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Which CPU Is Tops in Price/Performance?

Posted by Zonk on from the zing-for-your-buck dept.

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."

70 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Cheap as Free by mikejz84 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I would say a Pent Pro 200mhz processor, given that most are given away for free now.

    1. Re:Cheap as Free by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 5, Funny
      I would say a Pent Pro 200mhz processor, given that most are given away for free now.
      That's what I run my website on, you insensitive clod!

      (And before you ask, yes, I did get it for free....)
      --
      "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
  2. Processor {Power vs Heat vs GHz} by anandpur · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Almost all power consumed by processor get converted to heat any idea about Power consumed vs work done?

    1. Re:Processor {Power vs Heat vs GHz} by SlimSpida · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To answer this, AMD64 processors typically draw less power, and perform better than their Intel counterparts. Welcome to the mixed up tech world of today, with Intel inside Macintoshes, IBM inside Microsoft hardware, and overheating Intel chips.

    2. Re:Processor {Power vs Heat vs GHz} by angrist · · Score: 5, Funny

      // Mechanical Engineer Rant

      Well ... there is no boundary work, no (mechanical) forces acting over a distance, and no shaft work.

      I'd say that a processor produces ZERO mechanical work.

      When you look at a computer as a whole, you put in electrical power, and get out heat (with only a tiny amount of real 'work' from the fans). So from a thermodynamic standpoint, it's just an overpriced, inefficient spaceheater.

      Always keep that in mind when upgrading ;) // end Mechanical Engineer Rant

    3. Re:Processor {Power vs Heat vs GHz} by Kadin2048 · · Score: 5, Funny

      it's just an overpriced, inefficient spaceheater

      It's funny, I feel the same way about a lot of coworkers.

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    4. Re:Processor {Power vs Heat vs GHz} by pjrc · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Actually, there is a minimum theoretical energy associated with the rate of transition from one logical state to another. It's certainly much less that the relatively large energy stored in the electrostatic field between capacitively coupled conductors, which are charged or discharged with every logic transition in all modern CMOS circuitry. But, according to quantum theory (which I personally find utterly incomprehensible), there is indeed energy associated with the raw transition of information from one state to another.

      Here's an Arstechnica article that's fairly accessible, which discusses this lightly, and goes on to predict the maximum possible computational power if all the mass of a laptop were converted to energy (e=mc^2)... and how long it'll take to get there if Moore's law keeps up.

      Kinda makes me wonder if Gates's law will also keep up?

      But even those no mechanical work is being done, on a macroscopic mechanical engineering perspective, according to quantum theory, logical states are transitioning and there is a minimum theoretical energy associated with their rate of transition, and thus a minimum theoretical power consumption. Of course, to compute this and relate it to a computational task (even just one instuction or even one stage of a pipeline) requires knowing the number of 0 to 1 and 1 to 0 transitions, and possibly considering if those transitions are indeed the minimal approach to implement that particular higher level operation if you don't consider the processor's specific circuit design to be the same as the minimum possible to accompilish the task.

      So the efficiency, specifically the ratio of this minimum possible power consumption to the actual power dissipated by today's CPUs, is likely a very, very small number. But according to quantum theory, it is not zero, even though no "mechanical" work appears to be done.

      --
      PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
    5. Re:Processor {Power vs Heat vs GHz} by hattig · · Score: 5, Funny

      I always wonder why I feel more appreciated at work during winter. :(

    6. Re:Processor {Power vs Heat vs GHz} by Chris+Burke · · Score: 2, Funny

      goes on to predict the maximum possible computational power if all the mass of a laptop were converted to energy (e=mc^2)

      "You have selected 'utilize all rest energy'. This feature will convert your laptop's mass into energy for computation. This will allow your job to complete in the minimal theoretical time as predicted by quantum theory. WARNING: May vaporize you and everything around you. You will have approximately forty two femto-seconds (4.2*10^-14 s) to write the answer down and reach the minimum safe distance of thirty miles.
      Proceed? (Y/N)"

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
  3. Only amd and intel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    By narrowing the field to intel and amd, dont we cut the pie awefully thin?

    What about IBM, Sun, Motorola, Transmeta, and hell even VIA?

    What I'd really like to see is how the "normal" chips stack up in price/performance effeciency vs the "non standard" lineup....

