socket 939 CPUs by the end of the year, effectively ending the upgrade possibilities for current Socket 939 motherboards.

So, if you're looking to upgrade your current Socket 939 Athlon, do it soon. If you're about to get a new motherboard and CPU, be sure they are Socket 940.   

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/05/23/amd_intros_am2_processors/
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1966062,00.asp

[Simlover]

Thanks Hegelian, I'm planning on upgrading again towards the end of the year, will keep this in mind.

[Hegelian]

No doubt. But we're talking about game play here, not load times.

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, as far as load times are concerned, as a general rule, you need at least twice as much additional memory as the size of your downloads folder. This permits the entire mess to fit into RAM and thus avoid hard drive access. You will need TWICE as much, however, because Windoze will take up half of your RAM, so of any RAM you purchase for this, half of it will be Windoze's cut.

[Hegelian]

FWIW, as I write this I have 1046 MB of free RAM out of a total of 1535 MB, and my Paging File (virtual memory) use is 6 MB out of 312 MB availabe. This is actually a bit misleading since my Paging File is set for a maximum of 850 MB (the actual values are 10-50 MB on drive C and 100-800 MB on drive E). This is with WinXP Pro.

When I run the game I usually have 400-500 MB of free RAM.

[akatonbo]

Windows doesn't take up half of my RAM. There is a number I can't get below, yes, but it's closer to a quarter.

[witch]

So, excuse my ignorance, but I don't understand how these numbers relate to each other. I see I have custom settings, I assume my ex set them, should I change anything? I have 2Gb RAM.

[Hegelian]

There is an inverse relationship between the amount of RAM (random-access memory) and the size of Paging File you need. Because Windows needs to run on a wide (wild?) variety of machines, Microsoft takes a sledgeahmmer approach and allows Windows to take a huge chunk of your available hard-drive space for the Paging File. The problem with this is that there are two memory managers working at the same time:  one caches data from the hard drive in memory in order to keep it readily available for applications, because RAM is much faster than a hard drive at transferring data; at the same time the virtual memory manager (VMM) is swapping idle data in RAM to the Paging File on the hard drive to free up RAM. So you see the problem:  One hand is moving data to RAM, and the other hand is moving it back to the hard drive, but into the Paging File instead of just leaving it as it is in the original file. In addition, as you move past 512 MB of RAM, the VMM is "stronger" than the cache manager, so you can end of with hundreds of MB in the Paging File while less than half your RAM is being used. Until I limited the size of the Paging File on my PCs, Windows XP was using only about 25% of my installed RAM.

To understand the problem a bit better, keep in mind that virtual memory was introduced in the days when RAM was much more expensive on a per-megabyte basis than it is now, and the amount you could have was much lower (either because of the physical limitations of your motherboard, or because Win98 could only use 512 MB). Windows 3.1 needed to run on PCs with as little as 64 MB or 128 MB RAM, and the new Windows applications needed more than that. The solution was to use a designated portion of the hard drive as an extension of the physical RAM in the PC, hence "virtual" memory. Then as now, RAM access was much faster than hard-drive access, but since this was the only way to get large programs to run, or to have more than one application open at the same time, that's what we got.

In those days, the common recommendation was to set your paging file to 2.5X your physical RAM, which was fine when that meant dedicating 320 MB of hard drive space to virtual memory on a machine with 128 MB RAM. But as the RAM in the typical PC moved to 512 MB and beyond, this formula was no longer appropriate. Today, when installed RAM is typically 1 GB or greater, it actually hurts performance to have your paging file set to some multiple of RAM, or even to the same amount.

That said, there is no one optimal paging-file setting that applies to every PC and every PC user. There are ways to determine the optimal setting for a particular machine that are not difficult. In WinXP Pro, you can log Paging File use by turning on the performance log at Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Performance Logs and Alerts > Counter Logs > Pagefile Use. You would then experiment with different Paging File settings, running several of your most memory-demanding applicaitons at the same time (loading several large images into Photoshop and performing a few operations on them is a good test), and then setting the maximum Paging File size to about 50 MB more (or 20%, if that makes you feel more comfortable) than the maximum Paging File use reported by the log. The log files can be read in Excel.

