Phenom IIs, Core I7-920 Win Out In Value Analysis 214
An anonymous reader writes "We've all seen processor benchmarks, but how do today's enthusiast CPUs look when you account for performance per dollar? Using a smorgasbord of charts, scatter plots, and performance tests, The Tech Report attempted to single out the highest-value offerings out of 16 popular Intel and AMD processors. The results might surprise you: AMD's 45nm Phenom IIs (both triple- and quad-core) prove to be strikingly competitive with Intel's Core 2 Quads. And, on the high end, Intel's $266 Core i7-920 turns out to be a compelling step up despite the higher costs of Core i7 platforms in general."
Up front costs are a fraction of total costs (Score:5, Informative)
Until electricity is free, comparing CPUs based on up-front cost of the CPUs alone ignores a major part of the expense of owning and operating computers, particularly if you're running servers.
But that's okay, Slashdot. I understand that you live in your parents' basement and you don't pay for electricity anyway.
Re:Suprise? (Score:5, Informative)
Phenom II's is a singular possesive.
Phenom IIs's is a misspelled plural possesive.
Phenom IIs' is a properly spelled plural possesive.
Phenom II is a singular.
Phenom IIs is a plural.
Re:Let's stop making reviews for gamers (Score:5, Informative)
You didn't google enough.
These guys [silentpcreview.com] are really anal when it comes to finding quiet parts. Following their advice, I now actually have an overclocked PC, that I can't hear if it's on or off.
Re:Only one benchmark? (Score:2, Informative)
They're just using that chart as an example to illustrate their ranking system. You see the little next page button at the bottom of the page?
Re:Suprise? (Score:4, Informative)
2001 called, they want their AMD Thunderbird 1.4GHz back.
Sorry, but Intel has taken the lead in the hottest CPU, 150W for the QX9775, versus 125W for the Phenom II 940.
Re:Mistake in TFS (Score:1, Informative)
There are other costs involved in a Core i& system. You'll end up paying $150 extra on a motherboard that supports i7, for example.
Re:Suprise? (Score:4, Informative)
Phenom IIs is a plural.
Yes, yes, we all know that from grade school. But what happens when AMD launches a "Phenom IIs"
Is the plural Phenum IIss? And even if I write Phenom IIss, most of the readers will immediately wonder if AMD has released a "Phenom IIss"...
The reason the apostrophe is inappropriately used is because it works. When people see Phenom II's, they pronounce it correctly -and- the ambiguity is removed as to whether the "s" is part of the name. The fact that its grammatically/semantically incorrect is an acceptable (to most people) tradeoff.
Language changes, even grammar, and 's appened to product names and abbreviations is becoming understood to mean the plural of a 'non-word'.
Re:Best performance per dollar ... (Score:3, Informative)
But but but but ....
Any number divided by itself = 1
THEREFORE 0/0 = 1
See, maths is easy!
Re:Price is all-important (Score:5, Informative)
However, everyone I know runs multiple applications just by booting their OS.
But not everybody knows what their system is doing. I do: I always keep a CPU load chart in my KDE taskbar, and for interactive usage I probably use one core less than 3% of the time, and both cores about 0.1% of the time.
If I am transcoding a video, then one core gets pegged. However, I would never notice load on the processor on even with a single-core CPU if I just ran the transcode under "nice". It might take 3% longer to run because it waits for the interactive stuff, but that's insignificant.
But I don't run transcoding on my workstation anyway. Why? Because all the I/O continuosly flushes out my disk buffers for other processes. That makes my interactive apps seem slower than crap anyway because they have to hit the disk every time some of their data or program image gets flushed out. My dual cores do nothing to address that issue. I run transcode jobs on a server box where they won't bug anybody.
The only place dual core would really help most people with typical single-threaded apps is if they run at least two copies of programs heavy on number crunching but light on I/O and memory bandwidth, like $FavoriteCause@Home. Other than that, people will have to wait for multithreaded user apps to get much real-world benefit out of multicore CPUs.
Re:Suprise? (Score:3, Informative)
Phenom II's is a singular possesive. Phenom IIs's is a misspelled plural possesive. Phenom IIs' is a properly spelled plural possesive. Phenom II is a singular. Phenom IIs is a plural.
You are wrong. II's is proper spelling as per the rules of English grammar.
An apostrophe is used to form a plural for abbreviations, acronyms, and symbols where adding just s rather than 's may leave things ambiguous or inelegant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Use_in_forming_certain_plurals
Re:Price is all-important (Score:3, Informative)
Attempting to use more than roughly 38 logical processors will result in the additional processors either waiting to run the process scheduler, waiting for a memory access, or waiting for I/O.
[Citation needed]
SGI sold systems with 128, 256, 512 and even 1024 processors running a single Linux image.