    -GenTimJS

    1. Re:Only amd and intel? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 2, Insightful
      By narrowing the field to intel and amd, dont we cut the pie awefully thin?
      Those two are pretty much it if we're talking game rigs.
      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    2. Re:Only amd and intel? by xrobertcmx · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:Only amd and intel? by RicktheBrick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There is an interesting article at pcworld ( http://pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,122700,pg,3, 00.asp ). It states that both AMD and Intel have low cost 64 bit microprocessors out(AMD Sempron 2200+, Intel Celeron D.) The AMD Sempron cost only $60 so it is less than half the cheapest microprocessor reviewed here. I would like to see one of these reviewed using a 64 bit Linux operating system with only 64 bit programs.

  4. That has to be the coolest unit ever by antifoidulus · · Score: 2, Funny

    What is the metric equivalent of fpsFC/dollar?

    --
    Monstar L
    1. Re:That has to be the coolest unit ever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      fps/euro.

    2. Re:That has to be the coolest unit ever by kurzweilfreak · · Score: 2, Funny

      Probably wouldn't be too useful either, you can only get it to output "42".

      --

      kurzweil_freak

      5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student

      Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.

  5. allow me to save you all the trouble. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There's no clear-cut price/performance leader.

    there, and without cutting it up into pointless pages and appendixes (?!) to generate more ad dollars.

    1. Re:allow me to save you all the trouble. by FidelCatsro · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I had thought it a strange summary actually , After reading through the article the Athalon 64 3000+ was a clear winner by a large margin .. unless I misread some of the results .The only things the AMD chips did badly on were artificial tests.

      They didn't even mention the chip in the summary and it pulverised every other chip
      Defiantly a great buy for your money .

      --
      The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
    2. Re:allow me to save you all the trouble. by AdamWeeden · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, there is a clear-cut leader: AMD

      I noticed that too, but this makes me wonder how fair it was:
      Memory
      AMD: 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS 3200XL (CAS 2-2-2-5)
      Intel: 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS2 Pro (CAS 3-3-3-8)

      Now I am no expert in computer memory these days (I stopped paying attention when DDR hit), but shouldn't the difference in these impact the tests somewhat?

      --
      I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
    3. Re:allow me to save you all the trouble. by nolife · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They covered that as well.
      The real sweet spot here looks to be the Athlon 64 3800+. While lower-cost processors will give you a better frame rate-per-dollar ratio, some of the games tend to get a bit chunky in some titles--Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, for example.

      Bascially, it is cheap and does well in the fps/dollar catagory but the fps is just too low overall to be acceptable in certain applications. An opinion I guess.

      --
      Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
    4. Re:allow me to save you all the trouble. by Deliveranc3 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Intel uses DDR2 which is probably clocked at 667 MHZ as opposed to the 400MHZ of the AMD memory.

      But DDR2 is a big pile of garbage, it was designed to be ultra cheap and junky but somehow the prices never actually came down all we got were a whole bunch of memory maker anti-trust cases while Intel was fed to the dogs.

      AMD is looking at moving over to DDR2 now that it is hitting 800Mhz which might provide something like similar performance to DDR unfortunatly DDR3 is going to hit next year and it is actually supposed to provide a significant increase in performance.

    5. Re:allow me to save you all the trouble. by hattig · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

  6. No clear winner by EggyToast · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I like how after the full analysis, the ultimate result is that there's really no answer. Cheap is slower, expensive is faster. Dual core has poor support in Windows currently.

    Not exactly surprising, but I wonder how much of that is tied to the OS (f'rinstance, dual core kicks ass on OS X for processor-intensive tasks). Similarly, I wonder how much of it is simply benchmarking the wrong kinds of things. Comparing "office productivity" is mostly useless, as they say in the article, yet it still gets benched. Similarly, graphics, while still relying on the CPU, uses the GPU more and more.

    I've found in my own little "tests" that heavy-duty rendering and long-term CPU processes are really where the benchmark tests are at. Fire up something like VirtualDub and compare the time it takes to transcode video files, for instance, or use ffmpegX on Mac OS X. That's where the real CPU tests come into play. Not office and games.

    (I'd also be curious to see what happens if you start switching around operating systems. Test to see if an AMD chip and NVIDIA board is better running a Linux flavor compared to Intel, for instance).

