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Tom's Hardware End of Year CPU Roundup
Wister285 writes "Tom's Hardware has just posted one of their now famous CPU comparisons. Aside from looking at all of the nice graphs, they also compare the speeds of overclocked processors with their factory rated counterparts. It looks like the AMD chips just don't overclock as well as the Intel ones do, but when run at their specified level AMD almost always has the best price/performance ratio. Hopefully the upcoming year will be as promising in the processor sector as 2003 was!"
What are you preferred sources for technical information? What mailing lists, newsgroups, web sites, magazines and etc. do you read on a regular basis to stay current with computer technology?
there is no PPC 970 on there.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
This linked article is an excellent roundup of the ongoing battle between AMD and Intel. It holds a lot of insight for people who have not been following the news closely.
However, it has to be pointed out that he missed several important incidents:
- AMD alliance with SUN: news article
-AMDs deal with Tippet studios: We built some prototype desktop workstations powered by AMD Athlon(TM) MP processors. We had tried systems powered by a competitor's processors, and they worked fairly well. However, we absolutely preferred the performance of the AMD Athlon(TM) processor. A good part of the advantage comes from the performance of AMD's floating point engine, which is very important to compute-intensive operations such as rendering.
-Intels new challenge in process technology with a cheap strained silicon process, finally unveiled at the iedm. AMD, this will be a touch one: IEDM article
Well, then you got lucky. I had to underclock my 2600+ to 2400+ to avoid getting weird lockups. Maybe it had something to do with that shitty VIA motherboard though.
Sure, a Mac is a Mac but there should be a G5 performance comparison with there. After all, not too many Tom's Hardware readers have Itaniums in their home PCs. And with the PowerPC970 (G5) climbing to 3Ghz by March 2004, it should really be included in the article.
If at the very least, they could do speed comparisons on the AMD64, the P4, and the G5 all running various Linux distributions to make it fair. (I'm heavily assuming the Yellow Dog distribution supports the G5)...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Please read the linked article before posting statements, Mr. Karmawhore. Its a very excellent roundup.
Well, Tom may be overly enthusiastic at times, but you should not forget that he, and only he, had several world first on his website.
For example when he published thermal problems with the AMD athlons, instabilities of the to be released Pentium III 1.13GHz article and much more.
Judge the articles by themselves, not the website as a whole.
Overclockability reviews are pointless for a couple of reasons. The first, of course, is that there are never any guarantees - not every one of the famed 300MHz celerons would run at 450MHz, and just because the few samples a reviewer tests overclock well (or poorly) does not mean that all chips will be similar.
The other major problem is that review parts are often hand-picked, nullifying their value as indicators of overclockability completely.
My server
I am hardly a troll, I have perfect Karma.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Mod down as redundant: Original post
Well, My xp2100+ (1.733Ghz) is currently running at close to 2250MHz (195fsb, 11.5x Multiplier), which is over a 500MHz OC.. I'd call that a pretty nice OC, as it's still only cooled by air. . .
Don't worry, it's just RKZ or one of his little friends throwing a tantrum trying to divert attention from their blatent karmawhoring. They're getting sick of people picking up on it.
I hate to feed the trolls, but the sibling speaks the truth. This poster, rkz, is not a troll, but he is recycling comments. Not to mention his evil .sig
Yawn.
Intel are the market leaders thus can leave some spare capacity in their chips, allowing more effective overclocking. AMD are chasing their coattails so their chips use all the capacity they can spare.
(this post pulled unceremoniously out of my butt)
Adopt a Penis Cat Today. (http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6793/)
/\_/\ .| .| .|
< o.o >
> - <
8=m=====m=D
|.
|.
|.
\_ _/
^/ | \^
|
`'
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He has missed one very important fact. Very few of us need any more power then a 2.5 gig CPU. And INTELs 2.5 is twice the cost of AMDs 2500. I run better then 100 FPS in any game that I want to play. Including such hogs of power as BF1942 with the DC mod....
Just because it's the same OS does not imply that it will be a direct comparison -- they are completely different archetectures and can never be directly compared; an indirect comparison is about the best you can do. Still what does it mean? Not a lot, since the archetectures are fundamentally different.
