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"Budget" Chips go Head-to-Head
StewedSquirrel writes "Anandtech has published an article taking a look at the low-end of the CPU market today. It takes Intel's newest Celeron processors against the AthlonXP and Duron with a Pentium 4 1.8GHz thrown in for comparison. All of these processors will cost you under $120, but the article shows that the old Duron (at barely $40) can out-perform Intel chips costing nearly 3x as much. In addition, it shows that the performance of the Athlon XP is head and shoulders above the Celeron processors, while costing roughly the same."
It seems to me that the number of market sectors may be the ultimate decider here, rather than the actual technology :-(
:-)
Intel simply have larger resources - they can push money at blue-skies research, and non-profitable lines, whereas AMD (although successful) have to "bet the company" on every major decision...
In a way, I think it's because AMD is such an underdog, that I like the company - although the fact that their chips are damn good helps a lot
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
On a serious note, people, including myself, are starting to worry about power consumption. I'd like to pick up a low power device for a BSD gateway.
Agreed! I'm currently interesting in replacing my 400Mhz desktop. (I've got a 1ghz dell laptop, and 12"TiBook) It's used mostly when I either don't want to unpack my notebook, or want to take advantage of my 21" monitor.
I have three major "wants":
1. Be good on power...I don't want to power it down. (Does linux suspend well yet?)
2. I want it to be quiet...I don't want to be able to hear it.
3. Major brand. I can build and support my own machines, but don't want the hastle with this one.
It is very hard to shop for something like this, as it's not something that is well marketed. I don't need it bad enough to be willing to spend major time comparing hard to find specs on a model at a time basis. I am sure swordbuy and myself are not the only ones with desires like this.
AMD was high on my list, and it just jumped a little bit higher.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
First of all, this wasn't an Intel vs. AMD, and it seems you missed the point. The benchmarks are meant to compare BUDGET processors, that is, costing under $120. Clearly, the performance/price ratio is much higher for the AMD. Don't believe me? Go look at the benchmarks (and if not the ones on that site, then on other sites, like THG or something). I have been building Athlon XP systems since they came out and I have not had a single issue. Perhaps you just don't know how to go about configuring your computer? Same goes for your uncles. Second, running hotter is irrelevant. Even with an OEM heatsink/fan, you will not have any problems. They are designed to withstand those temperatures, and they will be unharmed all the way up to 85C. I have had it run in the mid 70's for extended periods (due to overclocking) and they have worked fine right after. If you want to buy Intel, be my guest, but your loyalty is unfounded. I used to be an Intel guy, shunning everything AMD, but experience doesn't lie, and I have been a happy camper since day one.
A blog like any other.
is the term "low end of the cpu market," as if to imply these chips are somehow less than adequate...
Bah.
Both of my current linux desktop machines run these "low end" chips, and they run just fine, thanks very much. They all have a bunch of RAM... but other than that they are very vanilla... 1.3ghz Durons all. It makes you wonder what's really driving the CPU market (other than wow-look-at-this-shiny-new-CPU marketing).
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
These Sub-$100 CPUs serve as decent upgrades for aging systems (e.g. the P3-800 that is barely chugging along)
I'm using a P3-550MHz, and it's fine for everything I do all day.
Can I have that 'useless' 800MHz chip when you toss it?
Cheers, Ian
Touche. I'm actually a G5 fan myself, and will own one as soon as I can afford it.
Let's face it though, a lot of people (especially Linux people!) are committed to x86. Opteron/Athlon64 looks like the most future-proof route there, by far.
I've also seen some performance comparisons where AMD64 trounces the G5. Not that there aren't examples in the other direction, but clock-for-clock Opteron seems a bit faster. It'll be worth keeping an eye on things as compilers improve and applications are updated. We'll also see if new G5 speed grades up to 2.6 GHz. really appear this spring...if G5 can get ahead on the clockspeed front it could prevail in real-world performance.
According to some of those benchmarks, though, it has a lot of ground to make up...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Took the damn thing back to their house and a whole bunch of the extended family was there, it being the holidays and all. They check out the computer and they are all, "Nice computer, only 2.6 GHZ though..."
:) This is the angle that Dell takes. They have those silly charts that shows 2.6GHz is only good for email and web browsing, while 3.0GHz is what you need for serious applications and gaming. In reality, it's only a 15% difference in raw clockspeed! And the actual performance increase is less than that, of course, because the bus and memory speeds are still the same. Okay, and the 3GHz machine uses significantly more power (more than a 15% increase), but Dell doesn't advertise that.
Heh
There really isn't a high-end PC market any more. ALL PCs are high-end.
Well true enough. But again the purpose of the article was to look at low end processors. I don't think the c variant of the P4 is a low end processor. As you can see, they only included processors in the same price range, keeping only one of the P4 for comparisons.
Pelops
Its probably to move the bottleneck away from the video card.