    1. Re:No clear winner by demachina · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think a key conclusion is that ExtremeTech is trying to drive page hits and ad revenue. Strategy, run a bunch of benchmarks, draw no particularly insightful conclusion, get it posted on Slashdot. A horde of page clicks ensue. Oh and a key point put an incredibly small amount of actual information on each page so that your army of unpaid clickers have to page through a dozen Next links to get to the conclusion, all the while probably generating tons of hits on their ads on each new page.

      I pass.

      --
      @de_machina
  7. The Simple Way by Seumas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Once you've decided on which company to go with (and most of us already have and stick with our choices), you look for the most powerful CPU just before the price break. Come on - this is nothing new. This is how people have been picking CPUs for at least a couple decades. And if powe consumption matters to you - and you're only buying a couple of these things and not hundreds - then maybe you should rethink the whole computer thing focus on affording your top ramen or whatever.

  8. Everybody knows the answer: by schwaang · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You buy the fastest CPU you can afford at the time. Stay away from the one or two top-of-the line chips unless you have mad money. And know that in another year you could buy twice the performance for the same price.

    1. Re:Everybody knows the answer: by AuMatar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe you waste money like that. I buy the one that has the best performance/$ rating at all times. THe extra $50-$100 for the next step up buys you no real performance increase. These days the performance is more driven by memory latency and bandwidth than anything else.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    2. Re:Everybody knows the answer: by hswerdfe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ya everybody knows the answer.
      but my answer is diffrent then yours.

      by the Cheepest CPU you can find that will actually do the work you want.
      in my Case AMD 1100 now 4 years old and still strong

      --
      --meh--
    3. Re:Everybody knows the answer: by YA_Python_dev · · Score: 2, Funny

      I usually walk in the shop and ask: "what's the cheapest AMD processor that you have?"

      This works just fine for me.

      --
      There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
    4. Re:Everybody knows the answer: by Nintendork · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Up until about three months ago, my computer consisted of a P2-350 (Came with the shitty QDI BrillianX-1S mobo for $35 about 4 years ago), 386MB of RAM (Mostly thrown together from salvaged systems), Geforce 4 Ti 4200 ($80 a year ago), a $50 case, a good $60 power supply, an ATA133 PCI card I got for free with a drive I bought at work, an NEC DL DVD-RW ($37 on NewEgg), an 80GB 7200 RPM drive with 8MB buffer, and my old 17" Sony Trinitron I got 8 years ago which is a constant reminder why paying an obsene amount of money or anything more than enough to get you by for that matter is a complete waste. Basically, I just upgrade a part when I find that it slows me down in what I do. I value my time. Fortunately, the CPU/FSB/and memory speed is the least of my worries since I don't play games on my computer or do anything else CPU intensive. Most people look and say "Oh my god, how do you survive on that", but they just don't understand where the real bottlenecks lie. In normal use, the hard drive and a lack of system memory or VRAM are the only real killers. The part that I'll pay the most for is a fast hard drive. The part I'll upgrade last is the motherboard. For those wondering what I got three months ago, I got a P3-850 to run on my current mobo and memory and a larger 7200 RPM drive with 8MB buffer (I really got into newsgroups, heh). As a matter of fact, I may have hit my first real need for a faster CPU so I can run the par files faster when repairing downloads or to compress movies.

  9. Cheaper means better performance/price by dtfinch · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No surprise there. Now if they could add celerons and semprons to the benchmark, we might see which is really the better value, otherwise they've wasted a lot of their own time and money.

  10. but no analysis of performance / $ with wattage? by Surt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You really need to look at your long term costs ... the power to run your computer in the long run is likely to account for a significant fraction of the overall price, so you should factor that in.

    --
    "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  11. Buy Cheap, Buy Often by saterdaies · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It seems it would be more cost effective simply to buy a cheaper processor and upgrade your system more often than it would be to spend on the more expensive processors.

  12. AMD64 3000+ by laffer1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
    1. Re:AMD64 3000+ by Shivetya · · Score: 4, Informative

      and leave it to AMD to drop that chip, AMD64 3000+ processors are no longer being produced. The new low end is the 3200+

      http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoo m/0,,51_104_609,00.html

      It has been known in performance circles that the 3000+ Venice cores were ideal overclockers. They had the best price/mhz ratio as well. (and yes I have one)

      --
      * Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
    2. Re:AMD64 3000+ by ackthpt · · Score: 2, Informative
      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.

      This is precisely why I bought one of these.

