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Although the i7 is today's "wickedly fast" x86 processor, I don't remember really giving all that much of a damned about it. The marketplace has matured, and nobody really cares all that much any more.

I think that has more to do with the phenomenon known as Getting Old, than with the state of the marketplace. We, the desktop users, are the ones who have "matured."

Back in the day, you could argue about whether a 386-40 or a 486-25 was the better way to go. Some benchmarks went one way, some went the other. The difference between the fastest x86 CPUs and the slowest ones on the shelf at any given time was perhaps 2x-3x. A lot of us paid very close attention to the CPU market and were always up for an argument or flame war about it.

Today, the difference between the high-end Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge CPUs and the low-end parts is stupefying. The performance spread between the fastest and slowest devices is 6x in the "high end" category alone. In the broader market the spread is more like 30x-50x. And this doesn't even consider GPU-based computing.

So I'd say the desktop CPU market is a lot more interesting now than it was back in the day... but there's too much other stuff going on that's even more interesting, like getting work done and paying the mortgage.

Atom was running at a TDP of half the TDP of your Bobcat, and it was doing it 5 years ago. That wonderful 18W TDP that you cite for AMD Fusion/Bobcat? Yeah... that's actually the same as the Celeron U3600 in my ultraportable laptop... sure the Celeron is running at 1.2GHz instead of the 1.6GHz for the Bobcat, but the U3600 outperforms a Core2 Duo T5450 on benchmarks, let alone the AMD Fusion ( http://www.cpubenchmark.net/midlow_range_cpus.html ... you'll have to scroll down quite a bit to reach the AMD E-450 Fusion, which is the highest rated AMD Fusion on the list), and the graphics have not had a problem with anything I've thrown at it. The only reason that my 13" lappy doesn't have the same battery life as your netbook is because the screen has 4x the real estate with the same size battery. That's a compromise I'm willing to make, since I get a larger screen, a full-size keyboard, more memory, and a much more usable system out of the equation... it still lasts 4h on battery, which isn't bad for a $400 laptop.

And the U3600 is the *last* generation of Intel's offerings. The current generation uses even less power. And if that's not good enough for you, you can still switch to an Atom, which uses even *less* power than either, but has a corresponding power tradeoff

Yeah. Right. Intel's being utterly dominated by AMD in that arena.....

They *are* being dominated in power consumption, however. Just not by AMD. Intel is talking about TDP of 15W in their consumer hardware. ARM is talking about TDP of 2W.

Maybe I'm missing something... but if it's taking you 36 to 48 hours to transcode a single video, and assuming you can justify dedicating a system to that purpose for such an extended time, wouldn't the power savings you'd get by purchasing a much faster system be worthwhile? I'm guessing that the power draw for a process which takes so long to complete is substantial, and that you aren't intending to transcode only a couple of videos.

One source of comparative CPU benchmarks is here http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+II+X2+245

Instead of relying on personal experience, try looking up your CPU from history in here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php The cpus date back to an Celeron 600mhz (Probably one of those Slot A types) up to current. Using the numbers from that link also, that cpu gets a "passmark" of 103. A current i7 3930k gets 13567. In other words, it is over 131 times faster.

There is a wide range of Pentium IV and Atom chips. My employer provided a now 6 year old Pentium IV 3.2GHz desktop, on this benchmark list it scores 522, it runs Windows 7 successfully although it needed a discrete graphic card to enable Aero. I also have a netbook with an Atom Z520 which scores only 247 on the chart, it came preinstalled with Win7 Home Premium and runs adequately with nothing crippled.

I'm not certain that there would be a significant performance increase from such a low-end processor. The VIA C7-D 1.8 only scores 333 on Passmark, which puts it in the range of an early-model Pentium 4 or Athlon XP from circa 2002.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=VIA+C7-D+1800MHz

It's also a 32-bit processor, so you're going to be capped at 3GB of RAM.

As an alternative, you can easily find used 4-5 year old Core2 Duo systems for $100-$200. They're 64-bit and will score 1300 or higher on Passmark.

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-755-Performance-Intregrated-Professional/dp/B004HPMH9Q/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1330885080&sr=1-4

Does it really? I recently bought a new laptop and did tons of research beforehand. I could not find a single six core Phenom II laptop, so I bought a quad core i7 (Sandy Bridge). I'm glad that I did too, because this i7 is faster than all of the Phenom II X6 models; the only AMD CPUs that can beat it are the AMD FX eight core and high-end server Opterons.

