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Which CPU Is Tops in Price/Performance?
mikemuch writes "You can spend 150 bucks or over a thousand on a processor, but how do you know which gives you the most power for your money? It's a little like MPG for CPUs. ExtremeTech's Loyd Case does extensive benchmarking on twenty-three current desktop processor flavors from AMD and Intel. While of course most folks won't make dollar-efficiency the sole basis for their chip decisions, it's interesting to see which CPUs get you, for example, the most frames per second in Far Cry for a dollar." From the article: "Take PC games, for example. The cheapest CPU available may have the best frame rate per dollar ratio. But you still need an adequate frame rate for an optimum gaming experience, and the cheapest CPU may not deliver that. On the other hand, office applications are generally not as sensitive to raw performance, and the lower cost processor may be better. It's all in what you do."
I found it interesting how well the AMD 3000+ did in the benchmarks. On almost every benchmark it had the highest score for price/performance in 3d and gaming related tests. It seems like buying this cpu and putting money in a better video card are the smart choice. I'm basing this on the fact that most gamers go through quicker upgrade cycles anyway.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Yes, as long as you are on Socket 939. If so, check your motherboard manufacturer's page for your motherboard, get the newest BIOS for it and flash the board up, and pick up a new X2 (might I suggest http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?Pr oductCode=80721-1 ) to pop in. You might double check that your power supply can bear the extra load.
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conclusion: there is no conclusion.
this article was the longest bit of nothing ive ever read.
dude.
I'm fairly confident that I'll never have to uprgade again. I'm running on 2ghz, and it's more than adequate for my linux window manager - it runs perfectly adequately. In fact probably 500mhz would have done a suitable job. If you're not a gamer or a windows user, then you shouldn't need that much to run an eye candy laden os. I'm fairly sure the only thing pushing the cpu market is the gaming industry, and the necessity for Microsoft to push a new generation of their products in coming years. CPU speeds have increased usefully over the last 15 years, but I can't come up with any home-computer user applications (apart from gaming) that would need more.
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
SPARCs are supposed to be multicore soon
SPARC's are multicore now (dual core). They are supposed to be massively multicore soon(eight cores per die/four threads per core on 2006-1Q).
Oh noes A Celeron! It might have *gasp* half the cache! Centrino is just a buzzword for a Pentium-M Processor with a certain kind of intel wireless chipset. Big fucking deal. And guess what else? Celeron-M processors are exactly identical to Pentium Ms other than the cache and clock speeds. Same pipeline, same architecture, same power-saving features. Same great performance per-clock compared to the P4. Celeron Ms are more than fast enough for people just wanting to do office stuff. They're a perfectly fine value processor - not a high-performance one - and certainly not something to be avoided like the plague.
/ i ndex.htm
Perhaps you should look at these two links before you post another ill-informed post bashing an intel processor.
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/celeron_m
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/pentiumm/
I've used a Via and unless I had a specific function in mind I wouldn't do so again. I think Transmeta got out of the processor market and Motorola spun off the processor division which is call Freescale I think.
"you are usually within 15% of the performance of a $500 at around $250"
4 4
Nonsense
http://www.pricewatch.com/
7800GTX: $460
6800GT: $280
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2575&p=
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2466&p=
F.E.A.R
7800GTX: 53 fps (+65%)
6800GT: 32 fps
Battlefield 2
7800GTX: 79 fps (+108%)
6800GT: 38 fps
They left out overclockability
Yes, I know not everyone overclocks, but with chips that clock as easy as the A64's, you almost have to consider it. For example, the 3200+ came out as second place for performance/$ in every test, beat only by the 3000+. However, my 3200+ is currently running stable and cool at 2.6 Ghz and has a 512K cache.
This puts it between the 4000+ and the FX-55. And my OC is very typical. As a matter of fact, it is low. Just about any venice 3200+ will hit that speed easily, and many will reach 2.7+Ghz. This puts the peformance/$ WAY up there.
The 3000+ would probably also beat it. For some reason when I purchased my CPU, I forgot that I could run my RAM on dividers, so I ordered the 3200+ for its higher multiplier, which is completely useless with any modern motherboard, since RAM speed and CPU speed are independant of each other.
So basically, I am saying get a 3000+, since it is the best chip out there for for performance/$, and almost matches the top of the heap for raw performance as well.
You seem confused about bus speeds.
What you commonly see as an "800MHz" FSB speed for an Intel system is, in fact, a 200MHz bus that can transfer 4 times a second, and you get 800 Mega-Transfers per second (MT/s). The Intel bus is 64-bits wide, so that is 6.4GB/s of data transfer.
The AMD interconnect is 1000MHz HyperTransport. This is the correct clock speed, but HyperTransport is DDR, meaning it transfers twice a second. Therefore the AMD bus transfers at 2000MT/s. However the AMD interconnect is 16-bits in each direction, or 4GB/s in each direction (for 8GB/s in total - about 23% more than the Intel bus).
Of course, AMD has the memory controller on the processor, leading to massive improvements in memory access latency, and less stress on the interconnect for CPU-Memory accesses.
From what I've seen, AMD motherboards of the equivalent feature-set to an Intel motherboard are significantly cheaper. Often by around $50. So you have to take the price of the motherboard into account - and you'd choose a different motherboard for a 3000+ than for a 4800+.
The article is useful for nothing apart from "don't buy a 3700+ because the 3800+ is a much better deal". They should have done, in addition, the entire system cost/performance graphs because that is what really matters.
It was an interesting article, with tons of good data (and, to their credit, they include the raw data without comment in the appendix (ok, it would have been a lot nicer if they included it in a spreadsheet-friendly format, but ...))
Unfortunately, you can't do anything with a bare processor. You need a system to plug it in to, and that system costs money.
If you assume that the disk/video/case/fans/power-supply/motherboard/OS package would cost $600 or so, then that would have the effect of adding $600 to the cost of each processor for a system that can do actual work. For example, in the 3Ds Max 7 Rendering Test, their calculated best performer was the Intel Pentium 4 630 or Intel Pentium D 820 -- relatively cheap processors.
But, adding the $600 to the cost makes the best performer the Athlon 64 X2 3800 (the cheapest of the Athlon dual proc chips.) The other X2 chips round comprise four of the next five places as well.
I think that adding a minimal system cost makes for a far more useful comparison -- and it does show the value of the new dual-proc systems. Not too surprisingly, the Athlon 64 FX chips still the worst price-performance solution -- they're just too expensive for what you get.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
As previous stated, you must consider total cost of ownership. Pentium M desktops are not common yet but if you check the benchmark sites, you will see that the 2.1GHz Pentium M out performs the P4 running at 3.0GHz. And at 1/3 the power consumption. Intel Engineers knew the P4 was a dog when they ran the first simulation, but upper management didn't want to wait 2 months and spend millions to rework the core, so they used marketing to push the product and their marketing department should all get raises, because it worked. They used the lame excuse to techies that the pipeline is designed to work better at higher speeds, so the clock speed race had begun. When the PM are available I'm scrapping my P4, getting more perfomance, lower electric bills, lower medical bills (later in life from EMI)and leaving the dog behind. As for AMD, I am a big fan of the underdog with the superior product, AMD64, but it still is a little too pricey and sucks a lot of power also. It would be my fallback if the Pentium M does not make it to market soon. The Notebook manufactures want all of the PM production and are fighting to keep it. We will see.