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AMD Intel The Almighty Buck Hardware Entertainment Games

Value Propositions of Current CPUs Put to the Test 152

Posted by Zonk from the more-gerbils-for-the-money dept.
J. Dzhugashvili writes "Processors are typically compared by their performance alone. However, the folks at The Tech Report have put together an article that attempts to quantify the value propositions of AMD's and Intel's latest processors. The article takes 16 processors through an extensive battery of tests that range from gaming and video encoding to Folding@Home and energy efficiency, and examines the value they offer in each. The results may surprise you."
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Value Propositions of Current CPUs Put to the Test More

Value Propositions of Current CPUs Put to the Test

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  • In a few weeks the E6600 will be at $170, quite a bargain...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by pushing-robot ( 1037830 )
      And the Q6600 will be $266, not $530. It'll be a much different playing field.

      At least they lay out all the figures so you can recalculate price/performance when the big drop hits.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ceeam ( 39911 )
      Saying "wait" in these comparisons is foul-play.
    • You can say that every single day and still be right. I'm a big fan of buying PC's from my local thrift stores for $20 each. PC's are, by themselves, probably the worst investment that I can think of. Not even American cars depreciate as fast as PC's. I always tell people that unless you're playing games on a PC (which is an insanely expensive hobby), or doing something important, just get the cheapest thing you can find.

      • Insanely Expensive? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by thestuckmud ( 955767 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @12:02PM (#19690717)

        playing games on a PC (which is an insanely expensive hobby)
        I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you have never tried yacht racing, which really is an expensive hobby. I play games on a computer which cost under US$2000 three years ago. New games are stressing the system, so I'll have to upgrade to a faster CPU and graphics card (another $600) this year. Including games, that works out to less than I spend on my bicycle.

        Games cost $60, less if you are willing to wait, often for a hundred hours of play time. No travel expenses. No special clothes required. Hell, gamers don't even need to buy deodorant. Ever priced a round of golf at a good course? How about membership at the club so you can play there?

        I know... if you want to compete with the best players or impress your friends you may choose to buy lots of bleeding edge hardware. My point is you don't have to do so if you just want to play games.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by grumbel ( 592662 )
          ### which cost under US$2000 three years ago. New games are stressing the system, so I'll have to upgrade to a faster CPU and graphics card (another $600) this year.

          A game console costs between $200 - $600 and lasts you for five years or more. There are certainly more expensive hobbies then PC gaming, but then there are also much cheaper solution to play a game.
          • A game console costs between $200 - $600 and lasts you for five years or more. There are certainly more expensive hobbies then PC gaming, but then there are also much cheaper solution to play a game.
            depends on the genre you want. Beat-em-ups and driving games are well suited to console controllers and have a wide selection availible on consoles. shoot-em-up and RTS games are not well suited to console controllers and as a result many simply never come out on consoles or are crappy compared to the PC version
        • Hell, gamers don't even need to buy deodorant.

          I call foul on this! Something smells rank about your statement...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rthille ( 8526 )
          On the other hand, most of the expenses for yacht racing go solely to the boat owner...
          Sure you want some clothing, but other than that there isn't much crew has to spend money on...
        • But, you see, the thing with Yacht racing is that those people actually have lives...
      • playing games on a PC (which is an insanely expensive hobby)
        It is possible to get a quite reasonable machine that will play most PC games released for a few years acceptablly albiet not at the highest quality settings while paying less than £1000 Games rarely cost more than £50 each.

        If you buy 10 games a year (which i'd say is more than enough if you check out reviews or demos first) and spend £1K every two years on a new PC thats a total of 1K a year. In reality you can get away with spen

      • you're playing games on a PC (which is an insanely expensive hobby)
        That was funny! Sorry, I don't have mod points...

  • It goes to show (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bullfish ( 858648 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:19AM (#19689349)
    That, now more than ever, the best processor for a person's needs depends on what they are going to do with their machine. The large number of choices in CPUs means that if your needs are simple, you can put together a fast machine with relatively few dollars. Ditto for video cards really. If you aren't married to the fastest cards, there are a lot of cards for around $100 give or take that will give great performance in most things, and even run a few games decently. The hype that CPU makers love to throw out there and the cost of high end parts belies that you can put together a machine cheaper now for most needs than ever before.

