If anyone can suggest a better forum to post this question please let me
know. Thanks.

It's been over 4 years since I last bought a new PC. It's getting to be
that time again, and I've got to decide between getting a single CPU
system and a dual.

Back in 98, I bought a Tyan Tiger 100 S1832DL and a P2-400. The dual
motherboard only cost $100 more than single cpu boards of the day. It
only had 128MB ram. The processor was about $1100 canadian. I only bought
one because that's all I could afford at the time. When prices dropped
to $200, I got another P2-400. When P3-800 dropped to $300, I upgraded
to dual P3-800. I've added 1GB RAM and a Ti4200 128mb.

So that's as far as this system's going to go. It's great for
productivity apps, downloads, ripping mp3s, etc. It sucks for new games
and it's slow for converting AVI-DVD. But I'm happy this system has
lasted as long as it has. Having 2 CPUs has been great for a lot of the
stuff I do. I can really load up a lot of processes and the system
remains responsive.

But I know times have changed and there's no way I can expect a system to
last that long, at least not if I want to stay current with software.

I love dual CPU systems, I just don't know if I can keep justifying the
extra cost, when I can get a single CPU system that's faster for games at
h alf the price.

I've been comparing AMD64 3400+, AMD FX-51, Opteron 244, and Opteron 246.

To go for a single Opteron 246 (2.0 ghz) , I'm looking at almost 2x the
cost of a 3400+ (2.2 ghz). To get the costs closer, I'd have to look at
a single Opteron 244 (1.8ghz). And then hope that prices for Opterons
drop to something reasonable before they go off the market, so that I can
eventually upgrade to dual.

Meanwhile, I could just go for a 3400+ "disposable" system and in the
time I hope to upgrade to dual opterons, possibly longer, just wait to
buy an entirely new system, or at least motherboard / cpu / ram, to
whatever the next range of systems are. Best option for productivity
apps? Maybe not, having the ability to through in an instant boost with
another cpu is great.

But building a new system in a shorter timeframe is definately the best
option to go with as far as staying current with games goes. It's really
the gaming where my system suffers the worst, and games don't often take
advantage of dual cpu systems, unless you're running a server or
offloading some other process. I have seen a marginal improvement in
pings for some games when switching between 1 and 2 cpus, but it's not
enough to make a big difference. The only productivity apps where I'm
really feeling the cpu limits are AVI - DVD/MPEG conversions, and CD
digital audio to FLAC lossless. Some video conversion apps support
multiple CPUs, but it doesn't make more than a 25% difference it seems to
me. In other cases, like the lossless audio compression, I haven't found
software that supports dual CPUs anyways.

I'm leaning towards AMD instead of Intel this time around. It seems they
offer the best price / performance for both single and dual cpu systems.
I can at least come close to the price of AMD duals. Intel Dual Xeons
just seem to stretch the price difference out even more. Again, the dual
systems for both are using slower bus rates, older chips, etc, than the
current single cpu systems. I do see some applications benefiting from
HT but right now I don't think spending the extra coin is worth it, just
to do for example faster AVI-DVD conversions with an app that supports
SMP / HT. If I did it for a living and made money off it, then the answer
would be different.

Then there's overclocking. I can only get about a 12% overclock on my
system; I can't lock the pci or agp bus. Dual cpu systems tend not to OC
to well. Not that OC is hugely important to me, I hardly ever use it,
but it's handy to get the most out of some games. If there's a
particular cpu/motherboard/memory/cooling combination that would yield
reliable OC results when needed, I'd be very interested in going that
route to get a little bit better price / performance. Again, it seems
the AMD 64 route seems to offer a bit more in this direction.

Ultimately, I'd like to wait until Doom 3 is released, and make my
purchase then. I don't expect a huge difference between AMD / Intel top
of the line single CPU performance. But I think there could be some
significant differences in video cards. But it's taking quite a while
and I don't want to stay on a dual P3-800 forever. I may have to just go
ahead and buy a system sooner.

I'm curious to hear from anyone else who's had to make the same decision
recently, and what you ended up going with. Single or dual, AMD or
Intel. Overclocked or not.

Thanks in advance.