With 1 GB RAM (now 1.5 GB), I have the Paging File on drive C (the boot drive) set for a minimum of 20 MB and a maximum of 50 MB. On drive E, I have the main paging file set to a minimum of 100 MB and a maximum of 800 MB. With these settings, Windows actually uses all my installed RAM instead of just the first 300 MB or so, and "disk thrashing" (excessive access of the Paging File) has virtually ceased. Everything runs faster and more smoothly because applications don't need to be constantly retrieving data from an oversized Paging File on the hard drive. The image below shows my RAM and Paging File usage as I write this; the Paging File use is actually a bit high, but I have six apps open at the moment, including three Web pages:




A couple things to keep in mind:  If you have more than one physical hard drive, it is good to have the Paging File on the drive that does not contain Windows (use a disk defragmenter like Norton Speed Disk to have the file located at the start of the drive, and unfragmented for optimum performance). However, note that WinXP likes to have a small Paging File on the boot drive (usually C:) even if the main file is on another drive; this file should be at least 20 MB. If you have only one drive, you can still set a minimum and maximum such as the 100/800 MB I use, although it won't be at the beginning of the drive. With the cost of hard drives so low these days, it can be a good investment install a second, relatively small 7200 RPM drive (or a really big one if the drive you have now is short of space), and move the main Paging File to that drive.

This is also a good strategy for data safety, since you can keep all your personal files on the second drive so when the time comes to reformat your boot drive and reinstall Windows (and that time will come!), you don't need to worry about backing up your data. Windows's "strategy" of dumping everything into a My Documents folder is no strategy at all, and setting up a proper document-filing system on a second hard drive is a good practice in any case. Most applications that work with documents and other files can have their default file-save destination folders changed in the application's options or preferences menu.  (BTW, with the TweakUI applet that comes with Windows XP Power Toys, you can easily change the location of the My Documents and other My" folders, where applications are installed, and other stuff.)

In this particular instance, with 2 GB of RAM, a Paging File with a minumum size of 2 GB is grossly excessive. Try scaling this back to something like 100/1000 and see how that works.  If you don't run into any problems and you still have noticeable disk access while running applications, try backing the maximum down to 800. And so on. A useful applet for monitoring RAM use is Cacheman XP.

Although the unregistered free version is mostly useful for monitoring your memory and Paging File usage, it will allow for some tweaks, the most useful being disabling Executive Paging, which will cause WinXP to keep more data in RAM and use the Paging File less. This is found in Cacheman's Tweaks tab (you can also edit this setting in the Registry, but I'm not going to recommend that in this venue).

There are more drastic recommendations out there, such as setting min and max to 300 MB, but being too aggressive in trimming down the Paging File can lead to problems, which while not fatal, can be aggravating to fix if you're not used to mucking around with your PC. 

Here's where to find the Performance logging in WinXP Pro (I don't know if this feature is available in XP Home):

[akatonbo]

Windows 3.1 needed to run on PCs with as little as 64 MB or 128 MB RAM

You did mean KB and not MB, right?

That said, there is no one optimal paging-file setting that applies to every PC and every PC user. There are ways to determine the optimal setting for a particular machine that are not difficult. In WinXP Pro, you can log Paging File use by turning on the performance log at Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Performance Logs and Alerts > Counter Logs > Pagefile Use. You would then experiment with different Paging File settings, running several of your most memory-demanding applicaitons at the same time (loading several large images into Photoshop and performing a few operations on them is a good test), and then setting the maximum Paging File size to about 50 MB more (or 20%, if that makes you feel more comfortable) than the maximum Paging File use reported by the log. The log files can be read in Excel.

With 1 GB RAM (now 1.5 GB), I have the Paging File on drive C (the boot drive) set for a minimum of 20 MB and a maximum of 50 MB. On drive E, I have the main paging file set to a minimum of 100 MB and a maximum of 800 MB. With these settings, Windows actually uses all my installed RAM instead of just the first 300 MB or so, and "disk thrashing" (excessive access of the Paging File) has virtually ceased. Everything runs faster and more smoothly because applications don't need to be constantly retrieving data from an oversized Paging File on the hard drive. The image below shows my RAM and Paging File usage as I write this; the Paging File use is actually a bit high, but I have six apps open at the moment, including three Web pages:

...I'm going to have to play with that. I have the sinking feeling that it's going to make me buy more RAM, too.

[Hegelian]

Windows 3.1 needed to run on PCs with as little as 64 MB or 128 MB RAM

You did mean KB and not MB, right?

Lol! No; the official minimum memory requirement for Windows 3.1 is 1 MB (640 KB + 256 KB). Win95 requires 4 MB and Win98 requires 16 MB. So yeah, I was thinking more of functional requirements rather than the absolute minimum.   