    • It's the same for everything (Score:5, Informative)

      by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:45AM (#19689641)
      Buy last year's hardware at a fraction of the cost and let someone else take the depreciation hit/development cost. You benefit from lower depreciation and usually, better reliability. There's always a dogleg increase in cost for the latest and greatest.

      Works for cars too.

       

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Flip side, you're buying older, slower hardware. When the next release of your choice of OS comes out and it needs more CPU or GPU power to behave well, or when you suddenly find that video playback is stuttering because the new codecs eat CPU like candy, you have to upgrade, while you might not have needed to do so if you had bought the top machine.

        There are costs associated with upgrading, and I don't just mean the raw financial cost. There's a cost of time to move all your data over, a cost to the en

        • Timeframe to the stuttering of your codec will be in the same generation window of the lower cost version of the same model CPU. You just push back the need to upgrade by about a year. So instead of a 3 year upgrade cycle you're on a 4 year cycle. Yet you're not paying 33% more, but 50-80% more for the priviledge.

          Does the time-cost of more frequent upgrades have a value that exceeds 15% of the purchase price of a new system? I should hope not. Perhaps you should use a different approach to migration -- for
      • If you are poor enough that the money matters (I sure am!) then do the geek thing and perform some computer work for the money.
        I upgrade computers for other people, and part of the fee is the hardware I replace. I now appreciate why everyone (else) NEEDS bleeding edge hardware.

        "Works for cars too."
        Boy howdy it does! Fix them yourself and you move from saving some money to saving a sh1tload and paying for top-quality tools while you are at it.

        "There's always a dogleg increase in cost for the latest and great

    • I heard somewhere that certain Core 2 Duo high-performance functions were disabled for 64-bit code.

      Given that Vista will be the last 32-bit Microsoft OS, is AMD a better choice, also given the Intel errata?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ceeam ( 39911 )
        If you don't need OSS graphics drivers AMD is a damn good choice. And it has been for the last 20 years except small K5 vs Pentium period.

        As for Vista being the last 32-bit MS OS, it could well be the last MS OS period. Anyway - it really stretches 32-bit address space as it is trying to fit its fat ass within i386 pants.

  • Accuracy somewhat questionable (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PoliTech ( 998983 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:24AM (#19689429) Homepage Journal
    FTA: "For instance, our Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700 processors are actually a Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor clocked down to the appropriate speeds. Their performance should be identical to that of the real thing."

    One must question the accuracy of the results due to the above verbiage.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Splab ( 574204 )
      Not only that, but in my experience the fraps hook can have huge impact on your framerate. On top of that the motherboards are running different chipsets, simple stuff like drivers for onboard sound cards can have a huge impact on the processing power if they are written poorly. They really aren't testing anything when they don't have a uniform rig to do so.
      • Not only that, but in my experience the fraps hook can have huge impact on your framerate.

        I doubt the overhead of FRAPS is all that significant these days. Most games aren't heavily multithreaded to the point that they can stress two cores, so there's plenty of horespower leftover in all these multicore CPUs to power FRAPS.

        And even if the FRAPS overhead is significant, you do realize that this will actually hurt the lower-end CPUs more in a comparison like this, right?

        If you're worried about variances caus

    • Re:Accuracy somewhat questionable (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CajunArson ( 465943 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:38AM (#19689565) Journal
      Maybe you need to look up the term 'speed binning' sometime. The X6800 is simply an e6600 or e6700 only at a higher clock speed. There is no differnce in cache or in architecture so I see nothing wrong with using it in this manner. There is one way in which the results might change, and that would be to differences in memory bandwidth due to messing with the FSB. However, the X6800 has an unlocked memory multiplier (Intel unlocks this on the 'X' series CPU's to make overclocking easier). By changing the multiplier and leaving the FSB alone, the reviewers are able to turn the chip into an e6600 or e6700 for any practical purpose. I mean, there will probably be some minute differences between different batches of the same e6600/e6700 production run that would have miniscule differences just as big as the difference between a properly clocked X6800 and the 'real thing'.
      • Yeah, I think the underclocking approach they've used is completely valid. If two processors are built on the same core revision and the same CMOS process, then clock differences are just a matter of changing the multiplier.

