Intel Quad-Core Price and Performance Showdown

ThinSkin writes "The folks over at ExtremeTech have had enough time on their hands to benchmark Intel's entire quad-core lineup to determine which has the best performance for the dollar. While prices range from $183 to $1399, the real bargain is with Intel's latest Core i7 architecture which outpaced many other more expensive processors. For comparison's sake, Intel's fastest dual-core CPU was thrown into the mix and was, at times, not even competitive, which suggests that we're beginning to see more and more multi-threaded applications take advantage of four cores."

Flawed analysis, I just bought a dual-core E8400

[DrDitto]

The analysis is flawed in my opinion since it doesn't consider overall system cost. I just built a machine yesterday for use as my desktop. The Core i7 mainboards and DDR3 memory really push up the price right now. I considered the following configurations:

• Quad-core Q6600 65nm 2.4GHz ($183), Gigabyte LGA775 mainboard ($105), 4GB DDR2 memory ($41): Total $336
• Dual-core E8400 45nm 3GHz ($165), Gigabyte LGA775 mainboard ($105), 4GB DDR2 memory ($41): Total: $311
• Quad-core Nehalem Core i7 920 ($299), Gigabyte LGA1336 mainboard ($245), 4GB DDR3 memory ($125): $659
  
  At 2x the price, Core i7 was not a consideration for me at this time.
  
  The choice between the E8400 and the Q6600 was a tough one. I could have gone either way. Quad-core is great for threaded applications like media encoding. But the E8400 outperforms the Q6600 for the majority of what I do (including Photoshop CS3). I am not convinced that threading will be widespread enough during my 3-year upgrade cycle. A common argument on the forums is that the Q6600 can be overclocked to 3GHz such that single-threaded is the same as the E8400. While I do not overclock, the E8400 supposedly can easily get to 4GHz on air.

Re:Need to factor in motherboard and RAM prices to

[RT Alec]

I'd like to see how the systems (CPU/RAM/MB etc) perform with a 64 bit OS with a simulated workload. How about:

• FreeBSD 7 (AMD64)
• MySQL 5.1.30
• Apache 2.2 (worker MPM)
• PHP 5.2.8 (or HTML::Mason)

What is the responsiveness of the system under load? Openssl speed? bonnie++?

Re:Whoopee

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody in their right mind should get an i7. A 30% performance-per-clock increase over the Core 2 series is not worth doubling the cost of the CPU and motherboard. DDR3 is also more expensive than DDR2. On top of that, Intel are getting into the power-sucking height of the Pentium 4s again; the Core i7s have a TDP of 130 watts. For any desktop use - including highest-end game machines - anything another other than a Core 2 Duo is just a waste of money.

Re:RAM Question

[lytles]

i've got:
    amd 64 x2 at 25W (BE-2350)
    690G motherboard with onboard graphics (ASUS M2A-VM HDMI)
    $165 total in dec 2007

and it runs fanless fine (tho i do have the fan hooked up idling and thermally controlled most of the time). doesn't look like they're still selling the BE-2350, and not sure if there's a current equivalent or if you can accomplish the same thing by underclocking.