But we're not talking Apple II here, which had 48 KB of RAM (my Franklin Ace 1000 had 64 KB!).

I don't think the issue of overriding the default virtual-memory settings in any version of Windows really became an issue until folks began having machines with 128 MB of RAM or more, but that's just my subjective impression.

[akatonbo]

Windows 3.1 needed to run on PCs with as little as 64 MB or 128 MB RAM

You did mean KB and not MB, right?

Lol! No; the official minimum memory requirement for Windows 3.1 is 1 MB (640 KB + 256 KB). Win95 requires 4 MB and Win98 requires 16 MB. So yeah, I was thinking more of functional requirements rather than the absolute minimum.   

I hated Win3.1 on sight, so I knew I might have been misremembering the likely RAM amounts for the corresponding years, but aren't 64MB and 128MB still ridiculously high numbers for the pre-Win95 era? The 486 I owned around that time wasn't beefy enough for Win95, and it wasn't especially high end when it was brand new (1992-1993), but it was a remarkably solid machine (I used it until 2001 as a Linux box, and at one point I had it running for over 180 days without reboot -- with the events at either end of that span being a power outage and a thousand mile move), and that box had a whopping 8MB of RAM when it was new and I lated upgraded it to a staggering 20MB (so I could run XWindows, Netscape 4, three different graphics editing programs, a MU* client, Pine, emacs, and at least one instance of Lynx all at the same time without the machine crying like a baby).

[J. M. Pescado]

Win3.1 was content with a memory alotment more like *2* MB, and Win95 could run on 16 tolerably. Naturally, it would still consume more than half of your RAM and continued to do so no matter how much you installed.

[witch]

Wow Hegelian, what an awesome reply. I understand now what is happening with the two memory managers - indeed why shift stuff off the hard drive, into RAM, then into a pagefile - certainly not efficient, particularly if there is plenty of RAM.

I wonder whether it's possible to get an OS to run purely in RAM?

Anyway, I'll try tweaking the settings and ta for the link to cacheman. I want to save your text, it's very helpful, hope you don't mind?

ETA
First off I tried running the sims, it's running in the background now, cacheman shows I'm nowhere near the limit of my RAM.



I don't understand why it says the paging file is 990Mb though, because I set it at the following - and have rebooted since.



Also, there seems to be no need to run a paging file at all on my PC, do you reckon it's safe to turn off?

[Hegelian]

I've not quite figured out why there is a mismatch between what Windows reports for the paging file in real time what what we set in the system settings. It appears to be making its calculation based on more than just the allocated hard drive space. In any case, if you find that you can run without problems with the 100/200 settings, that's good; I found that on my machine I needed to set it higher to avoid the occasional "low virtual memory" message. Since I'm not short on disc space and I get no disc thrashing, my 100/800 setting is good enough. 

What Cacheman is reporting for TS2 usage is probably just what the actual program file is using. That entry probably does not include whatever RAM is being used by the game content (downloads etc.), although I could be mistaken. The overall RAM usage of 1250 MB is in line with what I see when I run the game here. The Paging File use is also consistent with what I get with Exectutive Paging turned off.

For reasons I can't explain, Windows really needs a Paging File to work at its best; it just expects to see one and has issues when it does not. Also, some applications also expect to see one and don't run well (or at all) if you disable it completely. You can find testimonials on the Web from users who claim they run Windows with no Paging File without problems, but who are they and how reliable is their information, after all? Best practice is to have a Paging File, even if it is small. And if you have more than one drive, you should keep a small Paging File on the boot drive even if you relocate the main file to another drive.

BTW, on a machine running Win98 in 512 MB of RAM, I have the swap file maximum set to around 100-120 MB (I don't remember exactly), and when the swap-file usage approaches the upper limit, it goes to zero and then isn't used for the rest of the session. Windows sees a swap file so it works fine, but apparently the virtual memory manager thinks that once the upper limit is reached it isn't safe to use the swap file anymore and just ignores it (or maybe it's having a hissy fit).

