Help with Basic Questions

Hello to all members of TH,

Here are some basic wuestions that i have, can some one please take some time and exaplain these for me.

(1) How do you know which Intel CPU is for you, for example if i am a gamer and playing FarCry, do i need a dualcore or a quodcore, how will i know this that a game will be able to play more than 2 cores.

(2) Buying a 64bit O/S will it make the use of 4 Cores? Or can a 32 Bit O/S also use 4 Cores.

(3) if i have a 32Bit O/S and i have 2GB of RAM, and 2GB of VRAM, will it be worth buying 64bit due to the limitations on the O/S? Or can a 32Bit O/S use 2GB of RAM and 2GB of VRAM as well.

(4) Every motherboard has a chipset for example, P35,P45 X48, etc, what are these supposed to mean? I mean the numbers not what a chipset is.

For now these are some of the questions, that i have.

Thank you for taking your time in reading this thread.

Have a good day.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to mbison20

mbison20 wrote :

Hello to all members of TH,

Here are some basic wuestions that i have, can some one please take some time and exaplain these for me.

(1) How do you know which Intel CPU is for you, for example if i am a gamer and playing FarCry, do i need a dualcore or a quodcore, how will i know this that a game will be able to play more than 2 cores.

<<< if you are building, I recomend a quad. If you already have a duel core, dont switch until you need to.

(2) Buying a 64bit O/S will it make the use of 4 Cores? Or can a 32 Bit O/S also use 4 Cores.

<<< 64 bit is seperate from quad core. issue. 32 bit Vista or XP can handle the 4 cores

(3) if i have a 32Bit O/S and i have 2GB of RAM, and 2GB of VRAM, will it be worth buying 64bit due to the limitations on the O/S? Or can a 32Bit O/S use 2GB of RAM and 2GB of VRAM as well.

<<< if you have 4 gig or more of physical ram, you need 64 bit to access it all. PHYSICAL

(4) Every motherboard has a chipset for example, P35,P45 X48, etc, what are these supposed to mean? I mean the numbers not what a chipset is.

<<< numbers are arbitrary. They represent the series by the chipset maker. The ones you listed are Intel chipsets. Basically, they tell you what you can expect from the MoBo, because there are certain charicatristics of different chipsets. For example the X 48 chipset will support crossfire well because of the amount of PCI-E lanes. Other series may have on-board graphics. The numbers/letters assigned are arbitrary, though.

For now these are some of the questions, that i have.

Thank you for taking your time in reading this thread.

Have a good day.

Reply to hairycat101

1. if money is not a problem, get a quadcore. same performance as the dual cores in gaming. all games except crysis cannot utilize four cores but crysis doesn't utilize the four cores efficiently in gaming.

2. 64 bit is not worth the trouble unless you know a lot in computers.

3. don't bother with 64bit even if you have 4GB of system ram, you might have problems using it. video card memory is not a concern with the operating system.

4. those are just names of chipsets, numbers are nothing. if you want to learn more, check out Tom's motherboard reviews and search in google what you don't understand there.

Reply to zodiacfml

1. Duals are generally better for gaming today due to higher clock speeds, with a higher clock speed its able to do more in a second than a slower clock speed processor, generally speaking quad cores are better though because the performance difference in FPS for games is negligible and they allow better multi-tasking and ease of use for the rest of the system

2. Both can use four cores, but since 64-bit is the way of the foreseeable future it makes since to just get 64-bit and its already becoming much more widely accepted in software development

3. VRAM does in fact get viewed by the operating system. If you have a 32-bit operating system (only sees about 3.5 gb of ram) and you have 4 gigs installed... your operating can only see 3.5 gb of that ram. Now, say you have 1 GB of VRAM, that means 1 GB of that 3.5 GB is allocated to something else, then in reality your operating system only sees 2.5 gb of ram, with 64-bit operating systems, this isn't an issue so once again just go for the 64-bit

4. The numbers refer the chip that resides in that motherboard/cpu. A p45 and an x48 both are the same generation of motherboard, but the chip itself is different... which is indicated by the 5 and the 8. The p35 and x38 are a previous generation that refer to the chip. And in these circumstances, the 8 stands for high-end performance chip, while the 5 stands for mainstream and a 3, aka p43 or g43 (g means it has integrated graphics) is low-end low-cost chip

Reply to thogrom

Right now, games are written more for dual core, so if that's your primary purpose, and money is tight, a dual core is a good option. You do get roughly the same performance from a quad, but the prices are higher (since they have more cores).

I disagree about 64 bit OSs - it doesn't take a genius to use 64 bit drivers, etc. I've never had an issue with XP x64 or Vista x64.

It's up to you with the OS.

Yep, those are just designations for each chipset.

Reply to huron

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