My new laptop is an ASUS G73SW-XN2 with the aforementioned i7 2630QM, 8GB RAM, Geforce GTX 460M, 17.3" display and a 500GB Seagate hard drive. Total cost was $1200 USD. I have been unable to find any Phenom II based laptop with similar specs/performance.

Because it's new, and finding someone who's done it to get some pointers is really hard.
CUDA has been around a while, figuring it out isn't such a rough learning curve.

Overall I'm a little suspicious of someone looking to use a GPU for more threads on a problem. As going the GPU route is a really committed step, and the programming gets a new level of complicated. Using multiple cards has some odd issues in CUDA, ie. If you exceed the card index it defaults to card-0, rather than crashing. There are more places to screw up with a GPU- transferring memory- getting blocks, threads, and weaves organized(if done properly it hides all sorts of latency in calculations, done poorly it's worse than a CPU)- avoiding memory contention (the memory scheme isn't bad, but it needs to be understood).

So in most cases I'd first start with this chart http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html and tell them to cut their teeth on a GPU with a smaller(cheaper) test case.

That was my thought too, but according to this chart the E-350 is pretty much on par with D525. The AMD designs feature a nice Radeon chip though. By the way there's an E-350 based Eee Box already available...I would actually like to own one.

Yes, but I have to clarify. We are talking about Intel boards. While they have a reputation for great stability, their motherboards on the low-end are definitely under-featured. You can't find Intel Atom boards (I'm talking boards from Intel that feature an Atom processor, not as in "Intel Atom CPU") with more than two SATA ports, and the VGA issue, of course. I think they are scared shitless about the Atoms eating in their low-end Core i3 segment. Sure, the i3 is much more powerful, but an Atom D525MW can be had for 65€, add in two sticks of 2GB RAM at 18€. That's 83€, add in a small form factor case, a small harddisk or tiny SSD and you've got yourself a nitfy dual core desktop that suffices entirely for normal desktop activity. The cheapest i3 CPU, I could find was 75€ on itself.

To put a (modern) Atom-based machine in perspective. An Atom D525 performs just a bit worse on benchmarks (like Passmark) than the "beast" I built in 2003: an Athlon MP 2400+: Atom D525 versus Athlon MP 2400+

. Just note that the MP still makes a quite worthy desktop, at least for my needs.

I haven't seen an E-350 without DVI either (motherboards, laptops/netbooks are a different story), but they really can't be had as cheap as what Intel delivers with the Atoms.

You can get Atom-based motherboards with DVI and/or HDMI, but they won't be Intel boards.

Yes, but I have to clarify. We are talking about Intel boards. While they have a reputation for great stability, their motherboards on the low-end are definitely under-featured. You can't find Intel Atom boards (I'm talking boards from Intel that feature an Atom processor, not as in "Intel Atom CPU") with more than two SATA ports, and the VGA issue, of course. I think they are scared shitless about the Atoms eating in their low-end Core i3 segment. Sure, the i3 is much more powerful, but an Atom D525MW can be had for 65€, add in two sticks of 2GB RAM at 18€. That's 83€, add in a small form factor case, a small harddisk or tiny SSD and you've got yourself a nitfy dual core desktop that suffices entirely for normal desktop activity. The cheapest i3 CPU, I could find was 75€ on itself.

To put a (modern) Atom-based machine in perspective. An Atom D525 performs just a bit worse on benchmarks (like Passmark) than the "beast" I built in 2003: an Athlon MP 2400+: Atom D525 versus Athlon MP 2400+

. Just note that the MP still makes a quite worthy desktop, at least for my needs.

I haven't seen an E-350 without DVI either (motherboards, laptops/netbooks are a different story), but they really can't be had as cheap as what Intel delivers with the Atoms.

You can get Atom-based motherboards with DVI and/or HDMI, but they won't be Intel boards.

Intel i5 661: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115217&Tpk=i5%20661
According to these benchmarks, we have:

• AMD Phenom II X4 965 4,291 $129.99*
• Intel Core i5 661 @ 3.33GHz 3,286 $175.66*

And this doesn't account for the money spent on a motherboard, which adds a hefty price to any intel offering.

So, looks like you botched your careful number check.

