I need opinions on these two processors

I am having a new computer built soon and based on my budget I am looking at two different processors they are:

Intel Duo 2 Core 2.4 GHz or

Pentium 4, 3.4 GHz

What I want to know is which of these two will be better for gaming and running second life? Thanks for your help!

can anyone help me with this? I have no clue

If youre upgrading you need to know wich kinda of socket your current motherboard is,

type/socket/cpu

Intel - Intel Socket 775 / Intel core duo
Amd - am2 / AMD Athlon 64 X2

Both the new ones require you have ddr2 ram tho, not the older.

Both of these processors should work fine for sl and for gaming. But the Pentium 4 is considered obsolete. It only has one core, and it consumes an excessive amount of power for the level of performance it provides.

The core 2 duo is the coming thing. It has two cores, which won't help for sl or for gaming, but will help for many other things. Two cores are helpful if you run other applications at the same time as sl, such as photoshop or internet explorer. It is a better performer than the Pentium 4, and much more energy-efficient. As time goes by, more and more applications will be enhanced to take full advantage of dual core. Who knows, maybe even SL will benefit from it some day.

I wouldn't want to build a new pentium 4 computer, or any other single core computer unless I had to squeeze every penny possible. Even then, I don't think it will save any money in the long run, because you will have to replace the pentium 4 computer sooner than one built with the core 2 duo.

I've run SL on a MacBookPro runs very smoothly. So far it out performs my P5 1.89 Ghz Laptop. I know it isn't a fair comparison. The multi core processors are the future and you may not want to be putting money into a dead end processor. Quad core are already out.

Thank you all for your input on this it has been helpful.

Thili, yes i'm getting 2gb of corsair 5400 DDR2 (1ghz bus speed) for it and a
geforce 7950gt 512mg pci-e graphics card for it

If you're ONLY going to run SL, go with the P4
If you're doing to use the computer for ANYTHING other than SL, go with the Core Duo 2.


SL does not take advantage of multiple cores, thus you'll be running at 2.4Ghz only for your SL experience... so if the machine is ONLY for SL then get the P4.

If you're doing ANYTHING else (web surfing, Office, Photoshop etc) then get the Core Duo 2 since it SMOKES any P4 in apps that take advantage of it's abilities.

Parts may be parts, but gigahertz aren't always gigahertz. The Core 2 architecture is faster at any given clock speed than the Pentium 4 architecture; a 2.4GHz Core 2 can keep pace with a 3.4GHz P4, even with one core tied behind its back. In any application that can use both cores (which mostly doesn't include Second Life yet, although the First Look viewer has some multithreading support), the Core 2 Duo will blow that P4 system out of the water. The Core 2 also consumes less power, which means lower electric bills.

You didn't mention price. But there would have to be a BIG difference in favor of the P4 to justify buying one.