It would be a waste of THG's time when the whole idea was to compare x86 CPUs. Yeah it ignores the PPC -- why? x86 archetecture comparison is an apples to apples comparsion.
Karma whorin' since 1999
Ah, Tom's Hardware. Not trying to be negative, but IMHO, they are a terrible source for tech information, and the bulk of their reviews contain startling errors, conclusions that defy reason, glaring omissions, and sensationalized reporting. The majority of those writing the reviews clearly have no idea what they are talking about, at least regarding the subject they are reporting on. Overall, I would rate them slightly above HotHardware.com.
Tom himself, as far as I can tell, is on the ball and knows his stuff VERY well, but he doesn't write articles much anymore, and obviously doesn't read them either. It is a common practice among hardware enthusiasts to quote Tom's for the humor value, trying to see if the author of the latest article is even more clueless than he was in his (or her) last article.
To be fair, they do have some excellent articles occasionally, and were the first ones to dare publish information on Intel's unstable Pentium III 1.13GHz processor, but unfortunately these seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
Also, as has already been stated, XGI is hardly a new company. Of course, these bits of SiS and Trident are in completely new territory if they are trying to compete in the high-end gamer's market. Considering that this is their first real foray into that market, I think they have done an amazing job. I'd say give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise. Remember, even the (once) most respected companies in the field can faulter, and that XGI has something that is even in the same ballpark as the most seasoned of players is an impressive feat.
Who bothers to overclock a CPU anymore? With the falling prices of machines, you can almost replace it for the same cost. And 2 CPUs are always better than one, because you can run them in parallel.
They still do good work, now lets avoid the fanboy flame wars and just leave this alone.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I work as a research assisstant for a Psychology lab at a major university.
Part of my duties includes running experiments on undergrads. I had just
finished running this one experiment on a very attractive young lady. Just when
I was moving to thank her for her participation and show her to the door, she
interrupts. "Look, I hate to beg, but I really need some extra credit for psyc
101. If my final grade stinks as much as my current grade, my parents will cut
off my allowance. Could you spot me a few extra participation points?" "I'm
sorry, I'm not allowed to do that." What a pathetic grade-grubber. That's when
the brat began sobbing and blubbering. "But I can't fail this class! I got
straight A's in highschool! I'll be a disgrace! I -" "Well, I'm sorry but I can
only award credit commensurate with the amount of time you give us. I -" "What
if I give you a blow job?" Did she just say that? I'd better come up with a
generic response if I didn't want to come off soundling like a big pervert in
case she hadn't just tried to bribe me with oral pleasure. "Sure, okay." "Ten
credits, I'll even swallow." "Deal." My remaining disbelief disappeared the
minute she unzipped my trousers and opened wide. "Little Bobby" was having a
thoroughly good time, at first. But then I got a little nibble, and then
another. "Um, could you please stop biting me?" " I can't help it, my braces
only allow me to open my mouth so far." Braces!?! This chick had braces? I
guess The Castle Dental Center's advertised "invisible braces" really held true
to their claim. Normally I would have avoided a metal-mouth right off the bat,
but I'd been duped by The Castle. Common sense told me, begged me to abort
immediately, but I've never been one to pull the pancakes off the griddle
before they were done just because a cockroach had fallen into the batter. I
was going to complete this transaction. "ooh! ow! ooooh! ow-OW! oooh! ow!" Five
minutes later, the pancakes were done. My participant attempted to dismount,
but something was wrong. My flesh was caught in her braces! I tried to work my
pee-pee's way carefully and slowly out of her mouth, but she wouldn't hold
still! Suddenly she jerked her head back and a flap of skin tore off. I
screamed. She picked her teeth with her pinky nail, said, "Thanks for the
credits!" cheerily and walked out. I lay on the floor in a fetal position, my
member bleeding, for an hour or so until a scab had formed. I get my dick cut
up on Miss Piranha's maw of death and she gets ten credits?!? But she didn't
have the credits yet - I had to award them! I still had control of the
situation! Oh sweet revenge! Negative one-hundred for you, bitch!
