At the heart of the Canada Computers Content Creator X2 system is arguably the best processor on the market based on the AMD Athlon64 architecture; the AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ (socket 939). If you are a true gaming enthusiast you're best off going with a single core AMD Athlon64 or Athlon FX processor. For the rest of us who have deal with work related multimedia and content-oriented applications that the Content Creator X2 system is built for, the dual core AMD Athlon64 X2 is the right chip for the job.

At the moment most desktop applications only take advantage of a single core, but with both Intel and AMD pimping dual core technology as the next best thing since sliced bread, you can bet software developers are feeling the pressure to write applications that are dual core compatible, as standard. High end workstations and servers have long benefited from SMP (Symmetrical Multiprocessing) and its nice to see desktop users will soon realize this as well.

The AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ processor itself retails for about $1272 CDN ($1049 US), so it makes up a good portion of the Canada Computers Content Creator X2's total price of roughly $3400CDN. The CPU is a marvel because it contains two physical processor cores on one silicone die, built with the 0.09 micron (90nm) manufacturing process.

Each core runs at a default speed of 2.4 GHz, and contains 233.2 million transistors. Each has 128KB of L1 cache and 1MB of L2 cache, and share a single 128 bit DDR memory controller. Another way of looking at it is that the Athlon64 X2 4800 is the equivalent of two Athlon64 4000+ CPUs. The processor connects to the motherboard chipset via a single 2 GHz (1 GHz up/down 16-bits wide both ways) Hypertransport link. Like its single core counterparts, the Athlon64 X2 4800+ incorporates an improved memory controller as well as new SSE3 instructions licensed from Intel.

Having said all that, the key point that you'll see pop up in the benchmarks is that AMD's dual core CPU works really well with office-oriented and multimedia-type content creation applications. The dual core chip was virtually no impact on game performance, but that's where the twin Geforce 6800 videocards in SLI pick up some of the slack. The SLI option is actually called the 'Content Creator-X2 SLI Upgrade package,' as the base unit comes with a single PCI Express x16 videocard.

About Canada Computers

Now that we've gone over the parts that make up the Content Creator X2 system let's focus on the company behind it. Canada Computers is a Markham-based computer hardware retailer with 7 retail locations across Toronto and Southern Ontario; Markham, North York, Toronto, Richmond Hill, Mississauga, Kingston, and Waterloo. It's perhaps best known for its presence on Toronto's College St. strip, for those that are familiar with the city. The store offers a broad selection of computer hardware and also retails from its online website www.canadacomputers.com. Of our past experiences with Canada Computers, we've found that it uses quality parts on the whole, no PC Chips/Houston motherboards here, and offers a good level of after-sales service.

The store can be a mad house during peak periods, and it can be difficult jockeying with twenty other people for help. Still, with a bit of patience and understanding, one should not have a difficult time finding exactly what they are looking for, and the prices are pretty competitive.

Like most non-corporate computer stores, its prices are "cash discounted." This means that if you want to pay via a credit card, prices will be 2% higher. Overall our experiences with Canada Computers have generally been positive, and we've had no major problems in the past.

Now, let's take the Content Creator X2 system for test spin through a series of benchmarks, both 32-bit and 64-bit!

The Tests: Focus on Workstation Benchmarks