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Intel AMD Hardware

26 Desktop Processors Compared 192

Posted by kdawson from the two-bakers-dozens dept.
theraindog writes "The number of different CPU models available from AMD and Intel is daunting to say the least. The Tech Report's latest CPU review makes some sense of the landscape, exploring the performance and power consumption characteristics of more than two dozen desktop processors between the $999 Core i7-975 and more affordable sub-$100 chips. The article also highlights the value proposition offered by each CPU on its own and as a part of the total cost of a system. The resulting scatter plots nicely illustrate which CPUs deliver the best performance per dollar."
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26 Desktop Processors Compared More

26 Desktop Processors Compared

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  • Seems pretty clear: (Score:4, Informative)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @03:56PM (#28270675) Journal
    AMD has pretty embarrassing performance on the high end, which makes your choice there downright trivial; but is an excellent value in those niches where they have an entry.

    • Re:Seems pretty clear: (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mdm-adph ( 1030332 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:08PM (#28270813)

      Not embarrassing, just not as fast. However, a Ferrari is vastly more powerful for the money, but a Corvette is still the much better deal -- do I really need to explain this on here?

      • Re:Seems pretty clear: (Score:4, Informative)

        by mister_playboy ( 1474163 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:18PM (#28270957)

        The Corvette ZR1 has more horsepower and is less expensive than any current Ferrari.

        I love Ferrari... but the Corvette needs no apologies at all!

        • Re:Seems pretty clear: (Score:5, Funny)

          by characterZer0 ( 138196 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:20PM (#28270991)

          It does if you want to turn.

          Or if you want to not look like a redneck.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by mister_playboy ( 1474163 )

            A quick glance through some magazine tables shows the ZR1 with more grip (1.05 g or more) on a skidpad than any Ferrari, as well. Only the Viper ACR has done better.

            Rednecks don't drive cars that cost more than 100K USD.

            • Only the Viper ACR has done better.

              So they finally fixed the Viper? I remember that used to be one of its biggest drawbacks - tons of power, but awful handling if you needed to do anything other than drive in a straight line.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jon3k ( 691256 )
              Skidpad numbers doen't translate directly into handling. That said, the zr1 is an exceptional value and an amazing automobile.
            • Skidpad is only a measure of static lateral grip - slalom speed is probably a better performance metric there. Corvettes are fast and cheap (and feel like it too), but I prefer things like the Lotus Elise.
          • Amen, brother! Over here in Idaho I get *so* sick of all the corvettes I see. They're EVERYWHERE!

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:33PM (#28271189)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Latinhypercube ( 935707 )
          Wait until your kid is 3d rendering in Maya and you will be screaming for 8 core Xeons.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Chabo ( 880571 )

          Hell I gave my nearly 5 year old 3.6GHz P4 to my oldest and he is blasting zombies in Left4Dead even as we speak

          I read this sentence, and at first I thought you were saying you let your "nearly 5 year old" kid play Left 4 Dead!

        • I just ordered a new motherboard that I think is compatible with my old P4 570 CPU. (It's 800MHz FSB, so it should work, I hope!)

          The one thing I've learned over the years is to buy a good motherboard that lists your current CPU as one of the oldest ones it supports -- that way you've got plenty of room for future upgrades if you need them. The simple truth is that if I end up upgrading my CPU in the near future, it'll be because the new mobo isn't compatible, not because I need more speed.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hatta ( 162192 )

        Not embarrassing, just not as fast. However, a Ferrari is vastly more powerful for the money, but a Corvette is still the much better deal -- do I really need to explain this on here?

        Yes. In my experience, computer nerds and muscle car freaks are groups that seldom overlap. As far as I'm concerned Ferraris and Corvettes the same thing, impractical expensive cars for those going through a mid life crisis. I have no idea what you are trying to convey with this analogy.

    • Forgot to add...

      The only thing I'd get the i7 over the phenom ii's for is triple channel ram. That's the only upside I see with Intel chips.

    • AMD would end up with even better value on low-end if the cheap AMD system was built on a mobo with integrated GFX...which is good enough for everything except recent GFX-intensive games.

      Yeah, there are always Nvidia chipsets...but for some reason motherboards with them are definitely more expensive (at least where I shop) than comparable ones (both with AMD and Nv chipsets) for AMD platform.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by PitaBred ( 632671 )
        Seconded. I have a Radeon HD3200 and an Athlon 7750 in my Mythbuntu media center, and I couldn't be happier. Plays HD video like a dream and the total system including 4GB of RAM and 4 1TB hard drives clocks in at around $600 or so, $700 with the nice Antec case I got for it.