Hopefully the upcoming year will be as promising in the processor sector as 2003 was
;)
Talking about the becoming year, what technologies that are still in study (or on test phase) you're expecting to become concrete on 2004 (not 2005, 2010 or "Stardate 45494"
In the beginning of 2003 i heard about SiGe (ibm) and (150GHz transistors) but didn't see the impact of that technology already (besides some 20% improve on intel processors because of SiGe, that seens low for me).
Got a p4 1.6ghz running stable at 2.1ghz. Spent $40 on a good heatsink even though the intel stock HS is pretty hefty. It runs fine at 2.2ghz but by then the pci bus goes out of spec past 66mhz.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
This is only modded interesting cause the Athlon64 got its ass handed to it in the benchmarks he posted.
AMD/Linux/IBM good, Intel/MS bad.
Slashdot should change its title to that or "Bias news for nerds, stuff we think should matter"
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Has anybody overclocked a Z-80? My Sinclair ZX Spectrum ran hot at 4.7MHz
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
e've all been there but don't like to admit it. We've all kicked back in our
cubicles and suddenly felt something brew down below. As much as we try to
convince ourselves otherwise, the WORK POOP is inevitable. For those who hate
pooping at work, following is the 2001 Survival Guide for taking a dump at
work. Memorize these definitions and pooping at work will become a pure
pleasure.
ESCAPEE.
Definition: a fart that slips out while taking a leak at the urinal or forcing
a poop in a stall. This is usually accompanied by a sudden wave of panic
embarrassment. This is similar to the hot flash you receive when passing an
unseen police car and speeding. If you release an escapee, do not acknowledge
it. Pretend it did not happen. If you are standing next to the farter in the
urinal, pretend you did not hear it. No one likes an escapee, it is
uncomfortable for all involved. Making a joke or laughing makes both parties
feel uneasy.
JAILBREAK (Used in conjunction with ESCAPEE).
Definition: When forcing poop, several farts slip out at a machine gun pace.
This is usually a side effect of diarrhea or a hangover. If this should happen,
do not panic. Remain in the stall until everyone has left the bathroom so to
spare everyone the awkwardness of what just occurred.
COURTESY FLUSH.
Definition: The act of flushing the toilet the instant the nose cone of the
poop log hits the water and the poop is whisked away to an undisclosed
location. This reduces the amount of air time the poop has to stink up the
bathroom. This can help you avoid being caught doing the WALK OF SHAME.
WALK OF SHAME.
Definition: Walking from the stall, to the sink, to the door after you have
just stunk up the bathroom. This can be a very uncomfortable moment if someone
walks in and busts you. As with all farts, it is best to pretend that the smell
does not exist. Can be avoided with the use of the COURTESY FLUSH.
OUT OF THE CLOSET POOPER.
Definition: A colleague who poops at work and damn proud of it. You will often
see an Out Of The Closet Pooper enter the bathroom with a newspaper or magazine
under their arm. Always look around the office for the Out Of The Closet Pooper
before entering the bathroom.
THE POOPING FRIENDS NETWORK (PFN).
Definition: A group of coworkers who band together to ensure emergency pooping
goes off without incident. This group can help you to monitor the whereabouts
of Out Of The Closet Poopers, and identify SAFE HAVENS.
SAFE HAVENS.
Definition: A seldom used bathroom somewhere in the building where you can
least expect visitors. Try floors that are predominantly of the opposite sex.
This will reduce the odds of a pooper of your sex entering the bathroom.
TURD BURGLAR:
Definition: A pooper who does not realize that you are in the stall and tries
to force the door open. This is one of the most shocking and vulnerable moments
that can occur when taking a dump at work. If this occurs, remain in the stall
until the Turd Burglar leaves. This way you will avoid all uncomfortable eye
contact.
CAMO-COUGH.
Definition: A phony cough that alerts all new entrants into the bathroom that
you are in a stall. This can be used to cover-up a WATERMELON, or to alert
potential Turd Burglars. Very effective when used in conjunction with an
ASTAIRE.
ASTAIRE.