If you are really interested to know that then you should simply pick up any random benchmark from the web and compare prices. For example, in some benchmarks the AMD FX-8150 processor, which goes for about 220 euros, outperforms Intel Core i7-2860QM systems, which sells for around 500 euros. And in the nearest mom&pop store, an AMD Phenom II X6 1100T goes for 178 euros while the Intel Core i7 870 goes for 240 euros.

But seriously, pop up any random benchmark between recent intel and AMD processors and compare their performance and their price. You will notice that AMD either come out ahead or are head-to-head.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html Check out the 2600k 4 core compared to the next amd 8150 8core. 2k diff for 50 dollars? Intel has AMD stomped for a while. This coming from AMD owner 2000-2004.

A simple CPU performance comparison chart would work

But how can anyone tell whether one CPU is going to be fast or slow for their purposes? There's all that hyperthreading, cache size, memory size to consider as well.
You'd really need to know how many MHz and Megabytes a particular application requires in order to run smoothly.

My parents have a laptop (1.5 GHz) that is so slow on starting up, that they just basically keep it on all the time, and don't bother shutting down the applications (E-mail, spreadsheet, web-browser). On the times that they do switch it on, they go off to make a cup of coffee, make some telephone calls, and when they're done, the PC has booted up.

Too lazy... I just generally grep http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ and/or http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/index.php to see where things fall... roughly.

Plus, the old stuff I'm comparing to is often too old to be listed on any of the more modern benchmarks listed review sites. But I'm a cheapskate like that ;-D

Recently, I've taken out my old AMD Athlon MP 2400+. Yes, that's a dual processor machine and it's eight and a half years old. The graphics card in it (and it's really picky about which AGP card you put in it. A GeForce 6600GT didn't work) is just a NVidia FX 5500 (It originally had a Ti4200, but that didn't do DX9.0 and it made a lot of noise because of the fan. The FX5500 is passively cooled). Why do I tell you this? Because I toyed around with it, trying Windows 7 for kicks 'n giggles. The experience was horrible, just in case you wondered.

Thing is, I was wondering what the CPU would score on a Passmark test. It wasn't listed before I submitted my "scores". Why do I tell you this? Because this "beast" of a machine is on par with early Core 2 Duo CPUs used in laptops. It is also very close to "on-par" with my current desktop.... which is... an Atom D525. That's food for thought. I bought that Atom D525 as a complete machine with 2GB RAM and 320GB HDD for a mere 199€. I'd wager to say that you're better off with modern Atom than than to upgrade the graphics card on an old machine. Also note that, while the graphic chipset in that Atom is one of those sucky GMAs, it's enough to run Windows 7 Aero (I don't use Windows, but I did test it). That's the point of the PCI card the story is about: be able to run Windows 7 fully. There are no Windows 7 drivers for anything prior to the Geforce6 series as I have found out on the NVidia website. (5FX series has Vista drivers, though)

I'm not very fond of my Atom desktop. For some reason, Firefox is very slow on it. I don't know why. I have used machines less powerful than it where the browser worked fine. I blame Firefox because it's an "old" version that comes with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (the last "good" Ubuntu release).

I used to be a tech dumpster diver, but the insanely cheap-but-good-enough hardware makes it unviable to refurbish any machines I can get my hands on. (Currently seems to be 2GHz++ Pentium IV or AMD Athlon XP, and early AMD64 and Core2Duo)

Thats all well and good... as long as you ignore the fact that Intel only has two chips in the top-20, (#5 and #20) and neither of them are SandyBridge chips.

ROFL. Your link is a chart which has tons of discontinued, ancient, and slow discount-bin CPUs (like an Opteron 252, of all things) placed high just because some random garage vendor selling on Amazon's website is clearing them out for a song. It appears that price dominates in whatever calculation they're using to determine "value". A super cheap price boosts the CPU way up the chart no matter how slow (and discontinued!) it is.

Which makes it utterly unsurprising that Sandy Bridge chips fail to appear. They're the current standard-setters for value, by which I mean that AMD is (and has been for a few years now) stuck with being reactive in pricing. Whatever price Intel sets for a given performance level, AMD has to undercut a bit, while not being too much lower since AMD's costs per CPU are higher. (This is for two reasons: one, Intel's simply better at low cost volume production simply because they have in-house fabs and a lot more volume, and two, AMD's performance deficit means they must use more cores to compete in any given segment, which increases die size compared to Intel.) So, it's not too surprising to see AMD "first" in a chart which heavily favors the lowest price.