        • I recently built a similar system - Radeon HD3200 integrated graphics, Phenom II Quad 940, Ubuntu Jaunty. Box absolutely screams (it replaced an Athlon 3200+) and I'm very happy with the Ubuntu user experience (recent convert from Fedora)

          But Lord of Guns and Butter, the ATI 3D drivers SUCK. Crash crash crash, where the NVidia drivers Just Work.

          In retrospect, I wish I had skipped the integrated graphics and just bought an NVidia card.

          DG

          • Yeah. I'm not worrying about 3D right now in it... I'm using the open-source radeon driver that ships with 9.04 because it has tear-free xv in it. The fglrx/catalyst drivers suck donkey cock at doing video. If you're just looking for a media center or non-3D stuff, I highly recommend sticking with the open source drivers.

            On the plus side, ATI is devoting some serious resources to open-source drivers. Take a peek over at the Phoronix forums [phoronix.com] for some ATI devs posting the latest and greatest, answering quest

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Plot isn't that clear to me at all.

      Price/performance is slope on that graph, and AMD looks pretty good at first look, occupying a band mostly on the top-left.

      They ought to have plotted performance on the independent axis vs. price/performance on the y axis. And put that sucker on a log-log plot. Then we'll see who's got the best price/performance for various performance levels.

    • I don't know about that, the AMD X4 955 is on par performance and price wise with the Intel Q9550. Of course, the i7 line is probably what you mean by high end, but you're paying at least $200 - $900 more for a 25-75% performance gain.

      • The price/performance graph makes it look like there's a big difference in price between those chips, yeh. In reality, the Q9550 is only $15 more than the X4 955, with a gap that small, I'd put that down more to choice of other components than to "wow, the AMD chip is so much cheeper for the same performance, I'd better run out and get one.

    • Re:Seems pretty clear: (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Znork ( 31774 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:33PM (#28271177)

      Personally I don't find it that trivial; never before has the best choice been so extremely dependent on what you need the performance for.

      Say you've got some eminently parallel task, like ray tracing. With the huge price/performance difference between low end and high end you might beat the high end in performance by buying two cheap systems rather than one expensive. Look at the i7-940; it's just barely twice as fast as the cheapest CPU, yet it costs six times as much. That price would easily accommodate a cheap motherboard and memory and you'd still be shelling out less.

      On the other hand, say you have very few parallel tasks, then you may still be as well off with a cheap CPU. Without several tasks you're not going so see much difference between a dual core CPU with good per-core performance and a quad core. Not an entirely rare situation when talking about desktop systems.

      Or you might be in the sweet spot of latency sensitive parallel tasks, possibly applicable to some games, in which case a more expensive quad core CPU might definitely be what you're looking for.

      And add to that the need for actual application specific benchmarks to determine actual performance as opposed to generic benchmarks... well, I wouldn't call the choice trivial.

    • Notice that we are making some assumptions here that may not be entirely valid. For instance, we've priced the Socket AM3 Phenom II processors on a Socket AM2+ motherboard with DDR2 memory, though we tested most of them with DDR3 memory. As you may have noticed, memory type didn't make much difference at all to the performance of the Phenom II X4 810

      and we expect the story will be similar for the rest. In the same vein, we priced the Core 2 processors with DDR2 memory, though we tested them with DDR3. Our goal in selecting these components was to settle on a standard platform for each CPU type with a decent price-performance ratio, not to exactly replicate our sometimes-exotic test systems.

      "and we expect the story will be similar for the rest."

      You expect that, huh? Based on what? My experience with Intel processors has always been that they're memory starved. Core i7 may be a huge improvement, but please provide me proof. After all, DDR3 is more expensive, Core i7 CPUs are more expensive, and Core i7 boards are more expensive. It adds up to a 50% jump in cost. (~$500 -> ~$750+)

      I'd like to know whether that was factored in - but the quote right there makes me think maybe it wasn't?

      By their

      • The only significant difference between Intel and AMD processors on the memory BW front is that AMD moved to the integrated memory controller two generations before Intel did. If your experience is that Intel processors have always been memory starved, then your experience is limited to the time between when AMD integrated the controller and when Intel integrated the memory controller.

        On the question of memory BW it is that simple. The company that integrated the memory controller first was ahead on deliv

        • Oh, I'm sorry - I didn't realize the E6300 and E8400 had integrated memory controllers. ;)

          Here I thought they'd get a performance boost from the benchmarks being DDR3!

          • True. Those Intel chips do not have integrated memory controllers.