        I thought this was an excellent review. Probably the most useful CPU benchmark review I've ever read, actually. Very thorough, very wide range of benchmarks, very useful commentary on different factors that might be affecting the results on the different benchmarks, and not loaded up

  • The most useful information (Score:4, Informative)

    by WuphonsReach ( 684551 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:36AM (#19689547)
    Ignoring the game-based benchmarks - which are somewhat interesting, I think the most useful information is the Windows Media Encoding & LAME encoding (page 6). And some of the other charts on other CPU-focused benchmarks.

    It shows that for the CPUs priced under $250-$300, there's not a lot of difference in performance for a particular dollar value. Both AMD and Intel seem to be on parity in that market segment in terms of performance per dollar. (One exception would seem to be benchmarks like POVRay/Cinebench where there's a distinct gap between the two product lines, which flips around on the Myrimatch/STARS page.)

  • Summary, and Flawed Analysis (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MojoRilla ( 591502 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:38AM (#19689563)
    Bargain basement CPUs do better at $ / work than faster, more expensive ones, because they are so cheap. AMD does well at the low end.

    But this doesn't consider the total price of a computer which would help mid priced chips. A $113 CPU is 54% more expensive than a $73 one, so it would have to perform 54% better. But when you throw them into identical $200 systems (case, hard drive, fan, power supply, memory, etc), the $113 CPU (with a total system cost of $313) is only 14% more expensive than the $73 CPU (with a total system cost of $273).

    So, while the extremely low end chips do well with this analysis, they make much less sense when you consider total system costs.

    • Re:Summary, and Flawed Analysis (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MMC Monster ( 602931 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:52AM (#19689723)
      The problem is now: Is a person is going to use that extra few percent? It used to be (in the days of sub 500MHz CPUs) that everyone could use more power. Now that's not always true. There are people that do fine with a low power, low GHz CPU. And that 30 buck savings may be put to something else (ie: extra hard drive space), and the slower CPU may also waste less electricity as well.

      • Re:Summary, and Flawed Analysis (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:58AM (#19689833)
        You mean waste more electricity right? Cheaper the processor, the more goodies they knock out of the chip to keep the price down. That $70 Celeron is built without SpeedStep. The $110 Core 2 has the full sized Smart cache and SpeedStep. The Celeron might be 80% as fast as the Core 2, but the Core 2 will probably use 60% of the energy, meaning the net win (if you can afford to spend $40 more bucks) goes to the Core 2.

        In all honesty, it makes the most sense to buy the most "featureful" chip at the bottom of the clock bracket and overclock it. Not only will you have all of the features those chips ship with, you'll likely have more performance than the CPUs at the top of the bracket. You might cut the lifetime of the chip down, but computers today are such commodities that hardly anyone cares if the chip burns out after 3 years instead of 10; they won't be using that chip by then anyways.

        • Re:Summary, and Flawed Analysis (Score:4, Interesting)

          by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @01:47PM (#19692253)

          You mean waste more electricity right? Cheaper the processor, the more goodies they knock out of the chip to keep the price down. That $70 Celeron is built without SpeedStep. The $110 Core 2 has the full sized Smart cache and SpeedStep. The Celeron might be 80% as fast as the Core 2, but the Core 2 will probably use 60% of the energy, meaning the net win (if you can afford to spend $40 more bucks) goes to the Core 2.


          The problem is that you're looking at Intel, whose low-end CPUs suck. AMD's $59 Athlon 64 X2 3600+ has the latest process (65nm), power saving features (Cool n Quiet), full AMD-V support, and two cores.

          Oh, and the X2 3600+ is massively overclockable, too. Mine hit 2.85GHz (300x9.5) with no trouble - and it probably would have gone higher if my mobo supported higher LDT frequencies.