What's not clear is whether that has anything to do with "value". To me, "value" means: if I spend $X, how much performance do I get? Generally speaking, you'll find that $X buys you a given Intel CPU, and $X - ~5-10% buys you a somewhat slower AMD CPU (due to the reactive pricing I mention above), right up until AMD runs out of steam and can't compete at all any more (at somewhere around the $200 price point these days).

Thats all well and good... as long as you ignore the fact that Intel only has two chips in the top-20, (#5 and #20) and neither of them are SandyBridge chips.

I'll raise your "single sample" techreport FUD about the A8-3850 and go all-in with 122 samples (and counting) for the A8-3850, from real users, using real systems, that they really purchased, from real retailers....

Every single time you find a benchmark which significantly disagrees with the large sample set taken by PassMark on cpubenchmark.net, you have found a benchmark that is complete bullshit. Now that you know that techreport puts out bullshit benchmarks.. will you ever attempt to cite them again?

My guess is that yes, you will.. as long as techreport continues to favor Intel... you will blindly swallow their shit.

Yeh... Because AMD's $200 X6 1100T isn't already beaten by intel's $190 i5 2400... oh wait, yes it is.

No it's hasn't been.
AMD
Intel

Yeh... Because AMD's $200 X6 1100T isn't already beaten by intel's $190 i5 2400... oh wait, yes it is.

No it's hasn't been.
AMD
Intel

What will be interesting is the price/performance ratio compared to the Intel chips. This chip will be typically used in server farms, and this will be at least as important as the raw power - though obviously there is an overhead in running more servers. AMD has usually been ahead of Intel, and it still is on most mid-range and low-end chips, but it has started to fall behind at the high end.

For as long as I can remember, Intel have been in the lead when you really want cutting edge technology (excepting a few times when AMD has surprised the world), but AMD is what you go with if you want the most value for your money in an x86/x86-64 processor. Has this changed?

If pure value is what you are after, then no, it hasn't changed.

Note that the top two, the AMD A8-3x50's, have a competent GPU in them (suitable for WoW on high settings) so the actual value is also greatly under-stated. Those chips are essentially extreme value.. very very far ahead of the game.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-2310+%40+2.90GHz

Look at two things, one is the phenom that is beating it, and 2 the second graph that shows cpu mark / price. Certainly looks like the Phenom 2 isnt that easily thrashed, especially compared to the i5 you suggested.

For desktop computers... Mine is 4 years old and still similar in specs to PCs that are being sold today.

No, it is NOT even close! It is sad that people still view GHz as some metric of computing.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

There, go and find your old CPU and compare it to a modern one that sells at a similar price.

CPU loadout prices and performance metrics for various setups

The 12-core X56xx's solutions arent touching the 48-core solutions from AMD as of yet in parallel workloads. The Opteron 6168 solution is cheaper with more performance and the Opteron 6174 route is more expensive but significantly faster over-all, than a pair of X5690 priced at $3300+

I am simply amazed that Intel has not taken its older designs for larger process sizes and simply packed on more cores during a process reduction in order to break AMD's knee's in this market. Instead they are only using even more transistors per core and not upping the core count. That strategy is OK for desktop chips but the virtualization crowd that is running dozens of servers on one box are better off with more cores.

Not that AMD has produced anything stellar recently (tho Bobcat is certainly a formidable Atom competitor while Bulldozer is rumored to be postponed due to serious performance issues with the current stepping) but Intel still doesnt offer any competition in the big virtualization arena vs AMD's several-year-old solutions.

But back in the Athlon 64 days, the numbers used to have actual meaning and were related to Intel's processor performance. An Athlon 64 3800+ performed on par with a 3800 MHz Pentium 4

Actually this is not correct. The comparison between the AMD chips and Intel's Stopped with the Althon XP. Those were the chips that could perform at or near the same level as Intel with a lower clock. Performance Rating also called Pentium Rating or P4 Rating

Anything beyond the XP cpu's is nothing more than marketing ploys used by AMD. Although the XP numbers were also a marketing ploy but they could live up to it. Even today AMD uses PR capaigns to try and make up for the lack of performance.

Using the same site you linked for the Athlon64, AMD's highest CPU the Phenom II X6 1100T 3.3GHz @ $214 on the EGG has 30 Intel CPU's above it in performance benchmarks the 11th one being the mid range Intel core i-5 2500K 3.3GHz @ $224 on the EGG. Even several Intel Mobile CPU's out perform AMD's highest pride and joy.

