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Loading ...Dual Core for Christmas
khenry
The Athlon X2 chip finally arrives tomorrow, following the day when all birthday and Xmas pressies were bought - thankfully Google Checkout re-ran their GB£10 discount introductory offer to make the processor affordable this side of Xmas and in between energy bills and present shopping.
That’s how endemic dual-core has become now, instead of being a must have, it’s now mainstream and with quads coming down in price, could even be viewed as old hat. However, when you’re not making an upgrade to the newest chipset around, it’s dirt cheap to try out dual core in an existing setup, whether it’s LGA775 or Sockets 939/AM2 and without necessarily needing a PSU upgrade.
It’s also helpful that one of the two eldest Athlon X2s remains cheaper than Intel’s own revived Pentium and the 4200+ is the same price, so until the end of January at least, there’s no need to start the new build and have to choose new RAM before it’s absolutely necessary.
So, if you were steadfastly single-core as I was, it’s now as cheap as three chart CDs to upgrade your chip and keep the same kit going back three generations if you like - just grab one while the price stays great.
Dual, quad cores.
Nah, single core 3 year old CPU for the win!
Does sound nice though.
Don’t get me wrong I had two A64 single-core chips before this one, I’m just happy that thanks to an offer, I could go and get a dual core CPU like any other leisure item, computer-related or not, with a reasonable price.
Check around in January and see whether the 4200+ will get one more drop before even Ebuyer retires it (depending on your socket that is, if you’ve a P4 then might as well go Core 2 when you’re ready).