Nothing Serious, but what AMD Processor

Had a desktop with a spec. you wouldn't even want to know about, but have now upgraded it to what's shown in my profile. The Mobo is brilliant (well l think so), and l now have the cpu running at +20%, which gives a reasonable response. Also, the temperatures seem pretty well static, ie - 40 for the CPU and 33 for the drives. So, l had another post going on in the MS Windows thread regarding the slowing down of the CPU when running a number crunching program, such as ConvertxtoDVD against other programs. Brilliant replies, and l now totally understand the concepts (ie l need more than a one core processor, so it seems). Right then, l've got no money at the moment (and will probably never even have, but then, hey ho!) If l should be running ConvertXtoDVD, l just want to be able to search my HD's without the "torch" icon appearing all the time saying it's thinking about it! What AMD processor should l be looking at then? Regards

not exactly sure what socket it has on your motherboard but if this is it :- http://www.msi.com/product/mb/760GM-E51.html#?div=CPUSupport

then it supports all amd cpu's upto and including my recommendation of these x6's if you can afford one :- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist….&subid=1944

Yep, have to agree with Terry again. A six core CPU is the best you can get currently. One note though, a better CPU will not guarantee a fast response time regardless of what applications are running. Yes, in theory a CPU with more cores and which runs at a higher clock rate will make the computer more responsive, but any CPU running at 100% utilisation will make the system feel slow. I know this from personal experience. I run Milkyway@home to do "burn-in" tests. This ramps CPU and GPU usage up to 100%, and it makes it stick there for a long time. This is a great way of testing airflow configurations or to check overclock stability. Regardless of overclocks etc., the system will still run slowly if everything is at 100% utilisation. In essence what I'm trying to say is that a faster / better CPU will convert videos a lot quicker, but during the conversion the system is still going to feel more sluggish.

i have to disagree with you Nahumi my cpu runs at 100% load 24/7 365 days of the year, running folding, mythtv and server, along with anything else i do like encoding, surfing, etc. and i don't notice any slow downs, yes things might take longer, encoding a video for instance can take me 13minutes if i stop everything else but 45minutes when everything is running as normal, but in both cases i can surf the web and use the pc without any noticeable difference. ok my system is a bit faster than most, being a watercooled i7 920@3.8ghz but i know other people with stock amd 6 core cpu's that never notice any slowdowns either when their cpu's are at 100% load encoding,

What an absolute brilliant site! l ask a really dumb question and get constructive replys that even l can understand. Thank you Terry and Nahum Now don't get into a war about this as it was just a general query (ha ha) Terry - Ooh err. I'm pretty dayam sure it's an AM3 socket on my mobo. Nahum - Very interesting, and l'll soldier on. Thank you both as you've answered my original question. Kind Regards

Now don't get into a war about this as it was just a general query (ha ha)

we'd never do that i respect him to much and besides..

i'm not allowed..

it's complicated and i'm no expert but lets say on a cpu with 4 cores, programs will use them all if it can but if something else needs doing the controller will release one core to do that other job and allow it to start using it again as soon as it can, so the cpu will always be running at 100% load but the user rarely notices any really bad slowdowns like you would on a single core.

Hmm, I think I just figured out why it becomes sluggish. I always run milkyway with my GPU, and with it turned off and the CPU to max it all seems fine. I guess the display drivers don't prioritise in the same way the Windows does. The one thing you have to keep in mind though is that BOINC separates each computing task into individual processes. The priority of each process is always set to low (even if you change it, BOINC will reset it) which is why you don't feel any slow downs. It's not possible to do that for GPGPU's because there is no process management as such and the level of multitasking (Yes, I know that even CPU's can't really "multitask". Each core can only compute one bit at a time, but one of the key features of any OS is to manage when things get computed), is almost non existent for general processing. With that in mind, if you were able to put each process on the "Realtime" priority it would actually make the system unresponsive. I've just tried it now. Soo…the that would also suggest that if ConvertXtoDVD was set to a "low" priority, it should reduce all system wide slow downs. Every other process would get precedence over ConvertX. It's fairly simple to do that, just hit "Ctrl Alt Delete" to bring the Task Manager up. Find ConvertXtoDVD and right click it. Click "Set Priority" and then choose "Low". Try running everything again to see if it makes any difference.

Golly gosh. Your replies are amazing! I'm no computer whizz but can really understand your replies, so thanks for that. I've "upped" my CPU to 20%, just because l can, and will set the ConvertX to a lower priority via task manager. It's not a real problem, just a niggle, so will definately try this out. Thank you both, most informative. Kind Regards

spot on Nahumi. i just didn't want to get into task priority levels.

Not sure how relevant this is. But if you have the money, Intel seems the way to go. I did a bit of research and pitted the best AMD CPU out there vs my Core i5 750 (nowhere near the best CPU out there - the Hex-core i7) and found the Core i5 marginally won it in how it worked with most programs out there. Now this is surprising since I have had the PC over a year. The Cores and Clock speed were lower, but there is a lot of new technology in the new Core i?s which shows that they actually intelligently work to speed up programs rather than just give as much power as they can (so think of it as making CPU usage much more efficient). However, this would mean that you would need a new motherboard as well as a new CPU if you wanted to go Intel. That would be a big factor of course. Now, if you want to stick with AMD, I can't really give you any extra information than the well-structured and informative posts before me. Hope this gives you an insight into the CPU market -Daniel