When AMD releases a CPU that is truely benched at what they claim it can do, and I dont mean playing WOW on medium settings, I will consider the argument they are the better value. But when a 6 core high end CPU by AMD get stomped on by a mid range 4 core from Intel, I think I will stick with my Xeon Workstation for my Solidworks and AutoCAD.

But back in the Athlon 64 days, the numbers used to have actual meaning and were related to Intel's processor performance. An Athlon 64 3800+ performed on par with a 3800 MHz Pentium 4

Actually this is not correct. The comparison between the AMD chips and Intel's Stopped with the Althon XP. Those were the chips that could perform at or near the same level as Intel with a lower clock. Performance Rating also called Pentium Rating or P4 Rating

Anything beyond the XP cpu's is nothing more than marketing ploys used by AMD. Although the XP numbers were also a marketing ploy but they could live up to it. Even today AMD uses PR capaigns to try and make up for the lack of performance.

Using the same site you linked for the Athlon64, AMD's highest CPU the Phenom II X6 1100T 3.3GHz @ $214 on the EGG has 30 Intel CPU's above it in performance benchmarks the 11th one being the mid range Intel core i-5 2500K 3.3GHz @ $224 on the EGG. Even several Intel Mobile CPU's out perform AMD's highest pride and joy.

When AMD releases a CPU that is truely benched at what they claim it can do, and I dont mean playing WOW on medium settings, I will consider the argument they are the better value. But when a 6 core high end CPU by AMD get stomped on by a mid range 4 core from Intel, I think I will stick with my Xeon Workstation for my Solidworks and AutoCAD.

But back in the Athlon 64 days, the numbers used to have actual meaning and were related to Intel's processor performance. An Athlon 64 3800+ performed on par with a 3800 MHz Pentium 4

Actually this is not correct. The comparison between the AMD chips and Intel's Stopped with the Althon XP. Those were the chips that could perform at or near the same level as Intel with a lower clock. Performance Rating also called Pentium Rating or P4 Rating

Anything beyond the XP cpu's is nothing more than marketing ploys used by AMD. Although the XP numbers were also a marketing ploy but they could live up to it. Even today AMD uses PR capaigns to try and make up for the lack of performance.

Using the same site you linked for the Athlon64, AMD's highest CPU the Phenom II X6 1100T 3.3GHz @ $214 on the EGG has 30 Intel CPU's above it in performance benchmarks the 11th one being the mid range Intel core i-5 2500K 3.3GHz @ $224 on the EGG. Even several Intel Mobile CPU's out perform AMD's highest pride and joy.

When AMD releases a CPU that is truely benched at what they claim it can do, and I dont mean playing WOW on medium settings, I will consider the argument they are the better value. But when a 6 core high end CPU by AMD get stomped on by a mid range 4 core from Intel, I think I will stick with my Xeon Workstation for my Solidworks and AutoCAD.

But back in the Athlon 64 days, the numbers used to have actual meaning and were related to Intel's processor performance. An Athlon 64 3800+ performed on par with a 3800 MHz Pentium 4

Actually this is not correct. The comparison between the AMD chips and Intel's Stopped with the Althon XP. Those were the chips that could perform at or near the same level as Intel with a lower clock. Performance Rating also called Pentium Rating or P4 Rating

Anything beyond the XP cpu's is nothing more than marketing ploys used by AMD. Although the XP numbers were also a marketing ploy but they could live up to it. Even today AMD uses PR capaigns to try and make up for the lack of performance.

Using the same site you linked for the Athlon64, AMD's highest CPU the Phenom II X6 1100T 3.3GHz @ $214 on the EGG has 30 Intel CPU's above it in performance benchmarks the 11th one being the mid range Intel core i-5 2500K 3.3GHz @ $224 on the EGG. Even several Intel Mobile CPU's out perform AMD's highest pride and joy.

When AMD releases a CPU that is truely benched at what they claim it can do, and I dont mean playing WOW on medium settings, I will consider the argument they are the better value. But when a 6 core high end CPU by AMD get stomped on by a mid range 4 core from Intel, I think I will stick with my Xeon Workstation for my Solidworks and AutoCAD.

