Geetings all, Now that the AMD dual cores have significantly come down in price, I have made the leap and bought a new CPU and I just need some advice on how to make the change as smoothly as possible. Here's my current setup: MOBO: Asus A8V Deluxe CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ RAM: 2GB Corsair ValueSelect Graphics: Matrox Millenium G550 System HD: Western Digital Raptor 34GB Audio HD: Seagate Barraccuda 250GB MBox 1 - PT 7.1 latest cs I got the motherboard both for it's proven track record for Pro Tools and for the option of a DC future. I was originally going to double the power and get a X2 4400+ but seeing as they're so cheap now I just went for the best and bought a X2 4800+ which should arrive next week. Very exciting! So, can some kind soul describe exactly the process of making the switch? Precisely what changes do I make in the BIOS? Do I need an update of some kind? What's this Dualcore 'Hotfix' I've heard about? Any other potential pitfalls I should be aware of? Also, is it necessary to get a third party CPU fan (Zalman for instance)? I know that the AMDs are cooler than the Intels, but is the supplied fan sufficient? I'm going to make a Ghost image before and after the change just to make sure there's a backup plan. In addition, I've also ordered another WD Raptor, the 150GB one, to be my new audio drive - leaving the Seagate for sample libraries and backup. This should streamline my system extremely well, but it does leave me with one problem; noise. I have a QuietPC Acousticase, Silent Case Fans (120mm - 2000RPM fixed) and a ThermalTake 560W Silent PSU, yet when I boot up it sounds like an aeroplane taking off! I think that it's probably a combination of the two case fans, the stock AMD CPU fan and the 10000 drive. Here are my questions (I know, I'm full of them); -can I safely get by with only one case fan running? -will a Zalman CPU fan significantly reduce overall noise levels? -will investment in silent 'drive sleeves' be a good idea, considering I will soon have two 10000RPM drives in the machine? Do they work? (everything else I bought with the word 'silent' in the title hasn't seemed to live up to the title. Many thanks for reading a long post people. Any advice for a seemless transition would be most gratefully received. Peace Sonny

I just upgraded to a dual-core system as well. Right off the bat, you should start with a fresh install of windows. I was running into errors until I wiped my drive. Also, make sure cool 'n quiet is disabled in your bios. The fan that comes with the cpu will work without any issues. But if you do wand it to run cooler/quieter, than you can buy another fan. There are two hotfixes for dual-cores. The first is a windows fix, which you only need to install if you have cool and quiet enabled. The second is the AMD optimizer, which I would suggest. I don't have any answers about your other questions though, sorry...

Wow. Really!?! A complete reinstall of Windows? A completely new C: drive!?!!!? I thought it was a quick BIOS change and I could carry on as usual. I'm not about to go a get another HD, that must be overkill, surely? My C: Drive is a lovely Raptor and a reinstall is already a PITA. Boy oh boy. Really, what's the advantage of going to such lengths? Is the changeover really that unstable? Prodger, I take it I can get the AMD optimizer from their site? (by the way, thanks so much for your advice guys)

Yes, the optimizer can be found on AMD's website. You can always try to run it without reinstalling windows. The computer will run nicely, but protools may not operate perfectly. When I upgraded to a dual-core, I didn't reformat my drive and I was consistenly getting -6087 errors. None of the troubleshooting tips helped, so a reformat was in order. Again, you can try without reformating, but keep the option availble... Hope it all works out.

I upgraded from an Athlon 64 3700+ to an Athlon 64 x2 4400+ also on a ASUS A8V Deluxe motherboard. No fresh install of windows, no Windows dualcore hotfix or AMD hotfix. All seems to work well. Of course, YMMV. I'm somewhat disappointed with the performance improvement with ProTools LE 7.1, however. Going from the 3700+ to the x2 4400+ I expected a more significant improvement (same clock speed, same cache size per core, but two cores). As others have said, use Norton Ghost to backup your working system drive before starting... Larry