            All the chips from both companies potentially get a boost from DDR3 memory over DDR2 memory. But, as the article demonstrates on the other pages, for the benchmarks they are looking at, the sensitivity going from DDR2->DDR3 is small.

            I only talked about it in terms of integrated memory controllers because you brought up the idea that Intel parts have always been "memory starved". That statement is what I was contesting. Intel parts have

            • I only talked about it in terms of integrated memory controllers because you brought up the idea that Intel parts have always been "memory starved". That statement is what I was contesting. Intel parts have only been memory starved on some workloads, relative to AMD, when AMD had an integrated memory controller, and Intel didn't. The blanket statement that this has always been the case is not true.

              You should've been fighting my conclusion - they couldn't be bothered benching with the hardware they priced out. I mentioned the i7's improvement in my first post, but I'd still like some numbers on just how big a difference it makes.

              As to your point that you want to see data justifying the claims that DDR2 vs DDR3 in their study isn't all that relevant, the article provides that data. One may question the workloads they chose, but the data justifying the claim within the scope of the workloads that they did choose is there.

              QX9770(DDR3) vs QX9775(DDR2)?

              Mem Latency +60%
              Crysis FPS Avg -21%
              Crysis FPS Min -32.5% (below 30FPS; expect stutters/jolts with VSYNC enabled)
              FarCry2 FPS Avg -35%
              FarCry2 FPS Min -34%
              UT3 FPS Avg +13%
              UT3 FPS Min +4.5%
              HL:EP2 FPS Avg -7%

              Particle Sim Bench FPS Avg (?) +13.8%

              Worldben

  • Correlation is positive (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @03:59PM (#28270715) Homepage
    The first take away I get is that there is an actual, substantial positive correlation between cost and performance. This is a good thing. If I were in a cynical mood I would have guessed that the correlation would have been small or non-existent. The other thing to note is that there are some CPUs that by this metric are clearly just not very worth it where their are cheaper ones that perform better. So, more expensive generally means better, but not always. So CPUs are sort of like wine?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You perhaps aren't cynical enough. I wonder how much this chart would change if the chips were overclocked. That would tell you if some of the slower processors were simply underclocked versions of the faster ones.

      • And perhaps you're too cynical.
        Judging overclocked chips?

        Are we talking about a 32 second test, or a test over several months?

        Does the overclocked $250 system catch your house on fire after 6 hours of gaming?

    • Re:Correlation is positive (Score:4, Funny)

      by TinBromide ( 921574 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:12PM (#28270877)
      yup, just like cars (Once upon a time, you could spend 36k USD for a pt cruiser), houses, internet subscriptions, insurance, meat, items on ebay, and just about anything that has a varied price range and is subject to advertising, brand loyalty, or outright cons.

      I've always tended to get right behind the cutting edge, processors usually take a dive in price and speed, Like when i bought my processor, i paid 300 for a quad core intel last summer, the next step up was 395, then 600, then 1000, but the 1000 wasn't 3.3x faster, the 600 wasn't 2x faster, etc. However, the $150 intel chip was 40% slower, so the price/performance sort of follows a log function where the trick is finding the right place before the price starts to skyrocket in relation to performance. I'm sure that if you could find a bunch of old pentium 1 processors on the super cheap, in bulk, you might get the same price/performance as a new mid-level intel chip, but why would you want to run a beowulf cluster to get the same throughput? (Ignoring the price of all of the other components, since the article is price/cost of the cpu alone, that was the metric i went by as well).

      I wonder what the price/performance ratio of a pentium 1 that cost $0.01 is.

      Well, I suppose that running a beowulf cluster is it's own reward.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Aside from the possitive correlation, the other main point I would take away is the apparent 'knee' in the chart at about the $300 mark.

      Seems that is the point of diminising returns.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suggsjc ( 726146 )

      So CPUs are sort of like wine?

      I get your underlying point, but wine has more subjective values (wine enthusiasts would debate this though) that come into play whereas CPUs have more quantifiable comparisons. That said, for both CPUs and wine I would think that most of the people who are buying "high end" products they are a little more discerning about their purchases.

    • The other thing to note is that there are some CPUs that by this metric are clearly just not very worth it where their are cheaper ones that perform better.

      Depends on how much you value the time it takes to complete $PROCESSOR_INTENSIVE_TASK. If I hired software engineers for $100,000 a year, that's $1 a minute and so it might very well be "worth it" to spend $1000 on the latest N-core processor (compilation being nearly infinitely parallel) if that save 5 minutes per compile over 200 compiles on the year.

      The only thing the plot proves is that there are diminishing returns, not that any particular price/performance point is not "worth it".