BTW #2:  If you don't use iTunes you can turn off the iTunes service (services run in the backgound whether you're using them or not) to save resources and CPU cycles; recent versions of QuickTime install iTunes whether you want it or not. By default, WinXP automatically starts a number of unnecessary services (especially the Pro version), which can be either set to Manual (i.e., start as needed) or disabled altogether. There are two Web sites that go through the Services in detail and make recommendations regarding whether they should be Automatic, Manual, or Disabled. Although the Black Viper site appears to be better known, I think The Elder Geek site is more reliable, or at least gives more information.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm
http://www.dead-eye.net/WinXP%20Services.htm

Note that some services are installed by applications such as anti-virus programs, so if you see one that one of these sites doesn't mention and you can't identify it, it's best to leave it as is. OTOH, if you don't use ATi hot keys for changing video settings on your ATi graphics board, it is safe to disable the ATi Hotkey Poller and ATi Smart (unless you have an XT version of an ATi board:)

The ATI Hotkey Poller service is only needed if you use the ATI Hotkey settings available in the ATI Control Center (See ATI Control Center section below). If you don't use these (and most people don't) you can safely double-click on this service and select 'Disabled' under the Startup Type box. However, if you have an 'XT' type ATI graphics card, then disabling this service can also disable the OverDrive section in the Control Center. Therefore I recommend that if you run an XT card, you should leave this service on Automatic, otherwise set it to Disabled. Further, if you run a laptop with an ATI graphics card, you may need to keep this service enabled to allow your LCD screen to switch off when the laptop is closed.

The ATI Smart service is a bit more vague, as it is not needed for the ATI SmartGart settings to work. It seems to continually detect system conditions at boot time and adjust SmartGart settings if needed to maintain stability, but in effect it's just a useless resource hog. I highly recommend disabling this service - I have experienced no negative impacts by doing so. You should still be able to adjust SmartGart settings without any problems (as detailed in the Advanced SmartGart and ATI Control Center section below), however if you find your SmartGart changes won't "stick", set this service to Automatic, change your SmartGart settings, reboot and then disable this service.
Copyright © 2006 Koroush Ghazi (TweakGuides.com)



Be aware that disabling certain essential services can prevent Windows from running!

[witch]

That entry probably does not include whatever RAM is being used by the game content (downloads etc.), although I could be mistaken. The overall RAM usage of 1250 MB is in line with what I see when I run the game here.

Yeah, I was expecting the RAM to be used more heavily because I have about 2Gb of custom content in fact it was one of the things that I was hoping for with more RAM.
The CPU was running about 41% - 46% with just the sims, up until the moment I took a picture of the screen, then it jumped to 96%.

For reasons I can't explain, Windows really needs a Paging File to work at its best; it just expects to see one and has issues when it does not. Also, some applications also expect to see one and don't run well (or at all) if you disable it completely. ... And if you have more than one drive, you should keep a small Paging File on the boot drive even if you relocate the main file to another drive.

No, I decided to keep the paging file on C as the drives are much larger and much much faster. Good to know I could put it on another though. Ta, I'll keep a pagefile  running, I know Windoze has some weird legacy quirks.

By default, WinXP automatically starts a number of unnecessary services (especially the Pro version), which can be either set to Manual (i.e., start as needed) or disabled altogether.

XP sure does! I actually went through and cleaned out the services when I first set up the PC. I only noticed the new services (like itunes) when I saw the screen pic. Anything I'm not sure about I just put to manual startup anyway, so I haven't managed to wreck Windoze yet.

Good info about ATI - first time I've gone to those cards instead of nvidia, I'll have a play.

ETA Have cut down automatically starting services from 27 to 18 after reading those websites. (And windoze still boots).

[KatEnigma]

When turning off start-up crap, it's a good idea to keep a list of what you changed.  I always used BlackViper's site, and once I had a problem with WindowsUpdate because something I'd set to manual that wasn't supposed to break anything prevented the updater from working right- and it took a lot of digging in the help section to figure out what, exactly, the problem was, it was so seemingly unrelated.  So now I keep a print-out to help me trace down the problem if something goes kaplooie.

I have 2GB of RAM, and it looks like TS2 tends to use about 1.5GB, which normally keeps my page file to below 500MB.  However, I definitely think it was well worth it to add the 10000 RPM HD when I built my system last fall.  Even with a zillion downloads (at last count, I think it was 20k,  but I've downloaded a lot more since then) my game loads quickly, and barely a pause when I go to buy clothes, change appearance, etc. It's relatively expensive, especially for the size, but if you need more space for things that aren't game related, it's easy enough to throw in a huge 72000 RPM HD for storage and just keep windows and games on the fast one.

I also do not regret my X2.  I definitely need to consider upgrading it, while I still can, though. I don't need more power now, but I'd hate to not be able to get more if  I need it when the rest of my computer should hold me a couple years, at least.