          My system is 100% stable (as far as I know, based on a 36-hour two-process Prime95 run that pegged both cores at 100%, and based on a 12 hour Memtest86+ run). My motherboard is a $49 GeForce 6100 chipset board (right now, my board plus an X2 3600+ sells for $94 on Newegg). My heatsink is a $10 Arctic Cooling Alpine 7. My memory is cheapshit Kingston DDR2-667 (2x1GB).

          Including my HDD, DVD burner, GeForce 8600GT, Motherboard, CPU, DDR, and case, I've put maybe $500 into my machine.
          • My system is 100% stable (as far as I know, based on a 36-hour two-process Prime95 run that pegged both cores at 100%, and based on a 12 hour Memtest86+ run).

            That's a pretty good stability test - but may want to also be exercise the disks at the same time. I've seen a situation in the past where the disk controller would corrupt data when the CPU was under load. That one was a real bear - get the OS installed, start using it, then start getting all sorts of odd errors.

            (And Prime95 is a lot better for

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by 511pf ( 685691 )

            The problem is that you're looking at Intel, whose low-end CPUs suck.
            Really? Because I just paid $140 for a Core 2 Duo 4400 that runs at 2.8 Ghz on stock cooling and voltage. It's as fast as any sub-$300 dual core CPU on the market. I wouldn't call that "sucking."

            • Really? Because I just paid $140 for a Core 2 Duo 4400

              That's not low-end. My X2 3600+ sells for $59 on Newegg. I have no doubt that your CPU is better than mine. It's also more than twice the price.

              And, FYI, it's not that Intel's low-end CPUs have crappy performance. They suck because they don't have EIST (power saving) or VT/AMD-V. They also run on a crappy 800MHz FSB.

              $60 on the Intel side buys you a 2.66GHz Pentium D. The cheapest Core 2 CPU is the E2140 for around $80, which runs at 1.6GHz.

      • The problem is now: Is a person is going to use that extra few percent?

        How true. I just picked up an Athlon64 X2 3800+ to replace my single core 3500+. Naturally, there isn't much of a performance difference between the two. However, having the dual cores does seem to balance the machine out a bit. For instance, I can play a video fullscreen on one monitor and browse the web on the other without having the video stutter if I happened to hit a page with lots going on. Did I need the new processor? Not at

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ruie ( 30480 )

      But this doesn't consider the total price of a computer which would help mid priced chips. A $113 CPU is 54% more expensive than a $73 one, so it would have to perform 54% better. But when you throw them into identical $200 systems (case, hard drive, fan, power supply, memory, etc), the $113 CPU (with a total system cost of $313) is only 14% more expensive than the $73 CPU (with a total system cost of $273).

      I want to second that - I am always astounded at how closely the price increments of the cpu's matc

      • $113 CPU (with a total system cost of $313) is only 14% more expensive than the $73 CPU (with a total system cost of $273).

        The only case when lower priced processors matter is when configuring for capability rather than raw performance. I.e. larger cache, 64bit vs 32bit, thermal power dissipation, etc.

        This notion is a logical fallacy. The CPU speed is by no means the only performance-defining part of the system. Upping the amount of memory, the GPU or the speed of the hard drive may well cost 10% of the system as well, but somehow I don't hear a lot of people say "Oh, but a $200 GPU is only 15% more expensive than a $50 one, because it only costs 15% more in a $1000 system".

        Lower priced processors matter a lot to those of us who want cheap, fast, cool systems that kick bigger systems' ass in price/perfo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Fweeky ( 41046 )
          "Core 2 kicks Barcelona's ass"

          Do you know something the rest of us don't [tgdaily.com]?
          • I really don't [anandtech.com].

            The article you cited is AMD marketspeak from April 23.

            Barcelona's launch prospects are looking grim. If you recall this time last year, Intel had been showing off Conroe for almost half a year before launch. I have no doubt AMD can make it work in the long run (witness the evolution of K8) but they seem to be having serious problems and running out of time.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by wangerx ( 1122027 )
      I would add to this notion of diminishing impact. What about the value of time? If a quad core will run 4x but costs 7x the cost impact will diminish within two weeks of use! The 7x cost is a one time cost; say for example $500 more. The 4x impact on performance and time is forever. For an exaggerated point, if I can get four times the work done, every hour saves me three. If my time were a paltry $10 per hour, I would pay for the CPU cost difference in less than a week. Anything after that it gravy! You m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      But this doesn't consider the total price of a computer which would help mid priced chips. A $113 CPU is 54% more expensive than a $73 one, so it would have to perform 54% better.

