I'd like some input for smart buying...

[Guest]

I'm sure you are all sick of newb questions, but I am planning on upgrading my mainboard and chip in the near future. I have been a Pentium man my whole life, but now I am leaning towards a dual-core Athlon, probably a 3800 as that is the only one I can reasonably afford. I am looking for some intelligent, non-biased input on the matter. Mostly I am looking for the best processor to run a game that is graphically rather simplistic (my video card is more than adequate) but puts an ENORMOUS load on the CPU because of a huge number of AI calculations.

If you care, the game is specifically Hearts of Iron II, or at least it's the worst culprit. After a few game years there are literally thousands of military units operating at once, and the drain on the processor is so severe that it slows down to nearly unplayable levels.

If anyone could e-mail me at LeChevalierNoir88@hotmail.com with some input or a good, unbiased consumer report, I would be grateful.



Rowan

[CPUShack]

A dual core would be a big help for you.
I would use the AMD CPU as they tend to be faster at such work (pure math rather then SIMD graphics)

Either way though will surely be better then what you have.