  • Only Intel compatible .... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:12PM (#28270869) Homepage
    if they want to talk about desktop processors come back to me when they talk about decent choice, what about the ARM ?

    I am fed up with all these people who think that all the world is Intel compatible -- when there are better CPUs out there.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Microlith ( 54737 )

      They'll cover ARM when someone sells a motherboard with a socket I can stick a 2+ GHz quad-core ARM in and get performance equal to an equivalent AMD or Intel chip.

      As it stands, ARM is irrelevant outside the embedded/pda/non-x86 netbook scope.

    • Um, ARM CPUs really aren't high end in the least. Sure, they might be decent enough for web browsing, but tell me whenever I can get an ARM CPU that can render, play games, etc. Until then I'm sticking with x86. All ARM-based CPUs are good for is low power systems like phones, etc.

    • Because desktop PCs of the world DO run Intel compatible chips, and that is just how it is. Doesn't matter if you don't think it should be that way, that's how it is and that's what tech sites deal with. Windows is of course the by far dominant desktop OS with over 90% market share. Well Windows only runs on Intel and AMD chips. Most versions are x86 and x64 only, there are a few IA64 (Itanium) versions. No ARM, no Power, etc.

      After Windows is MacOS. All new Macs sold for a number of years have been Intel ch

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cyberax ( 705495 )

      It makes little sense to compare ARM boards. They are usually power-optimized (with peripherals consuming substantial fraction of power), not performance-optimized. Also, end-user devices might be underclocked and undervoltaged. Besides, if you want performance with non-x86 CPUs, then look at MIPS CPUs (which are usually used for things like AV processing in set-top boxes).

      Now, a comparison of end-used devices (netbooks/phones) with ARM/MIPS CPUs might actually make sense.

  • A better solution. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:13PM (#28270885) Homepage Journal

    What is the cheapest CPU that can playback 780P flash well?
    That is probably a good CPU for 99% of the population. Flash is a resource hog and is likely to be most intensive thing that most people use.
    The next step up would be to list several games and see what is the cheapest CPU that can play them at say 60FPS at good settings with a $99 video card.

    If your a video editor, hardcore PC gamer, transcode a lot of video, or run CAD get the fastest CPU you can afford.
    So hard core types should buy I7s and pretty much everybody else should buy AMDs once you take into account ram and motherboard prices.

    Also if you are planing on running virtual machines AMD are often a better choice. Intel doesn't support virtualization on a lot of their CPUs while I think AMD does on their AM2 and up CPUs.

    • Re:A better solution. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wjh31 ( 1372867 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:23PM (#28271033) Homepage
      if all you want is 720P flash, pretty much anything on the market will do. My wifes laptop with a C2D T2080 @ 1.73GHz manages it fine. when comparing it against other desktop processors of similar performance on here: (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+T2080+%40+1.73GHz), and then looking it up on ebuyer.com, suggests that a £40 proccesor is fine for 720p flash.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

        That is kind of the point. If you want to step it up then go for one that supports 1080p and that will be good enough for most people.
        And actually I think the Atom doesn't handle 720p all that well yet.

        That is the interesting thing about CPUs today. The best price to performance ratio isn't always important.
        If you have no need for the extra performance don't get it. As it is very few applications will use an I7 well. Most people just don't need 8 threads.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jon3k ( 691256 )
          "And actually I think the Atom doesn't handle 720p all that well yet."

          Incorrect. NVIDIA Ion based nettops are already playing 1080p video smooth as silk. It's more about the graphics adapter than it is the Atom.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

            It That is blue ray and not Flash. That is why I specified Flash.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jon3k ( 691256 )
              No where in the post I responded to does the word "flash" even appear. I've got a hp mini 2140 with a 1.6Ghz Atom, 2GB RAM and the standard intel GMA 950 graphics adapter and have no problem whatsoever playing 720p encoded video via the VGA output port, including numerous h.264 encoded videos (which is the same format used by Flash [wikipedia.org])

              "Flash Player 9 Update 3, released on December 3, 2007,[2] also includes support for the H.264 video standard (also known as MPEG-4 part 10, or AVC) which is even more comp

      • I'm doing it on IBM T42 with 1.7GHz PIV and Radeon 9700. That's like 4 years old. We really don't need faster processors we have already for general use computing. Games on the other hand...

        I use Ubuntu (with Compiz), but I suppose Windows should be also fine, probably even better as drivers are faster.

    • Flash is a resource hog? Little Red Riding Hood for you!

      http://vimeo.com/3514904 [vimeo.com]

      How can you call that a hog? It is a blast, on any CPU.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      You mean 720P flash I assume, or, less likely, 480P. 780P isn't a standard high-def resolution.