      Which is of course a meaningless metric to most people, maybe it'd be relevant for a data center but it'd probably be overshadowed by power costs. There are three factors IMO:
      1. Can and can't dos. Can you play your game at your desired resolution/fps? Can you play back 1080p HD-DVDs/Blu-Rays? Those have values in themselves.
      2. The

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      I was going to say that the Intel motherboards where a little more expensive than AM2 motherboards but I am shocked that this is no longer so.
      However ever I will say that for a lot of people that extra CPU performance really doesn't matter. If you don't use it then it it valueless. For most people I would bet they would be better off spending that extra money on more ram then a faster CPU.

      • was going to say that the Intel motherboards where a little more expensive than AM2 motherboards but I am shocked that this is no longer so.

        Off-hand, I'd say that in reality AMD and Intel boards of equal (and moderate) capability are almost always within a few dollars of each other. Go take a look at prices on pricescan.com or MWave's motherboard bundles. Last year at this time, Intel board were running about $10 more expensive, but it seesaws back and forth.

        It's only the esoteric motherboards (all m

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gfxguy ( 98788 )
        I would say the vast majority of typical users have overbought their systems, period, including disk space and memory.

        Some schmuck comes home from work (where the quality of the computer might matter) and maybe reads email, surfs for the latest movie schedule, and watches a couple of youtube videos his friend sent him... even play a DVD at full screen.

        The lowest end computer is going to do all of these things and still waste electricity and cpu cycles.

        He doesn't want HD on the computer, he's got an entertai
        • 100+ FPS may be pointless, but having a minimum of 60FPS is ideal. If your FPS ever drops below 60, then you start getting closer to having stuttering, etc.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
          I often see low end PCs with only 512 megs of ram. Which while usable isn't as nice as a gig.
          If I had a choice between an AM X2 3800+ with 1 gigabyte of ram and X2 5000 with only 512 I would go for the extra ram everytime.

          I agree with you for the most part. I am compiling code on an X2 3800 every day. I use the Eclipse CDT and debug with it every day as well. It really is fast enough. I can compile the Kernel in a reasonable amount of time. It really is pretty freaking fast. For the average person the X2

    • Bargain basement CPUs do better at $ / work than faster, more expensive ones, because they are so cheap. AMD does well at the low end. But this doesn't consider the total price of a computer which would help mid priced chips.

      Actually, I see exactly the opposite...

      When AMD* turns out slow, low-end chips, they do so after the high-end original has passed on, and in the process they update the tech, and so tend to give the "value" chips lower power consumption for free. That is of course baring the possibili

    • The proper way to do this analysis is to consider the "efficient frontier" of CPUs. CPU X is on the efficient frontier if all equally priced or less expensive CPUs are slower. If you buy a CPU on the efficient frontier, then you couldn't have paid less and gotten more speed (although of course you could have chosen to accept less speed). This factors out the problem of diminishing returns which plagues "frames per dollar" comparisons.

      The efficient frontier is analogous to the same concept in Modern Portfo

    • If this had been factored in to the scatter plots shown in TFA, it would have caused a compression of the results along the horizontal (price) axis. Which means yes, the lower priced processors would move away from the maximum price/performance tangent and the higher priced ones would move towards it.

    • The damn thing is a trooper. Seriously for the 70 bucks I can clock the thing at 2.7 ghz even though it's base is 1.9. That damned Brisbane core is a trooper. Seriously, it overclocks 42%. Really it's enough for what I do, that I don't bother (also as a downside the chip has poor temp readings, everything says something different so I can't tell a meltdown condition from room temp) -- Honestly, I'd buy another of the $73 if it cost $113 and the $113 was $73.
    • [So, while the extremely low end chips do well with this analysis, they make much less sense when you consider total system costs.]

