dual core worth it?
"From a software perspective, it will be treated just as two seperate CPUS. Yes, it's possible to run software to take advantage of n number of CPUs, but only in specific applications where you're not waiting on the results from one calculation before you begin the next. Take for example 3D rendering in something like Maya. If you're rendering a 320x240 image and you happen to have 76,800 CPUs then you can assign 1 pixel to each CPU and it can be rendered all at the same time. If you only have 2 CPUs, you can assign 38,400 pixels to each CPU, etc."
Maya dual core
Avid pro hd is "multiprocessor optimized" which means it can use more than 1 cpu to work faster.
avid hd pro
For the types of things you're going to do, dual core would definitely be beneficial, but to what extent, I don't know. Is it worth the wait? Hard to tell since dual core isn't here yet.
I think you would be happier with dual core, but it could be a bit of a wait. If I were you, which I'm not, I think I would get an amd 939 and then upgrade to dual core, because I hate waiting, and 939 should have dual core compatibility. But that is me, I hate to wait, but want maximum upgradeability.
I looked for more maya benches, and found that in maya amd's fx51 (2.2ghz actual speed), a formerly top of the line chip, is better than a p4 3.2ghz of the old generation. But the new intel generation(6xx) is faster in maya. The article says that maya version 5(and probably higher) is more tolerant of the amd64.
The a64 single core should give acceptable performance in maya, probably good enough to last until dual core.
Xbit maya bench
Do you know anyone who's used amd 64 in the apps you want to use? If you can find someone ask them how it performs.
Edit: here's another chart comparing cpu's,no intel 6xx cpus which should be better, but interesting, I haven't seen this before.
Ace's hardware Maya