But back in the Athlon 64 days, the numbers used to have actual meaning and were related to Intel's processor performance. An Athlon 64 3800+ performed on par with a 3800 MHz Pentium 4

Actually this is not correct. The comparison between the AMD chips and Intel's Stopped with the Althon XP. Those were the chips that could perform at or near the same level as Intel with a lower clock. Performance Rating also called Pentium Rating or P4 Rating

Anything beyond the XP cpu's is nothing more than marketing ploys used by AMD. Although the XP numbers were also a marketing ploy but they could live up to it. Even today AMD uses PR capaigns to try and make up for the lack of performance.

Using the same site you linked for the Athlon64, AMD's highest CPU the Phenom II X6 1100T 3.3GHz @ $214 on the EGG has 30 Intel CPU's above it in performance benchmarks the 11th one being the mid range Intel core i-5 2500K 3.3GHz @ $224 on the EGG. Even several Intel Mobile CPU's out perform AMD's highest pride and joy.

When AMD releases a CPU that is truely benched at what they claim it can do, and I dont mean playing WOW on medium settings, I will consider the argument they are the better value. But when a 6 core high end CPU by AMD get stomped on by a mid range 4 core from Intel, I think I will stick with my Xeon Workstation for my Solidworks and AutoCAD.

But back in the Athlon 64 days, the numbers used to have actual meaning and were related to Intel's processor performance.

An Athlon 64 3800+ performed on par with a 3800 MHz Pentium 4

But back in the Athlon 64 days, the numbers used to have actual meaning and were related to Intel's processor performance.

An Athlon 64 3800+ performed on par with a 3800 MHz Pentium 4

Indeed, AMD is still crushing Intel's 4-chip solutions in performance

This is certainly due to Intel not really refreshing its server lines at all, focusing mainly on the desktop space, while AMD has steadily updated its server lines.

Lets not forget that AMD is also about to unveil its bulldozer cores, while Intel has recently updated its desktop chips. Until this year, Intel had an extremely hard time competing in performance per $ in the desktop space, and expect that even if bulldozer doesnt match i7 levels it will again regain the performance per dollar crown that it had up until this year.

Certainly if you are spending $1000 on a CPU, you would go Intel today. But if you are spending $250 on a CPU, the choice today isnt so clear at all.

And what exactly was that snork for? The "bang for the buck" has been firmly in the AMD side of the aisle for quite some time, as you can see here on this handy chart. Thanks to the Intel socket roulette it has gotten to the point that depending on the socket one can build an AMD quad complete for less than a dual Intel and motherboard alone, that is how much extra you are paying for all those ads (and the kickbacks to OEMs of course).

Since it came out that Intel was rigging their compiler and bribing OEMs (where the hell is the antitrust bust anyway?) I've been selling AMD exclusively and my customers couldn't be happier. The lower price of AM3 boards and CPUs means they can get better features and more options for less money and having those extra cores helps to future proof a system. I mean how can you complain when you can get an AMD triple OEM PLUS a good ASRock motherboard for under $100, or that I can deliver a fully loaded AMD quad WITH a Geforce 210 AND a wireless keyboard/mouse combo and Win 7 HP X64, all for $550 while still making a decent profit? I certainly can't and my customers couldn't be happier with the performance. Not everyone is only worried about ePeen benchmarks you know.

As for TFA this isn't really surprising and the only shock is that Nvidia didn't do this sooner. Intel in their usual douchebag manner killed the Nvidia chipset business (again WTF? Where the hell is the antitrust already?) by refusing them the right to build on anything past LGA775, thus forcing everyone on Intel boards to have a craptastic Intel IGP whether you wanted it or not, so working out a deal to have SLI on AMD seems only natural.

To me the bigger question is why the hell don't they sell a 1x GPU board designed for PhysX. There are many of us I'm sure that don't have dual x16 boards that would be happy to buy an Nvidia chip just to add PhysX but screwing us over by disabling PhysX support if it detects an AMD GPU is just stupid, especially since that pretty much kills any point of having Nvidia on AMD with nearly all AMD boards having Radeon IGPs now. If they want to sell more GPUs a 1x board dedicated to PhysX would probably sell like hotcakes for those of us on AMD platforms.

Personally until they quit screwing us with the drivers I'll keep using Nvidia for strictly HTPCs (you can get a Geforce 210 for like $20 after MIR) and for those that want to game on the cheap sticking with the HD4850 (can't beat 256 bit pipeline for $60 refurb, and makes a cheap crossfire monster) or the HD5770.

But the other poster is right.. you dont generally want turbo features on servers.

No, the other poster is not right. Turbo is just as desirable on servers as it is anywhere else: if the software you're running doesn't hit the CPU's power limits, it makes itself faster until it does hit the power limit. Why would that be undesirable, ever?