      It's an upgrade to 64 bits, it's cheap, it runs cool, it uses less power then the CPU I currently have. It's a cheapskates delight. :-)

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  13. Re:dual core cpu for amd 64 ? by Kobun · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  14. article cliff notes... by i7dude · · Score: 5, Informative

    ads...
    words...
    benchmarks...
    ads...

    conclusion: there is no conclusion.

    this article was the longest bit of nothing ive ever read.

    dude.

  15. rule of thumb by yagu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I haven't been deep in numbers for processor performance over the last couple of years. I've found the processing speed to be so fast lately that the software I use or care about runs FAST on most modern processors.

    That said, when someone asks me for advice, unless they have some specific high-end gaming requirement, the only advice I offer is don't buy a Celeron!

    Other than the poor performing Celeron I suspect most processing bottlenecks today are more from insufficient memory, bad or slow bus architectures, network latencies, and disk I/O bandwidth.

    Frustrating to me is the non-sequitur naming of technology, I don't know if it's done intentionally to confuse the buying public. A friend of mine saw the ads for some manufacturer's laptop with Centrino technology (which really isn't about processor anyway), and went to her favorite electronics store and got talked into a laptop with the Celeron (mistakenly remembering the "C" word incorrectly).

    I made her take it back and exchange for Centrino.

    1. Re:rule of thumb by wpmegee · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      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 ndex.htm

  16. I'm happy with my setup by RiotXIX · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  17. Am I reading it wrong, or is it flawed? by Enigma_Man · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They say price/performance higher-is-better... Higher would mean more price for less performance... I don't understand how they're coming up with that metric, maybe they're actually saying performance/price, but they don't know how ratios work, or am I just missing something important?

    -Jesse

    --
    Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
  18. Given away by whom? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Given away by whom?

    I recently got an old server from my office for free. It was dual capable, so I figured I'd stick another PII 450 in there for fun. What could it cost, like $10?

    Called up Dell to make sure that it could handle the 450, and I was offered to buy it from them. Get ready for the price:

    $457.

    That doesn't include installation or anything. I literally laughed out loud and the guy on the other end said "Yeah, you should probably get it somewhere else."

    I went to pricewatch and I got it for $12 with shipping. For that price, I could have bought a whole fleet of PII 450s...maybe that's not a bad idea...

    1. Re:Given away by whom? by BJH · · Score: 3, Funny

      Dell CPU price secret formula: $1 per MHz + $7 postage.

    2. Re:Given away by whom? by Sylver+Dragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's not uncommon. When a company doesn't want to carry/sell a product, instead of saying no, they just price themselves out of the market. That way: a) The customer never hears a, "no", which is something to avoid. b) If someone actually does buy from you at that price, what the hell, you made a buttload.
      I ran into this on my home printer. I bought an HP 2550 printer (for doing all of the printing for my wedding). It comes standard with 64MB of RAM. This is plenty until you start sending graphics to the printer. So to stop the "Out of Memory" errors, I decided to upgrade the memory. The printer would handle an extra 128MB SODIMM.
      Price from HP: US$800
      My response: Bullshit!
      Price from Kingston: US$50
      And, it only took me moments to find the right part with Kingston's website (they have a really nice memory finder). Also, Kingston offers a lifetime warranty and puts out a solid product, so no worries about a fly by night company.
      So, in the end, I got what I wanted and HP got to stay out of the memory business, without ever explicitly telling me "no".

      --
      Necessity is the mother of invention.
      Laziness is the father.
    3. Re:Given away by whom? by thebdj · · Score: 2, Interesting

      i think the reason most companies do this is because they expect most the people looking for a PII 450 to be some unlucky sap who still has that running as their server at work and they know no better then to pay Dell $457 for a new CPU because they HAVE to keep the server up. Sometimes it is said how dense some IT departments and their managers are when it comes to parts...

      --
      "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
  19. A useless price/performance measure by Eukariote · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The review calculates price/performance based on the price of the CPUs instead of total system cost. A useless measure, since a CPU on its own cannot do anything useful. It also hides the added system costs for CPUs that consume a lot of power: larger PSU, more cooling and noise reduction measures. And then there are the additional platform costs for CPUs that only work with particular chipsets or expensive motherboards. Never mind the increment to your electricity bill.

    What this smells like is yet another bullshit metric invented by the Intel marketing department. One wonders how much these review sites get paid for prostituting themselves.

