other components have come on very far, you just need to look in the right places, then you will get your performance (if you have the right system for the applications your running, ie, ram hungry apps = lots of ram to prevent swapping).
eg hardware:
ram = Corsair DDR2 XMS2 Dominator (1111MHz)
hdd = WD Raptor, 10,000rpm (1.5 Gb/s)
youll need that £700 cpu to keep up with the £450 sticks of ram. (2x1gb)
my cpu is coming up to being 5 years old (P4 ?prescot? shit cant remember, its old tho), and it supports multi-threading very well with its HT technology. it basicly splits the cpu into 2 virtual cores (i can see each cpu in task manager), and allows better threadded performance, even though it is a single core.
when source goes multi-threaded, i should see some more performance my way (not that i use all my cpu, due to my pwn £20 128mb fx5200 - which i can still get 50/100fps out of

).
single core amd chips do not have HT, and there for stay as a single core. this means all the threads go down the same route of processing.
i think amd has some kind of "thread managment" shit to try and deal with it, but . . intel wins with HT.
at the end of the day, the only people who wont see anything much good from this, are the people with single core amd chips, so its hardly a bad idea on valve's part
Post edited by: [KM] + FROG +, at: 06/11/2006 00:09