Also: I highly recommend OCZ products. Their RAM was the lowest latency I could find- AND the least expensive, and when one of the sticks was erroring out in Memtest, they replaced it, no questions asked. Since I'm local to their headquarters, they even let me exchange it IN PERSON rather than paying for Fed Ex- just had to wait a day to give them time to test the new pair.  I ended up with one of their PSU's, and am extremely happy with its design, too. The fan sucks air in through the bottom and then out, so it works as an extra case fan, and it alone lowered my system temp by 10ºC.  A good product, low prices,  and excellent customer service will leave me singing their praises for a long time. Until, of course, they get too big and go the way of Alienware and ruin it all. 

[IgnorantBliss]

I have a question: Does TS2 actually take advantage of dual-core processors, or does it only see a single processor? I'm trying to figure out if it makes sense to upgrade to a dual-core one, or just a faster single-core one, since I'm mainly upgrading to boost TS2 performance. Don't want to spend a ton of money on a dual-core one if it doesn't matter for the game.

[Hegelian]

Hmmm . . . .   

Chances are, probably not, at least not directly. A few games to seem to be able to take real advantage of two cores (or HyperThreading on a P4 with that feature), although from what I've seen, most do not. the impression I get from stuff I've read is that some games built on the most recent Quake/Doom engine (which I think is still OpenGL) can show some significant performance boosts with a dual-core CPU.

OTOH, even if you don't regularly use applications engineered to take advantage of dual cores (or dual CPUs), it seems that overall system performance can be enhanced, especially if you tend to run several apps at once. So that could be an argument for dual-core.

Finally, dual-core is where the market is heading, and in the not-too-distant future, single-core CPUs will be a thing of the past, rather like the Zilog Z80 and CP/M. And it seems that very soon if not just yet, single-core processors will be more expensive than comparable dual-core chips. Also, the dual-core CPUs require less power and generate less heat as a result.

If your current motherboard supports only single-core CPUs and you don't want to replace it, the choice is clear. Likewise, if you are going to replace both the motherboard and CPU, then it only makes sense to go with the forward-looking dual-core option rather than the end-of-the-road single-core option. However, I would wait until Intel releases its Core 2 CPUs sometime next month, as these are supposed to be introduced at very competetive prices, and AMD has apparently told vendors that it will cut its own prices significantly once the Intel chips are on the market.

There is one thing though that might induce you to go with a dual-core CPU today:  the Intel D805 dual-core (Pressler) can be had for about 120 USD here in the US, and with some luck and third-party cooling, can be overclocked to 4 GHz.   

Tom's Hardware:  A 4.1 GHz Dual Core at $130 - Can it be True?

If you have a CPU that supports HyperThreading and you have or can set up a dual-monitor display, you can run the game on one monitor and have the Performance tab of Task Manager (or other performance-montoring app) on the other monitor, and you can see whether the game uses both processors (since HyperThreading makes the CPU appear to be two CPUs to the OS), and to what extent.

Some games known to be multi-thread or dual-core "aware" are:

Call of Duty 2
City of Villains
Quake 4
World of Warcraft
Age of Empires III
Black & White 2
Peter Jackson's King Kong
The Movies
Battlefield 2 & Battlefield 2: Special Forces
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced
Warfighter
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland
Unreal Tournament 2007 (forthcoming)
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

[IgnorantBliss]

OK, thanks for the reply . My motherboard can handle dual-core processors, so that would not be a limitation. This is the last upgrade I can do for this computer, pretty much, and the CPU ungradeability was one of the main reasons we chose this particular motherboard. At the moment still, single-core CPUs are considerably cheaper than dual-core CPUs, at least here in Finland. From what I heard from my husband, AMD has already annouced something like a 50% price cut on many of their processors, so I'm going to wait until those prices reach Finland, and then buy one. I'm not planning on getting anything very "top-of-the-line", I will be satisfied with something like a 2,4GHz one or similar (current one is 1,8Ghz). I'll have to wait and see where the prices settle after the cut, and if a dual-core one will be of a reasonable price, then possibly get one of those. Not quite sure yet.

[jrd]

Many of the games in Hegelian's list are only partially multiple-CPU compat. Quake4 for example will only send the sound to the secondary CPU, as will PJ's Kong game. If you have a crappy (or onboard) soundcard this will result in significant performance increase, but it won't matter much if you have an Audigy-like card which already has a good coprocessor of its own.

Most games unfortunately still use a single thread. Any game which does so will not benefit from multiple processors in any way, unless you can tweak your system so that the system's threads all run on CPU1 and your game on CPU2.