From time to time, I get asked, “What computer should I get?” And, while its rare, I do get the question, “…if I want the best-performing desktop for gaming and multimedia encoding?”
Since the emergence of the Athlon 64 FX series with the FX-51 in late 2003, the Athlon 64 FX has reigned over the performance PC industry and beat the Pentium Extreme Edition in roundup after roundup.
In fact, some high-end gaming system builders have almost exclusive relationships with AMD, to the point that they currently dont offer Pentium CPUs in their PCs.
/zimages/7/28571.gifThe demand for Athlon 64 processors puts AMD under pressure.Click hereto read more.
System builders like Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Overdrive PC and VoodooPC build their reputations on high-end systems that use the latest FX series processors, though FX sales usually count for relatively few units a month.
/zimages/7/28571.gifRead morehereabout AMDs low-end Athlon 64 X2 line.
The bulk of their sales come from more pedestrian—affordable—systems that use processors like the Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 4200+ and the like.
The Athlon 64 FX-62 is a dual-core processor, which means that multithreaded tasks like Windows Media Encoder are more efficient on the FX-62 than on a single-core processor like the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition or single-core Athlon 64 processors.
The multimedia scores like the Photoshop CS2 and WME scores on the systems below show this performance gap.
/zimages/7/28571.gifRead the full story on PCMag.com:AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Reigns King
/zimages/7/28571.gifCheck out eWEEK.coms for the latest news in desktop and notebook computing.