Definition: A subtle toe-tap that is used to alert potential Turd Burglars that
you are occupying a stall. This will remove all doubt that the stall is
occupied. If you hear an Astaire, leave the bathroom immediately so the pooper
can poop in peace.
WATERMELON.
Definition: A turd that creates a loud splash when hitting the toilet water.
This is also an embarrassing incident. If you feel a Watermelon coming on,
create a diversion. See CAMO-COUGH.
HAVANA OMELET.
Definition: A load of diarrhea that creates a series of loud splashes in the
toilet water. Often accomp
It looks like the AMD chips just don't overclock as well as the Intel ones do,...
I cannot infer it from those OCDBs (and was about to shop for AMD for the first time ever):
http://www.vr-zone.com/guides/AMD/Barton/
http://www.vr-zone.com/guides/Intel/Northwood/
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I have figured out the hidden jumper on the G5 motherboard to allow me to overclock the G%. Here is a snapshot of my cpuinfo from Linux running on it.
/proc/cpuinfo
james@g5linux -> uname -s -r -m -p
Linux 2.6.0-65 PPC G5
james@g5linux:~> cat
processor : 0
vendor_id : IBM
cpu family : 6
model : 6
model name : PPC 970 (G5)
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 2315.13
cache size : 2048 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow altivec
bogomips : 12473.98
>>startling errors, conclusions that defy reason, glaring omissions, and sensationalized reporting.
that's way over the top. you sound like a CNN reporter. can we say "over sensationalize"?
i think i'd just simply describe tom's as:
"not very good anymore"
I once had a problem where my PC would not complete POST. So I tried another proc (XP 1800+).
I just wanted to see if it would complete POST and give me the BIOS screen so I booted without a heatsync in place.
The proc was smoking and fried before I even got the the BIOS screen, it was instant.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I think maybe they're keeping things as is to maintain a foothold in the enthusiast market.
After all, who doesn't like somethin' for nothin?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
THIS EXACT SAME POST
was on the last toms hardware story.
The "thermal problems" with the AMD Athlons is a PERFECT example of why you should NOT read Tom's Hardware Guide! At the very least do not take the articles read at face value without verifying the facts first!
1.) Their P4 was shown to run at a constant 29C. Thermal throttling on the P4 doesn't even start until ~65 or 70C. If the chips were running at 29C, they wouldn't be throttling at all.
2.) The P4 can throttle down to an absolute minimum of 1/8th of it's clock speed, though it's set to 30-50% by default (factory setting) according to Intel's thermal design guidelines. At 30% of it's clock speed, a P4 will still consume easily 20-30W of power, which is WAY more than you can disapate with no heatsink. Yanking the heatsink off a P4 WILL cause it to crash in a very short period of time.
3.) The comment that was made that AMD's thermal sensor could only react to 1C/sec temperature changes was absolutely ridiculous and CLEARLY showed that the author was completely clueless! Such terrible performance couldn't be accomplished by incompetance along, you would really have to TRY and make it that bad!
The whole deal about the instabililties of the PIII 1.13GHz wasn't so much technically incorrect for the simple reason that there was next to no technical info provided, it was almost all just self-congradulation.
I DO judge the articles by themselves, and the articles on Tom's site generally leave a LOT to be desired. The article linked from this story seems to be mostly fluff with a few benchmarks requiring the standard (ie very large) grain of salt.
too bad the idiotic editors just can't devise a way of stopping the flood of recycled comments. more proof the moderation system sucks cmdrtaco's little cock.
It seems many athlon XPs, mostly 2500+'s, I think, are being shipped factory multiplier-locked, anything above week 39, really.
;)
So, of course Intel chips will overclock better if the multiplier is locked...
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
so what exactly then is the fastest solution? they dont exactly specify that at the end of the review. i've got some x-mas money to spend, and I'm not sure weather I should buy a AMD 64-bit chip (to prepare for the onslaught of 64-bit software) or to buy the latest p4 chip? I'm looking for the fastest solution and a solution that will carry me the longest time (at least a year and a half)
Personally, I don't run very many processor intensive machines, but on the ones that I do, stability is more important than performance. I've never had good luck with AMD + Windows 2000. So even if I can get the same performance for half the price, it still isn't worth it to me if my web server crashes all of the time. Screw fastest, anyway. I just buy the cheapest Intel boxes that I can find, and they're always more than I need.
