Intel Targets AMD With Affordable Unlocked CPUs 207
EconolineCrush writes "For years, AMD has catered to gamers and enthusiasts with mid-range Black Edition processors whose unlocked multipliers make overclocking easy. Intel has traditionally reserved unlocked multipliers for its ultra-expensive Extreme CPUs, but it has now brought the feature to affordable models that compete directly with AMD's most popular processors. The Core i5-655K and Core i7-875K have two and four cores, respectively, and they're priced at just $216 and $342. It appears that both will easily hit speeds in excess of 4GHz with air cooling. Surprisingly, even at stock speeds, the i7-875K offers better performance and power efficiency per dollar than just about any other desktop CPU out there."
Re:That's "frequency", not speed (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you expect? It's a kdawson submission. You know: the submissions that always plain incorrect or just total garbage
Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
"just $216 and $342"?
The majority of regular users can get by with just about any modern processor on the market today. Just glancing at Newegg, single core CPU's are starting at $32. Dual cores at $50. Quad cores at $81. I personally haven't spent more than $100 on a processor in ages, and I'm more or less a power user (do heavy programming and video encoding as well as other such tasks on my systems).
Now, at work, for servers, and I'm sure other users who are doing things like heavy graphics editing and such, people do need faster processors, but the people doing such tasks are NOT going to give two shits whether or not the multiplier is unlocked (anybody using an overclocked processor in a professional environment is just asking for trouble).
So you're left with the absolute hardcore hardware enthusiast market. Even in this market though you're going to have the "I'm poor and don't want to spend much" people who are still going for the low cost ones and trying to push them, and the "I've got money to blow and want the fastest available" people who were likely buying the really, really expensive stuff already.
In short, I just don't see this feature, at the stated price points, as really having much of a market.
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Enthusiasts" are people with more money than sense. Why would anyone pay more than $150 for a CPU these days? A quad-core 3.0Ghz chip is not going to be your bottleneck. Yeah, I guess if you spend all day ripping and encoding video then that extra 10%-20% might amount to a few minutes saved, but for most people spending the extra $150 on an SSD drive instead would give them a far more noticeable performance boost.
Or, if you've still got money to burn, buy a nicer monitor-- or a second one, for that matter. Or some quality case fans that don't make your case sound like a jet engine. Or a decent set of speakers.
The obsession with CPU "speed" is dumb.
Depends on how you read the chart (Score:5, Insightful)
At the $200 price point, AMD is still killing it. Look at the scatter plot, and note what happens on the $200 line. Now, draw an imaginary $100 line, and check that out. It's all AMD. So while you may want to buy intel if you want today's fastest gaming machine, AMD is still the processor for those of us who want performance and money at the same time.
With that said, can anyone recommend a good AM3 air cooler that's not too spendy? I have a PhII X3 720 retail black edition that I'd like to overclock. The stock cooler won't cut it :) But I want to keep my budget very small, which is why I went AMD in the first place. So far, so good.
Re:That's "frequency", not speed (Score:5, Insightful)
for once, quite accurate by the anon. Reviews about these have been inconsistent, some citing bad overclocking potential [hexus.net] and generally being not for enthusiasts. [anandtech.com]
Meanwhile, others seem to state it's a full sweep [overclockersclub.com] and/or basically great [hardwareheaven.com].
I'm wondering if this is another scenario of handpicked engineering samples or not.
I'm not at all convinced that this is great, or horrible. Anyone care to weigh in with better comments than kdawson?
Re:4 GHz, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, faster is always better.
What we learned is that high GHZ don't necessarily imply a chip is faster.
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, I just don't see this feature, at the stated price points, as really having much of a market.
Corvettes and Camaros sell Citations and Celebrities.
Or in other words, Intel will sell more CPUs than AMD if they can convince the world that they have a bigger penis. Nobody wants their CPU to come from small penis guy, or to imply that they are one.