AMD has been king of the multi-CPU solutions for awhile now so we will have to wait and see how Intels new line will stack up in 4xCPU (40 cores / 80 threads) configurations vs AMD's current king 4xCPU (48 cores) solution.

Your benchmark link is laughable. Aside from the terrible choice of benchmark (nobody who buys expensive highly threaded servers would even think of using PassMark to evaluate them), the only highly threaded quad socket Intel systems tested are literally about 4 or 5 years old. The funny thing is, even those ancient systems, so old they had front side buses, hold their own against some of the much more modern AMD systems. For example, quad X7460 (6 cores 2.66 GHz) beats quad Opteron 6128 (8 cores 2.0 GHz). (I'd expect that in a real server load X7460 might not fare so well... the FSB hurt that generation of Xeons quite a bit. Then again, back when X7460 was new AMD didn't have anything nearly as good as a 6128 to go up against it.)

Anyways. The new E7 10-core Xeons replace the previous line of X75xx 8-core Xeons (codename Nehalem-EX), and cpubenchmark.net hasn't tested a single Nehalem-EX system. So you have no basis to claim that AMD is king today if that's all the data you have to go on.

But even that poor data does suggest that AMD is far behind. Just look at the top 3 systems: two 4-socket 12-core (48 cores total) Opterons take the top 2 spots, with a 2-socket 6-core Xeon (12 cores total) nipping at their heels. It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate from these results and predict that a 4-socket Nehalem-EX ought to leave these 4-socket Opterons in the dust.

(In PassMark. Which, I reiterate, is a terrible benchmark for this purpose.)

Slashdot featured a comparison of Intel's vs AMD's "Turbo" features just about a year ago now.

But the other poster is right.. you dont generally want turbo features on servers. This 10 core Intel server chip is in the same boat as AMD's 12 core server chips, as it will under-perform for single threaded tasks. These chips simply arent made for single-threaded performance.

AMD has been king of the multi-CPU solutions for awhile now so we will have to wait and see how Intels new line will stack up in 4xCPU (40 cores / 80 threads) configurations vs AMD's current king 4xCPU (48 cores) solution.

It really depends on your budget but the biggest single price issue is screen size - the best deals are for 15.6 screens but if she wants something larger or smaller then the prices for decent machines go up wildly. Look for a powerful processor with a good GPU that has dedicated RAM, as much non-graphics RAM as you can afford and x64 Windows 7 with good build quality and you should have a machine which will perform well and last a long time. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ is really handy for checking on what's good/not for processor and GPU deals Both Lenovo and Samsung make excellent machines which both look good (which could be important, quite a few of my female friends use Samsung) and have great build quality

Video conversion, CAD, data processing, compiling very complex programs, software 3d rendering. This is slashdot, I'm sure you can think of your own use cases.

If you are really serious about that stuff specifically, you can get significantly better performance for the same cash from some server-build options such as this 32-core server.

The trouble with using expensive consumer chips for embarrassingly parallel tasks is that they dont compete vs the low end server solutions that are at the same price point. If money is no object, then here is a 48-core high end solution that will perform nearly 300% better than the best i7.

Video conversion, CAD, data processing, compiling very complex programs, software 3d rendering. This is slashdot, I'm sure you can think of your own use cases.

If you are really serious about that stuff specifically, you can get significantly better performance for the same cash from some server-build options such as this 32-core server.

The trouble with using expensive consumer chips for embarrassingly parallel tasks is that they dont compete vs the low end server solutions that are at the same price point. If money is no object, then here is a 48-core high end solution that will perform nearly 300% better than the best i7.

I usually check PassMark's CPU/Value website.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html

But make sure you also compare it to the absolute benchmark too:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html

I usually check PassMark's CPU/Value website.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html

But make sure you also compare it to the absolute benchmark too:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html

I see a lot of data, but no organisation -- all I really want is a simple table like this one

Your laptop might be faster, if it has a really good graphics and I/O systems, but your CPU benchmarks 7% slower http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+960+%40+3.20GHz Suffice it to say that I am skeptical that the Apple isn't at least close.

Please provide the make/model/price and the results of the PCMark Vantage, 3DMark06, Crysis, Lost Planet 2 and Handbrake tests. Then tell us about your battery life and weight.