Agreed.
FUD is slashdots favorite word for others but most of us see It is also slashdots favorite pastime.
This is a bit harsh but I'm starting to think the root for her (slashdots) opnions is based off being anti-capitalist, anti-american. Look at the politics storys or how anything not from america is built up to be some freedom fighting application, vendor or technology. I used to think it was _just_ an underdog complex but its becomming glaringly obvious.
What I would like to see - "If I'm going to overclock, which one pays better"?
First they give overclocking capablities and then non-overclocked price/performance ratio.
We know Intel CPUs are overclockable better but more expensive than AMD.
So, say, I can buy a 2GHZ AMD and overclock it by 300MHZ, getting 2.3GHZ. For the same money I can get a slower Intel and overclock it more. Now, if it was that I can get i.e. 1.7GHZ Inter and overclock it by 600MHZ, it would mean the CPUs are pretty much equivalent for me. Means - about the same price per megahertz overclocked. But if I can buy P4 1.6G overclockable by 500MHZ, giving total 2.1GHZ, it just pays better to buy the AMD.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
that's why i asked and putted a ;) in the end ;)
Just mod him down for his sicko sig link. Son of a BITCH!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
"I DO judge the articles by themselves, and the articles on Tom's site generally leave a LOT to be desired. The article linked from this story seems to be mostly fluff with a few benchmarks requiring the standard (ie very large) grain of salt."
If you'll look often, you'll note that the articles on Tom's tend to slant toward whoever is advertising on their site at the time the article is published. When AMD is advertising on Tom's, the benchmarks slant AMD's way and Intel is nothing more than a monopolistic money-whore bent on selling overpriced junk. When Intel's advertising on their site, the benchmarks are all in favor of the P4s and AMD is nothing more than an irrelevant offbrand trying to ride Intel's coatails with a fraudulent model system.
All this just goes to show that you can manipulate the numbers simply by your choice of benchmarks and system setups. I can make a Pinto seem faster than a 2003 Mustang if the Mustang is climbing a mountain while the Pinto is on its way down.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
" This is only modded interesting cause the Athlon64 got its ass handed to it in the benchmarks he posted."
Tom's has long since been known to skew results to please their advertising Masters, whoever they may be at any given time. The choice of benchmarks and the particular machine setup account for many of the results yielded. To prove this, I can show you a review in which the P4s get their asses handed to them in gaming benchmarks by the slowest Athlon64. From that link:
"As you can see, Athlon 64 won eight of the nine benchmarks, and one of them by 27%. For those who need superior gaming performance than a 3.2 GHz P4, but at less cost, these benchmarks indicate that the Athlon 64 3000+ is the way to go."
Thus, thine conclusion is predicated upon a prejudicial generalization.
When you're done looking up all those words, go away.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
You didn't mention that 'evil sig' meant "spawns hundreds of windows that won't stop popping up.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
"Thus, thine conclusion is..."
dipshit
This must be the only site that does not mention the Athlon 64 in the conclusion. Therefore I can only draw one conclusion (if you remember that a Athlon 64 3000+ outperforms a similar priced P4) Tom's hardware is done for.
I've been following Tom's hardware for years on end, and I loved their articles on RAID and drive benchmarks. Nowadays the articles are mostly written by mediocre "editors" though, and they bear little resemblence to articles by Tom himself.
To be fair, sometimes they still have great reviews (printers, screens and harddisks mostly), but you will have to look for them between articles that should never have seen the light of day.
Linux users should avoid this Windows site at all cost.
Why did they completely leave out the VIA EPIA cpus?
These seem to be a very interesting alternative especially for those who use their PC primarily for "e-mail and word processing".
And for everyone who would like a silent PC.
I am hardly a troll, I have perfect Karma.
;)
Um, unless every post you've made hits a +5, your karma isn't perfect...
(And mine will take a hit for this post!