      But, to answer your question, probably the new class of netbook like the Pegatron [engadget.com], which, interestingly enough is running a Freescale processor with an ARM based core. This little netbook also has flash based GPU acceleration (supposedly), is incredibly thin and sports I think 6 hours of battery life.

  • Ancient CPUs (upgrade comparison) (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Do any of the CPU reviews use old CPUs? What I what to know is how much faster today's CPU is compared to my 3-6 year old CPU, but these hardware reviews typically have a low end much newer/faster than my current system. Practically, a 50% CPU edge is too marginal for me to upgrade, but if a new system was 3X faster than my current aging machine I would be tempted!

    • Do any of the CPU reviews use old CPUs? What I what to know is how much faster today's CPU is compared to my 3-6 year old CPU, but these hardware reviews typically have a low end much newer/faster than my current system. Practically, a 50% CPU edge is too marginal for me to upgrade, but if a new system was 3X faster than my current aging machine I would be tempted!

      tomshardware.com

      • Re:Ancient CPUs (upgrade comparison) (Score:5, Informative)

        by dr_wheel ( 671305 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:40PM (#28271257)

        Tom's cpu chart is a great tool, but they don't generally compare older chips to newer ones. They also change the testing credentials from time to time, so there's no real way to directly compare old vs. new.

        Anandtech has a new cpu benchmark site that compares everything from a single-core atom up to the top-of-the-line core i7. They've also recently added two pentium 4 chips to the mix so you really can directly compare them to the newer stuff. Check it out:

        http://www.anandtech.com/bench/ [anandtech.com]

  • What I'm seeing... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:27PM (#28271071) Homepage Journal

    The performance scales sub-linearly with the price, and ends up almost flat at the extreme end. This means you need to examine the cost of SMP vs. a more powerful CPU. Two X2 6400+ chips in an SMP should give you about the same performance at the same cost as one i7-920, after you add in the extra for the upgraded chipsets and mobo.

    More powerful low-end chips become more and more effective when SMPed versus their higher-end rivals. The other benefit of going SMP is that you have fewer cores sharing the same cache, therefore increase the number of distinct tasks you can perform in parallel effectively without cache-flooding.

    Of course, you can't SMP forever - the largest SMP array you can make before the system slows down by more than the CPU increases performance is 16-way. Even before then, you lose linear scaling fairly early on. So you end up balancing the different CPUs against the different methods of arranging them to get the best performance for your money.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      Dual and Quad socket motherboards are exceptionally expensive and typically require registered/ecc RAM. I would genuinely like to see a setup with comparable CPU features to say, a core i7 920, where you'd get comparable performance for the price using two processors. (no used prices obviously, since we need apples v apples).

  • /.'ed (Score:5, Funny)

    by dr_wheel ( 671305 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:28PM (#28271091)
    Apparently, the tech report should have benchmarked their web server before putting this article up.

    • > Apparently, the tech report should have benchmarked their web server before putting this article up.

      It's probably more bandwidth related than computer related. When the County first put our sex offender registry online, we had a measly T1 which got saturated by the community within minutes of the local news stations carrying the announcement. Our (low-power at the time) Linux web server registered 0.00 0.00 0.00 loads most of time time. If it wasn't for the server logs expanding rapidly, I wouldn't

  • Article doesn't really talk about features (Score:5, Informative)

    by vux984 ( 928602 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:33PM (#28271183)

    Its too bad the article doesn't talk about things like Execute Disable, Virtualization support, etc. For a power user audience like /. these are important considerations.

    For me not being able to install Xen, or Windows 7 XP mode, etc are complete deal killers. I want CPUs with those features, especially when shopping "value CPUs".

    Getting something like an E8190 is a mistake that will bite a /. power user in the ass eventually even if it is a few bucks cheaper than an E8200 and delivers the same performance, at the same wattage, etc...

  • Intel Atom 330 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Eil ( 82413 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:49PM (#28271379) Homepage Journal

    I've been something of an AMD fanboy ever since the Athlon came out, but I just bought an Intel Atom 330 for a lightweight file server, and I have to say I'm thoroughly impressed. 64-bit, dual-core, virtualization extensions, and low-power to boot for around $80 which includes the motherboard. Simply unbeatable.

    Also wanted to mention that these guys [cpubenchmark.net] have easy-to-read benchmark charts of a wide variety of CPUs. Certainly more than the 26 in TFA. Benchmarks don't tell the whole story of course, but it's a good start for quick-and-dirty comparison.

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