It is rather crazy that gamers buy these, though. Far be it from me to tell anyone how to spend their money; whatever makes you happy that doesn't hurt anybody (indictments of the western lifestyle aside for now) is fine with me. But if you stay just behind the curve you can upgrade every year (to last year's kit) and still be able to play virtually every game at quite good settings. Buying the latest and greatest comes with a massive price:performance penalty. Once you get into the new generation of lower-power equipment it seems like there's little motivation to ride the upgrade train so far or long.
Re:That's "frequency", not speed (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing that would be really sleazy would be if the review processors "just happened" to perform atypically well compared to the ones that poor saps can actually buy. Since, though, the mixed reviews are coming from reviewers, that seems less likely, and that these chips are simply spotty overclockers more likely(unless, of course, some of the reviewers are reviewing "representative samples" kindly provided by Intel, and others are reviewing representative samples scored from somewhere in the distribution chain.
The fact that a chip only sometimes outperforms its sticker speed is irksome for the overclocker; but not a big deal. If Intel is feeding handpicks to the reviewers, that sucks.
Re:igive up (Score:3, Insightful)
I count 28 of them on my keyboard.
Re:That's "frequency", not speed (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, thats why I want to know. It's not at all unknown for them to handpick the samples. I remember some recent controversy about this with somebody, I forgot if it was Nvidia, AMD, or Intel, or all of them in general.
The sites with the great results seem to say "this kick ass", and the ones without are meh, so it doesn't seem to be indicative of whether this processor is even worth it or not, all things taken into consideration.
Re:Please explain overclocking. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a guy who posts this exact message, almost word for word, every time a new CPU or graphics card is announced. "This is useless - I'm a power user and I can get by with a can of tuna and a bit of string".
Well, I'm afraid I have to tell you, you're not a power user, if you don't need the power that is now available. 2005's power user, maybe. But if you want to do video editing (and I mean final cut/premiere, not reencoding your dvd rips), play the latest games etc, then you do need that hardware. That software is designed to run on that hardware. And if you manage your own machine, whether it's for gaming of photoshop or whatever, you're going to care that this thing gives you bang for your buck. for what it's worth, this new chip isn't the fastest available. It isn't even close. It's the best value high-end chip, with a view to become even better value if you're open to overclocking it.
If you're not in that target audience, then fine - why do you complain about it? Do you bitch that lamborghinis are too expensive? "$150,000? I have a ford cortina that I got for $500 and it gets me to the mall just fine!". You don't see there is a market for this, because you are looking at a sample size of 1. Intel and AMD have a multi-billion business riding on this, I for one trust they're going to have done their homework.
(And I'm interested in the chip too - I'm planning a system upgrade soon - first since my Q6600 - and I like high-end, value chips I can overclock!)
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
I concur. I just set my watch back one year and save thousands of dollars on everything. New games $50? Nope, mine are $25. New processor $300? Nope, mine are $100 and runs my one year old games perfectly. My last "new" car was $30k new but I bought it with 8k miles and just under 1 year old for $20k with full warranty. I'm about to buy a pair of Motorola Droids, which I can get for $99-$199 for both (2y contract, yes). It doesn't always pay off, but on average it saves up tremendously without sacrificing anything but a little time.
The net results is that I actually can buy MORE toys for the same money. Delayed gratification can be a beautiful thing.
Re:Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
Congratulations on missing the entire point of my post.
Nowhere in my post did I state that fast CPU's had no purpose. I explicitly stated the opposite. I for example, throw all the CPU I can afford when I setup a database server because there, I will see the ROI.
My statement was about the clock multiplier being unlocked on essentially a middle of the road (as far as cost - not performance or sales volume) chip. If the announcement had merely been about an ever-faster chip then I wouldn't have even cared.
MOST people are fine with chips costing significantly less. As I stated, you can get quad core chips now for under $100. Those are fine for 99% of what users do on a computer. If you think you need more than that to do do real work (or gaming) on a computer, you're just delusional. A 2+Ghz quad core chip is a lot more than a "can of tuna and some string".
For users with specific needs for high-cpu utilization tasks, they typically are going to be in a position where they can afford faster chips, and they're certainly not going to want to dick around with overclocking in a professional environment.