Weird; I've always felt that AMD was the value leader, if you don't need Genuine Intel for some reason. I may be wrong, but could the difficulty of clocking AMD vs Intel be because AMD is already optimized so much nowdays? I don't have any recent experience with it, but that's what I always thought. Could someone explain to a geek who hasn't used them since the K6?
C|N>K
I just upgraded (MSI motherboard died) from an Athlon 1.33 to an Athlon XP 2600+ (1.92.ghz). Can't tell much of a difference. Seems kind of depressing but then I remind myself that w/ negligible difference between last year's and this year's processors, we can all afford to wait for the 5ghz 64bit processors of our dreams.
This guy is way out there
Has anyone done any comparisons about the best system to use in terms of improving compile-time per cost? Will 64-bit help? Is the extra cost of going to multiple processors worth it?
Intel's champion Overclocker the 2.4c is absent from that list. My P4 2.4 is running at 3.1 GHz. A 700mhz increase on air.
Don't worry... IE will have a pop-up blocker sometime next year. For those of us who have joined the 21st century and use a good browser, popups aren't a problem.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
Anyone who knows about this stuff will tell you that Tom's is notoriously biased. It can be shocking. He has been caught out on numerous occasions - photoshopping pictures of cpus, reviewing certain components on crippled test rigs, swapping colours over on his graphs without telling the reader; you name it, he's done it. On his original A64 vs P4EE review he even benchmarked the A64 with three year old 100mhz SDRAM. Unfortunately, hardware newbies (including /. it seems) don't realise this and take what he writes as gospel. I've lost count of the number of innocents i've seen who have bought second-rate hardware on the basis of a THG review. At the moment he is pro-intel, and slightly pro-nvidia for graphics although this is less marked.
NewEgg is Fry's Electronics on-line. I bought a 1U server case from them and I'm still waiting for a replacment power supply after the first one blew after 3 weeks of use. Having heard gushing reviews about customer service I assumed it'd be a simple thing. After telling me to overnight the PSU they sat on my RMA for 2 weeks without so much as an e-mail to let me know what was going on. Then they demanded I send in the whole case. I told them no because I'm running a business using it with a contract to my ISP to pay for the colo. I'm not about to waste a couple hundred (and lost business and pissed off customers) on hosting waiting for them to get me a new case. The only intelligent decision they made was to refund the money paid to ship the PSU to them.
After 2 more weeks we finally had enough and took it to the better business bureau. My server case is currently using an ATX power supply which is pretty ghetto but it works. I'm not about to shut down my business for the idiots at NewEgg. If the BBB doesn't resolve it pretty quickly I'll just buy a Sparkler from someone else. I could only get an ATX PSU the day it blew out. Even the company that makes the case I'm using said NewEgg should have just sent me a new PSU like they said they were going to do. It's been a couple months now. They're holding my busted PSU hostage.
If I want cheap crap and crap customer service I'd just go to Fry's. At least Fry's has never given me the run around when I try to return something and I can yell at people in person if they try anything.
If you're looking to buy high end expensive parts shop at www.aberdeeninc.com
Prices are a little higher but you get the confidence that you're not buying from a bunch of technical deliquents. NewEgg even admits they aren't technical people. They don't do tech support. They never test parts before they go out the door. So why in the world would you buy expensive parts from them?
Aberdeen Inc tests all it's parts before they go out the door and if there's a problem you can talk to knowledgable people.
Another alternative to NewEgg is mwave.com although I havn't had any personal experience with them.
If I need a part and it's not critical (anything but a CPU or Motherboard basically) I go to Fry's. Out of principle I'll never buy anything from NewEgg again. I've bought a few things from Aberdeen and have never had a problem.
In short, don't buy expensive parts from Fry's Electronics type stores. Get them from quality merchants. Otherwise you could really end up in a world of hurt.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Thats FAJ you moron
I always read all the replies before metamodding it unfair.
Your suggestion is worth remembering; that has to be the BEST I've seen yet :)
:)
Biased News for Nerds, indeed
AMD's 1.4 GHz Opteron 240, thanks to being "obsolete" is now down to about $215 per chip. (Anyone who thinks Opterons are expensive, is on crack.) Throw a couple of these into a dual-socket-940 motherboard (about $360), and you will have something that can bite the head off of (and shit down the neck stump of) a high-end single P4 system. And costs about the same (not counting the P4EE, which costs more).
