It’s been over 1.5 years since I built my current computer, and back then it was pretty decent. Heck, it’s still pretty decent right now and there’s no real reason why I decided to upgrade, other than the fact that I had the upgrade itch. So, that’s why last week I ordered a bunch of components (again from Netlink Computers) to build a new computer with. The parts arrived yesterday, after some haggling with Purolator, but everything seems to be in good shape and I’m excited to put things together!

I decided to go with the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor. Why? Well, it was a sweet price - $270 - and it’s quad-core. Just the name sounds so badass - it’s reminiscent of the “Quad Damage” power up of the Quake FPS series, and heck, quad is better than dual, no? But let’s be real here - I probably have no real need for a quad-core processor, and claims of future-proofing may be dubious at best. After all, I am on a roughly two-year upgrade cycle, so by the time quad-core becomes commonplace (like dual-core is right now) I will most likely have upgraded to a new CPU.

However I do use my computer for a lot. In addition to gaming, (which currently does not benefit from a quad-core CPU, generally), I use my machine as a development box, and often have many programs running in the background, such as Apache, MySQL and the like. I have no real evidence to suggest that quad-core might help in this situation, but maybe it will. One thing is for sure though - single-core CPUs just don’t cut it anymore, even for regular desktop work - the advantages of going dual-core are easily visible.

In any event, I’m hoping to start putting together the parts sometime this week, but most likely will have to wait for the weekend to get everything fully assembled and up and running.

The solution is nicely outlined in the [H]ard|OCP Forums, where it’s aptly known as the “Benny Hill Effect”. Turns out that the problem has to do with power state management issues and how they affect the read time stamp counter instruction (RDTSC), which is used for timing. I followed the guide, and it fixed my problems.

The games that I noticed the timing issues in were NFS:MW, Rome Total War and GTA San Andreas. This is by no means a complete list of games that are affected by this issue. Some of my own observations and suggestions for fixing the problem:

• I installed the “AMD Dual-Core Optimizer”, but found that while it fixed some of the jerky games, it caused problems such as video distortion in other games
• So, I uninstalled the fix, and strangely, the jerkiness in games remained gone and all previously caused problems were removed as well
• This may have been the result of the “/usepmtimer” switch being added to the “boot.ini” file (This may have been all that was needed)

Regardless, the guide in the [H]ard|OCP Forums is quite extensive, and you should be able to solve any of your dual-core related gameplay issues by reading it.