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!"

Comments

they should have said PC CPUs

[the_2nd_coming]

there is no PPC 970 on there.

Re:Preferred sources for technical information?

[arth1]

Anandtech is generally the best place to find information on anything you're looking for and is where all the cool kids go. They go above and beyond the call of duty in all of their reviews, and their monitor reviews are unsurpassed.

A few other popular sources of information include:

HardOCP
Dan's Data
X-bit Labs
Ars Technica ... or you can just wait, and sooner or later it's going to be slammed on /. :-)

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:POSTED PREVIOUSLY BY A DIFFRENT AUTHOR, MOD DOW

[Stigmata669]

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

This article is a bunch of crap.

[VeXteR]

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....

Re:This article is a bunch of crap.

[rgmoore]

Actually he didn't miss that point at all. This was mentioned in the very end of the article under the heading "Conclusion: Common Sense Prevails". Some of the comments there include:

Over and above the clear test results, our price-performance analysis clearly shows that the added performance of CPUs in the upper bracket bears no sensible relation to the extra price. ...

In the gaming sector, many processor makers are dogged by the fact that only a few programs need really fast CPUs. One reason for this development is the displacement of graphics-intensive operations to the graphics card; another is the ongoing tense competition between AMD and Intel that long ago outstripped the requirements of modern standard software in terms of performance. ...

Novices should certainly consider the AthlonXP 2600+ or 2800+, since a serviceable platform with 512 MB of memory is inexpensive and will do nicely for the next 18-24 months. ...

The AMD Athlon64 FX and Intel's Pentium 4 Extreme Edition are still status symbols for the computing jet set. After all, you can pick up a complete and high-performance system for between $750 and $1,000, which as our benchmarks show, also offer a superior price/performance ratio.

That certainly sounds like somebody who understands that most ordinary users will get all the performance they need by buying a cheaper processor, especially one of the notably cheaper AMD models.

Re:Preferred sources for technical information?

[Loki_1929]

"A few other popular sources of information include:"

Not to mention Ace's if you're really into all the nitty gritty details of things. They do outstanding reviews and technical articles, but can get pretty heavy on the technical details. So far, Ace's is the only place I've found that actually goes over my head from time to time. I do enjoy the challenge. ;)