The Pentium 4 "Extreme Edition" is the ultimate ripoff for suckers. $1k for a processor? You can get four "obsolete" Opterons for the same price, which make the "extreme" chip look extremely slow. (Hm.. trying to find a quad-940 mb to look up the price, but I'm failing. I know they exist, and there's no way they cost over $600.)
Of course, you can play the same dirty tricks by building multi-P4 systems out of older "obsolete" versions of the P4 which are cheaper, too. But I think the Opteron still wins. The point I'm trying to make is: "day-old" chips are cheap, and if you build SMP systems out of them, they slay!!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Actually, "most" of us need far less than a 1 ghz cpu. Most people I know could get by nicely with a 3-500 mhz celeron, for what they use their computers for.
That might be true up till recently, but the increasing integration of digital still cameras and MiniDV/MicroDV camcorders with computers has finally forced many users to upgrade to far faster machines. Still-image processing and editing videos downloaded from camcorders nowadays make MAJOR demands on CPU processing power; with the price of computers running the AMD Athlon XP 2000+ or slightly faster CPU being very inexpensive nowadays, anyone who wants to "grow" into digital multimedia would be advised to get the fastest machine they can afford.
I'm surprised no-one else is bringing this up ....
The review takes pains to point out that AMD-64 binaries are as rare as hens teeth, and for the reviewer's primary audience who are gamers on Windows, and who have to run whatever P4-optimised or Athlon-optimised binaries the games vendors supply, that's pretty much true.
However, for many readers of this august forum, things are a bit more flexible - the only app I run at home that works the CPUs at all hard is digital video processing (transcode / mplayer / mpegenc on Linux), all the binaries for which are of course built from source, thus could potentially be 64-bit if one had AMD-64 hardware and suitable compilers.
Likewise, for the scientific community using Beowulf clusters, who generally run home grown code, this surely has a lot of potential.
Can someone post a summary of the state of the art in terms of AMD-64 binary output from gcc/egcs, and some info on how well it runs with CPU-intensive number crunching like this?
Professionally speaking, all our stuff at work is Java based, and we are looking for price/performance and space/performance ratios - our latest batch of servers (1U pizza boxes with desktop 2 CPU chipsets are the best price/perf compromise) have dual P4's because of the better memory bandwidth of the i7500 dual channel setup compared the dual Athlon chipsets which were stuck at single DDR-266 for the longest time, but if there was a byte compiler which targeted AMD-64 I could see potential for really nice price/performance with the Socket 940 systems, and even just using 32-bit code the higher memory bandwidth would help a lot with Java apps.
Ummmm.... Tom's yet again incorrectly identified a CPU. IA-32 != IA-64 people, however backwards, IA-32 = x86-64... Of course knowing how perceptive people are on /. this has already been posed, right?
Except, because of the way it works, a popup blocker has no effect, unless it blocks ALL popups (possible in Opera, but not in Moz), or JavaScript is disabled (I can do that like *that* in Opera, but Moz? No.
I should know - I looked at the code. What it is is simple on-mouseovers, and window movers. However, it is designed to be REALLY evil on Internet Explorer - it hides all titlebars, and pops up a window with a different window mover script that only works on IE, with a flash animation that says "You are an idiot, ha ha ha ha ha ha" in an infinite loop".
Strange. I clicked on it in Galeon (based on Mozilla), and didn't see a single popup. I have JavaScript enabled and only disallow unrequested popups.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
Since laptops are becoming more and more common as the only pc one selects, it would have been better to include mobile processors as well.
Move the mouse around a bit... especially, mouse over the shitfaced woman.
/. still links to that shit?
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
Use Ace's Specmine to search Specint2000 and Specfp2000 data. This is the best frontend I have seen for the data. Keep in mind the details of a system before you start trolling chipA over chipB. Of course, you can also use this to feed such trolls. ;)
New hardware isn't always the most cost effective. Try finding and 64-bit 8-way AMD or Intel box with 4M/cache/proc, 4G/ram, eight FC-AL drives, and three SCSI controllers for only $1600.
