What's best for WinUAE, 4400 X2 or 4600 X2?

[Reactioned]

Dual-cores at silly prices now. Wondering as the prices are almost the same, which of these would be better to run WinUAE on.

4400 X2 2.2GHz 2MB L2
4600 X2 2.4GHz 1MB L2

I strongly suspect only one of the cores would be used (I can find a use for the other one).

Would the JIT emulation perform better on big cache Athlons or would the extra MHz be better?

(Also be using it to run DX9 and DX10 games soon e.g. Crysis.)

[InTheSand]

Hehe! For WinUAE use, either would be overkill!!!  :-D

 - Ali

[amigagr]

i think the biger cache gives higher performance. the real mhz diference is too little... go for the 4400.

[Rooster]

NEITHER.  INTEL all the way

[nyteschayde]

Ignore Rooster. I have the AMD X2 4400 and you'll love it. It rocks the house. I also have a MacBook Pro with a Intel Core Duo. The X2 performs much nicer in "real world" performance. Meaning ignore the benchmarks, hook up the X2 and enjoy.

-Gabriel

[amigadave]

Reactioned wrote:
Dual-cores at silly prices now. Wondering as the prices are almost the same, which of these would be better to run WinUAE on.

4400 X2 2.2GHz 2MB L2
4600 X2 2.4GHz 1MB L2

I strongly suspect only one of the cores would be used (I can find a use for the other one).

Would the JIT emulation perform better on big cache Athlons or would the extra MHz be better?

(Also be using it to run DX9 and DX10 games soon e.g. Crysis.)

I wonder if one core would be running the OS (XP) and the other running WinUAE?

[DrBombcrater]

Extra cache makes next to no difference at all with Athlon 64 processors. That's the main reason why AMD have stopped production of all A64/AX2 chips with more than 512K cache per core. The 4600's extra 200MHz will push it ahead of the 4400 for pretty much every task.

I actually did a little test of this recently using my own hardware. I set up two systems, one with an X2 4600 and one with a Sempron 64 3400+ overclocked to the same 2.4GHz as the X2.

You'd think the Sempron would get trashed given it has 256K L2 cache and single-channel memory against the X2's 512K and dual-channel. But the difference was basically nothing, below 5% for most things. In fact the Sempron actually gave slightly better 3D benchmarks than the X2, which I can only put down to the AGP port on the Sempron's VIA-based motherboaqd being a bit more efficient then the one on the X2's ULi based board.

[CLS2086]

Well, to emulate a fully AGA system and faster than a 060 with WinUAE you'll need something like a P3-800, so ...