      Maybe, maybe not. On Newegg right now (and other similar sites) an AMD 3800+ 65W goes for about $67. A 4600+ 65W goes for about $113.00, a difference of about $45. That $45 will buy an extra GB of memory and most people will benefit more from a 100% jump in memory from 1GB to 2GB than they will from the 25% jump in clock rate, though it probably won't show up in these benchmarks

  • Question: Cost of the energy to run the CPU? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:38AM (#19689567) Homepage
    Note that the Power consumption and efficiency [techreport.com] section in the linked article shows CPU power plotted against cost of the CPU, rather than CPU power plotted against the cost of the electricity.

    For computers that are on much of the day, the cost of the electricity over the perhaps 4-year life of the system is significant, and more important than relatively small differences in the cost of the CPU.

    Although the article has some flaws, it is very useful.

  • "The results may surprise you" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tkw954 ( 709413 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @10:50AM (#19689693)

    The results may surprise you.
    How come does it seem like all the summaries lately have to have a cliffhanger? I'm all for reading the articles, but give us the results. This is a news site, not a murder-mystery.

  • Power management still has a ways to go (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bhmit1 ( 2270 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @11:10AM (#19689999) Homepage
    I'd like to see computer manufacturers get to the point where all non-essential components can power down when a machine isn't using them. This would be huge for server rooms, where most machines are there waiting for users to connect. For my mythtv server, it's running non-stop, but hardly using any cpu until it's recording or playing back. Same goes for a mail/file server. The 100-200 watt idle numbers are wasteful, lets get this down to 10-20 watts. Hibernating or suspending doesn't work when you need to be standing by to service a user.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )

      The 100-200 watt idle numbers are wasteful, lets get this down to 10-20 watts.

      Stay away from the high-end, and computer are nearly there already, thanks to AMD pushing CnQ/PowerNow on everything (while Intel STILL omits SpeedStep on their low-end chips).

      The only real problem/exception seems to be GPUs, so for now, you have to go for a lower-end, (preferably fanless) video card to be safe.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by moeinvt ( 851793 )
      "The 100-200 watt idle numbers are wasteful, lets get this down to 10-20 watts."

      Sorry dude, there are a lot of brilliant minds in the semiconductor industry working on this, but it's a perpetual challenge. The problem you described with the static power dissipation is the natural result of shrinking device geometries. As you scale down the physical sizes of the devices, they dissipate more power just by means of being turned on (i.e. whether they are switching or not).

      It would take a major innovation in d

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by pz ( 113803 )
        I've been thinking for a long time that CPU manufacturers could do well to promote low power chips through the following tact: take an older CPU design (say the venerable PIII) and reimplement in the newer technology. A 1GHz PIII is a reasonable CPU for every-day things like surfing the web, reading email, watching videos (with the help of an MP4 chip), and so forth. At original spec, they dissipate 35 W or so. Current-generation CPUs dissipate 2-3 times as much power, have 3-4 times as much cache, run a

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Plekto ( 1018050 )
          How about taking the massive improvements in device design, fabrication, architecture, power management, and so forth that went into these impressive achievements and re-implementing the lowly PIII 1GHz, but at 5-10W maximum power?
          ****

          You can do this with some motherboards by underclocking the processor. That Celeron D 360, for instance, is essentially a 3.6Ghz Northwood with much lower heat. Underclock it and presto - it runs at 20W power(we're talking stock cooler with the fan *off*!) as fast as an old

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bhmit1 ( 2270 )

        It would take a major innovation in device fabrication or power management to get tens of millions of transistors manufactured in a 65nm (or smaller) process down to 10-20 Watts of static power consumption. You could probably make a few million $ and possibly win a Nobel prize if you can figure that one out.

        They already have stuff now that can turn on and off certain parts of the processor to conserve energy. So, thinking a little out of the box, put an additional core on a chip that runs similar to what

      • Bullshit.