Last year's midrange server is this year's workstation, but Tom's advertisers aren't the ones that are selling parts for it. (To be fair, the majority of his readers probably build computers for games, which my workstation's 8-bit framebuffer isn't likely to deliver on.)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Butt this is not even as fast as your Mom "types". hehe.
Note that mere make -j 2 won't pass the flags to sub-makes. On multi CPU computers I usually put "-j2" in MAKEFLAGS.
The owls are not what they seem
Nobody tries to hide the bias, it's one of the reasons the site is popular.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
I used to overclock, but I don't anymore. It mattered when a medium speed CPU was barely affordable, and then I could ramp it up to being a fast CPU by OCing. And then when CPUs starting getting cheap it turned into a hobby, and I'd buy a new CPU not because I needed extra speed, but because I just wanted to see what I could pull off. I had MEGAHUGE fans all over the place and finally graduated to water cooling. I was even starting to think about cryo stuff. Then one day a year or two ago I bought an XP2000+ for $65 shipped. I even clocked it up for a few days, but it was so fast at stock speed I just couldn't tell a lick of difference. Stuff happened either instantly, or instantly. The only delays on my system, were non-CPU related. Now today, for practically no money at all, I can have a rediculously fast CPU, or a rediculously fast CPU, depending on whether or not I want to try to clock it. So I don't bother.
One must ask WTF for, it's not as if anyone would notice any differrance while actually doing something else on the computer, other than overclocking per say
Benchmarks run a series of tests designed to give a reproducable score. I have benchmarked several PCs, and proceeded to use them every day for work and play. The benchmark scores were not indicative of actual performance based on real usage. Consider, with a 7200 rpm drive, 256 MB RAM, and a 400 Mz P2, I can render and copy files from partition to partition while surfing the net. Using an "equivalent" AMD processor, the individual processes stall until one is completed. The benchmarks implied similar performance, but the facts are the AMD chips are not nearly as capable as Intel chips, even today.
I specifically asked when the PSU went out if I could just send the PSU. They told me yes. If they had told me to send the whole case I wouldn't have sent them anything and I wouldn't have a negative opinion of them. I just would have bought a 3rd party PSU 2 months ago.
They've failed to uphold their end of the bargain and until they do they'll have a black mark with the BBB. Even the makers of the case told us NewEgg only needed to send us out a new PSU. NewEgg even lied about having the case in stock and didn't promise to send a replacement. They said they'd reimburse me for the case OR send a replacement. As if I could trust them. They're just braindead.
I wonder what they think is worth more: giving me a factory reimbursed PSU that costs them nothing, or a black mark with the BBB that can cost them other customers besides myself and my entire family.
I had a $700 system priced with them.
That replacement PSU that would have cost them nothing to give me has now cost them several thousand dollars. They're completely braindead. Only two other companies have been so dense: CaptialOne and Qwest. Neither of which we do any business with any longer.
Since NewEgg has decided to be dense, they now have someone who actively warns people not to shop with them. Over something that should have been a non issue. It was just a power supply. I'm not losing anything over it. My business is going along just fine. They decided to make an ass of themselves and now they're losing money.
It boggles the mind how they could be so dense. It doesn't matter how many good reviews they've gotten. I can't believe how utterly idiotic they were with dealing with my situation.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
" a 400 Mz P2,"
" the AMD chips are not nearly as capable as Intel chips, even today."
Interesting how the poster talks about modern CPU capabilities, then proceeds to tell us a delightful story about how he had problems using a pair of 5 year old processors.
As for benchmarks being only good for producing reproducable numbers, this is in fact the case for synthetic benchmarks. Most hardware sites now test using actual games, reporting the average framerate received, and test how long it takes to render a given image or sequence, reporting the time taken to do so. Now, what part of "you get 40 frames per second while playing this game if you use this CPU, or 30 frames per second if you use this other CPU." is not "indicative of actual performance based on real usage"?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
if the overclocked processor was an add-on instead of original equipment. Why would you want to buy an over clocked processor that was original equipment, rather than just buy a faster chip?