  20. The analysis is nonsense by Saunalainen · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Suppose processor A costs $100 and gives 100 units of performance, but processor B costs $200 and gives 150 units of performance. Then the cost per performance is 1.0 unit/$ for processor A and 0.75 unit/$ for processor B. Right? WRONG!

    Both of these processors need $500 of ancillary equipment in order to function. Therefore, a system with processor A gives 100 units for $600, or 0.167 units/$, whereas processor B gives 150 units for $650, or 0.231 units/$. This analysis shows that processor B is better value when speccing out a new system

    But what about the case where you're just upgrading your cpu? Well, in that case it's moot to compare the AMD with the Intel processors, as you would need a new motherboard too. But simply dividing the performance by the cost of the cpu is meaningless here, too, because staying with your existing processor ($0) would give you a performance/price ratio of infinity.

    Conclusion: you have to calculate your total outlay in order to figure out which cpu is the better value.

    1. Re:The analysis is nonsense by Jeff+Molby · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You also need a house to put each of them in. Do you add that overhead to?

      I'm not saying your analysis is wrong, but both approaches are valid. Ideally, you should only factor in the equipment that varies between your two configs (probably processor, motherboard, and memory). There's no reason the case, keyboard, and mouse should be factored in.

  21. Half the fastest CPU? by Malc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I haven't bought a new CPU for years. In the past I would look at the fastest CPU on the market, and then buy one that runs at about half the speed. It helps to also buy a motherboard that supports faster CPUs.

    For example, I bought a new system back in 2000. I think the top of the range Intel chips then were P3s @ 700-800 MHz. I bought two P2-450s for my computer. A few years later I bought two P3-850s, which was the max the motherboard would take. For those four CPUs, I paid less than the price of a single P3-550 back when I was originally shopping around.

    Buying top-of-the-range CPUs is just a waste of money. Gamers are the biggest fools of the bunch with their obsession to have the latest and greatest.

  22. Re:Good idea but ultimately useless by Jozer99 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You might be suprised there. I have seem similar tests on graphics cards, and the result is not the same. Basically, the lowest end cards (sub $100) are renamed 3 generation old crap (GeForce MX4000 is a geForce2). There is a sweet spot somewhere around $150 or so. Above that, the cards performance increase decreases quite fast, and you are usually within 15% of the performance of a $500 at around $250, which you could say is the sweet spot for gamers.

  23. Price vs Performance by Wells2k · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I work in a high performance computing center, and we just recently acquired a new cluster. One of the major items that we looked at was the amount of heat that is generated by the systems, as cooling systems for large amounts of equipment can be quite costly. We went with AMD dual core systems because we were able to load up with twice the number of systems and cores (thus a 4X overall improvement in number of processors) for a heat load that was actually less than the old system we had that was running Intel Xeon processors.

    Shifting to a DC powergrid helped a lot too.

  24. Re:Best price/performance: A used computer by CDMA_Demo · · Score: 2, Insightful



    I have a pile of 286s you might be interested in, one owner, only used them on Sundays...

    Awesome! Most people don't realize that the automobile industry has little in common with computer technologies. The comparison doesn't hold. A new and shiny car can perform as nicely as an older well-kept car. The same doesn't go for computers.

    As with cars, people seem to want to pay through the nose for something new and shiny.

    Whoever modded this guy up as "insightful" is an idiot.

  25. Do you feel lucky, punk? by dangitman · · Score: 2, Funny

    Step 1: Rescue 386 with Windows from Dumpster Step 2: Give to relative Step 3: Upgrade phone system to handle influx of calls Step 4: Commit suicide after seeing the horror of it all

    --
    ... and then they built the supercollider.
  26. Overkill by COMON$ · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Given that most CPUs are overkill for non hard core gamers or encoders. Anyone can be more than happy with a AMD XP 3000. And right now those are going for pretty cheap, I think Tigerdirect was running a combo sale 3K and mobo for $100. And when you notice that it is slim picking to find a app that needs more than 1.8Ghz, I would say you are doing pretty well there.

    Sure you can solve little man's syndrome by buying an "efficient" powerhouse Processor, but what good is it when you wont see any difference 99% of the time and you can save $400.

    --
    CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
  27. Re:Sometimes free costs too much by Professor_UNIX · · Score: 5, Funny

    The trouble with older CPUs is that they lose power later in life as the magic smoke wears out. A 3.6GHz Pentium 4 is basically the same speed as a 486DX2/66 was in 1992, but the 486 "seems" slower today because the magic smoke has escaped so it isn't as powerful anymore.