You're forgetting that AMD has a very comfortable performance lead at the very high end

Yes, those are AMD 48-core system at #1... and #2... and #3

Then there is the old performance per dollar metric where AMD has the top 7 chips on the market right now.

Intel definitely has some good chips, but aside from a small group of them, they are terrible value (rip off) and also not something they are selling a whole lot of (if you are throwing down $1000 for the CPU, you are probably in the market for a server chip with significantly better memory bandwidth than that i7-980 offers)

They're not cheaper because they want to be, they're cheaper because they have to be. They can't compete on performance

Intel is more expensive because they have to be. They can't compete on value.

See what I did there?

The only metric worth anything is performance per dollar. You have not used that metric but tried to draw a conclusion as if you did.

Before you reply in fanboy rage, lets try it with cars:

Ford is not cheaper (than Ferari) because they want to be, they're cheaper because they have to be. They can't compete on performance, so they try to do it on price.

With cars your bullshit logic has no teeth. Now why the fuck would it apply to processors but not cars?

Intel has a very large range of processor models at a very large range of price points. Yet they don't top the charts with whats on the market today.

Intel charges more because it has brand recognition which was propped up with the illegal activities of this convicted monopolist.

Uhhh...didn't read past the first sentence, did ya friend? Otherwise you might have noticed this part: I was a lifelong Intel man but after all the payola came out I switched to only AMD for myself and my customers . So it is kinda hard to tell me to "switch to AMD" when BOTH the boxes I use AND the boxes I sell are ALL AMD. Hell my oldest even got a nice Turion X2 netbook for college. It does all his schoolwork and games nicely when he doesn't have homework, and at $599 the only competition was from "Intel IGP" machines locally. Yuck!.

That still don't change the fact that unless you are just sticking it in a board that can't support anything else (like those 775 Pentium Ds I picked up cheap) then buying dual cores is dumb when you can get triples and quads for so cheap. Even if you don't need the power now you may need it down the road and then not be able to get the chip (as I found with a board that I had in 99 that would take the high end P3 that I waited too long on) and end up boned. With C&Q even the quads sip power when not having work to do but when you do have a job for them such as converting a video you'll be damned glad you got the extra cores.

But buying dual cores nowadays unless you are trying for insane OC speeds thanks to having the larger die for cooling, or going for a cheap shot that may/may not unlock, it just seems silly to be building duallies anymore, especially on the AMD side. Just look again at this chart and notice how few dual cores are on it. The better value nowadays is triple and quad, and by a pretty good margin.

My last dual core build will be this AMD X2 7550 I have sitting in a drawer from my upgrade to a quad that I will end up building into a cheap netbox for my GF. Considering the hardest thing she does on a machine is plays Farmville? I think it is safe to say it will be overkill. But even then I'm gonna get a cheapo core unlocking board just to see if I can get a stable X3 or X4 out of it. If I can get her a free upgrade, why the hell not?

But isn't the i3 a duallie? Why would you want a duallie when AMD quads are so cheap? Unless of course you are a rabid OCer as I heard the i3 can crank, but then again the AMD duallies can usually unlock, so I'd call it a wash.

I'd say the big problems with Intel is they are too damned high and they have too many sockets ATM. If you look at this chart of top 50 price/performance the only i series comes in all the way down at #27. I was a lifelong Intel man but after all the payola came out I switched to only AMD for myself and my customers and you know what? I can't really tell the difference. Lets be honest, most of us aren't gonna be slamming the living shit out of our CPUs to be able to tell that 15% difference in performance and the price of the CPU plus motherboard is great enough on most of Intel's good chips one can really outfit a nice box for a hell of a lot less. And my customers are sure happy with $450 triples and $500 quad core machines delivered to their door.

So while I've got nothing against Intel users, hell I've got a couple of 775 boxes I just upgraded to Pentium D chips I picked up dirt cheap, after the payola, rigging their compiler, the just announced DRM, even using dirty tricks against the OLPC, Intel just doesn't seem like a company I would feel right about supporting ATM. I'm a firm believer in putting your money where your mouth is and where your beliefs lie and just like I won't buy Sony after the rootkit and the screwing of PS3 owners I just couldn't in good conscience support a company that has played so dirty lately, even for a 15% performance gain.

The Pentium M and Pentium III were both faster than the Pentium 4 in a clock for clock comparison. Don't believe me? Have a look for yourself. Pentium 4 2.8GHz scores 415 and Atom Z550 2.0GHz scores 386.