        Any chip, if properly engineered, can turn off parts of itself completely, eliminating all gate leakage in those parts. It can also clock down to the lowest rate necessary to process interrupts, which is millions of times slower than its operating clock speed (though anything below 1/4 the top speed is usually not implemented due to diminishing returns). So there's nothing preventing the CPU from flushing the caches (or not, depending on depth of sleep) and powering down everything except the inter

    • Hibernating or suspending doesn't work when you need to be standing by to service a user.
      Same goes for hookers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Quikah ( 14419 )
      This is the ultimate goal of virtualization in the data center. Once everything is virtualized you can cram as many machines as possible on a few servers, once they start getting loaded you move the virtualized systems to a new host, then back again when the load goes away. Maybe even power off some of the unused systems at night and bring them up in the morning. All the while keeping 24/7 access to your systems.
  • Im sorry, but this article shows nothing that isnt obvious from the economics of the CPU market.

    The time a CPU spends at the top end of the market is small compared to the overall time it is available. This time is also at the lead-end of its production when availability is small. Rarity (and demand) create a premium over and above the actual worth of the CPU.

    By the time other CPUs displace it, such as CPU will no longer be in as much demand and the manufacturer may have to drop prices below or close to cos
  • Too bad they left out Intel's newest low-end core2 duo proc, the e2160.
    It's basically an e4300 with less l2 cache and 40 bucks cheaper [newegg.com].
    The e2160 starts to put a lot of pressure on AMD's low cost dual-core offerings.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by sjwaste ( 780063 )
      2160 is $91, x2 3600 is $64 (both Newegg prices). That Core2Duo costs 40% more than the x2, so while it's a step in the right direction, its not there yet. Plus, factor in that you can get a good AM2 board for ~70, whereas you have to spend north of 100 to get comparable features for Core2 (ie, Nforce 550 vs 965P chipsets).

      Since they both take DDR2 memory, you can quickly add up the cost of moving from one platform to the next (assuming one already has a PCI-E card, just for the sake of argument). Figur
    • They also left off the new Core 2 Duo 6420, which is basically the 6400 with double the cache at the same price point. I was a bit annoyed by that omission, since I just got one for myself.
  • The best performance per dollar has almost always been through overclocking, which they don't even cover. The e6600 can be overclocked from 2.6Ghz to near 4Ghz on air almost doubling its performance per dollar at every level, probably putting it at the number one position in every test.

  • Very happy with Dell AMD x2 3600+ (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adrew ( 468320 ) on Friday June 29, 2007 @12:25PM (#19690997)
    You can't argue with the value of the entry-level processors. I bought the system below a couple of weeks ago for $688, including shipping and tax. Dell had a coupon for $350 off any system $999 or more, so I played with the options until it was exactly $999, then applied the coupon.

    Dell Dimension E521
    AMD x2 3600+, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, nVidia 7300LE, 16x DVD burner, card reader, keyboard, mouse, Vista Home Premium, Dell 22" widescreen LCD

    For a home computer, performance is great. Vista is nice and snappy and it runs everything I've thrown at it without any problems. I work at a university, so I bought a copy of Office Enterprise for $30 and it runs beautifully. The speech- and handwriting recognition works great and doesn't bog down the machine at all.
  • J. Dzhugashvili? Is the full name Josif ("call me Stalin") Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili by any chance?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gr8dude ( 832945 )
      Yes, you're correct; Stalin was just a nickname (its meaning is close to "made of steel",).
  • Had a total of 263 computers, all Macs, and was involved in Video Production. That including 3D rendering and a full post setup with Shake. We had a full time 150 node rendering cluster set up on Qmaster & Xgrid and then the other 103 units would render tasks when available. Now all but 3 units in the building was running Macs, this included the Office and accounting people too. We kept 3 Windows boxes in case we had something come in on MAX that needed to be converted for use in Lightwave. Plus th
  • As expected, the less expensive processors work best for the dollar.

    But they forgot the real budget models like the newest Celerons. It would be interesting to see how an overclocked budget AMD or Celeron(air cooled, say no more than $30 spent on the cooler) would fare versus the big boys.

    They may be single core. And have less cache. And run at a slower FSB. But for $50-$70, I bet they are only slightly slower when overclocked.
  • I know they're a smaller player, but they're still out there, especially for price-sensitive and energy conscious consumers. How do VIA chips compare to this lot?

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