  28. Re:Interesting by Draco_es · · Score: 2, Informative

    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).

  29. Re:Sometimes free costs too much by Schemat1c · · Score: 5, Funny

    The trouble with older CPUs is that they lose power later in life as the magic smoke wears out. A 3.6GHz Pentium 4 is basically the same speed as a 486DX2/66 was in 1992, but the 486 "seems" slower today because the magic smoke has escaped so it isn't as powerful anymore.

    Sounds like you have partook a bit of the "magic smoke" yourself.

    --

    "Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
  30. Re:Unless you have the money.... by bigman2003 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Excellent gaming commentary from a guy who advertises a coupons site.

    --
    No reason to lie.
  31. Not strange at all... by bradleyland · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > I had thought it a strange summary actually

    It's customary for review sites not to take sides. How else will they continue to get free product to test?

  32. Re:Unless you have the money.... by QMO · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But, people don't buy/build The Ultimate Gaming Machine(TM) to improve their game stats, they buy it so they can have The Ultimate Gaming Machine(TM).

    So, if an extra $362.00 will get you a faster processor, and $574.00 will get you the better video card, it doesn't matter whether your skills require you to be inside the barn to shoot it.

    You may notice that case mods don't improve performance at all, but people still spend money on them.

    Disclaimer: If I had more money I'd buy spiffy hardware too.

    --
    Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
  33. Most people by merlin_jim · · Score: 2, Interesting

    replying have said these metrics don't have a lot of value to them (in one way or another)

    I disagree

    But I'm a rendering geek

    I was VERY happy to see the POVRAY price/performance (technically performance/price) breakdown... and will definitely be getting an Athlon 64 XP when I build my system... the 3000+ model if these numbers are still valid when I get the loot

    --
    I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
  34. older CPUs by zogger · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think for most folks casual home use, an older CPU is fine, just throw lots more RAM at it and upgrade the video card. Unil a few months ago that's all I was using was a PP200, it worked fine with modern linux, at least, for my purposes it did. I'd still be using it if it wasn't for extremely crappy local grid power, fried two machines so I just snagged a cheap barebones system and swapped my drives out.

  35. Overclockability by stoanhart · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  36. Significant flaw with their math skews results by Thagg · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.
  37. Why no Sempron or Celeron? by EnglishTim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's odd that they've not included any Semprons or Celerons in there...

  38. (performance ^ 2) / $ by smithmc · · Score: 2, Interesting


    When I buy a new CPU, I use a slightly different metric. Bang-for-buck is important to me, but so is raw performance. So I multiply the two together: (units of performance) * (units of performance per dollar) = (perf units ^ 2 / dollars). This tends to yield a maximum at a couple of speed grades below the highest available, which is the point at which the prices really start to take off.

    --
    Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
  39. Why didn't they consider power consumption? by pclminion · · Score: 3, Insightful
    At current average energy prices (which are only increasing at this point), it costs about $7 a year for each 10 watts of continuous power. So if two processors' power consumptions differ by 50 watts, that's a savings of $35 a year. This might seem insignificant but it's enough to shift some of their results around.

    As energy prices climb the effect will only become more pronounced. Selecting a processor which is cheaper and faster but also happens to consume as much power as a small city is NOT a cost effective solution. Why blind ourselves to this?

  40. Re:Sometimes free costs too much by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In a way he is right. The programing for a 486dx2 was leaner and faster then the stuff availible today. It seems that you upgrade a slow and slugish computer for a faster new one and after years of program upgrades, the bloated newer stuff apears to run as slow as the computers you upgraded. Windoes runs slower (even though they say it is faster) with every upgrade, office applications tend to do the same. Even antivirus (especialy symantecs offerings) end up using more resources and cycle and give the apearance or running like an older computer.

    In fact, i just pulled out my 486SX/33 computer running windows 3.11. loaded a couple programs i used then and still use today. Even thought the newer programs have become more powerfull and such, the 3.11 486 loaded a program at about the same speed and apeared more respncive to menu commands then the new program on my P4/2.8gig machine.

    Maybe the magic smoke is bloated software that seems to find its way into updates and such.

  41. You must consider Pentium M and power consumption by demiseofman · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.