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Core Duo - Intel's Best CPU?
Bender writes "How good is Intel's Core Duo mobile processor? Good enough that Apple chose to put it in the iMac, and good enough that Intel chose to base its next generation microprocessor architecture on it. But is it already Intel's best CPU? The Tech Report has managed to snag a micro-ATX motherboard for this processor and compared the Core Duo directly to a range of mobile and desktop CPUs from AMD and Intel, including the Athlon 64 X2 and the Pentium Extreme Edition. The results are surprising. Not only is the Core Duo's performance per watt better than the rest, but they conclude that its 'outright performance is easily superior to Intel's supposed flagship desktop processor, the Pentium Extreme Edition 965.'"
Can we just all agree on "this is Intel's best chip so far"?
I thought this was commonly known or assumed. Is this news to many people?
I thought that the only reason the P4 had not been totally abandoned already was that it takes time to switch directions in such a massive company. (and with so many partners that design around your product)
...actually show ANYTHING really well, then it's the absolute neglibility of recent synthetic benchmarks. Looking at the numbers SiSoft Sandra spills out, the clocked-to-the-brim Netburst-cores should take the performance-crown with ease in FPU and ALU-applications alike. In reality though, said CPUs hardly matter at all when it's about uncompromising peak-performance. I fail to understand why benchmark-suites this far away from reality still matter in reviews like this.
Sad, in an awkward way.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
Core Duo is a 32bit processor.
Athlon 64 X2 is a 64bit processor.
I care not how much power it uses or how well it runs Word or whatever else they are doing to test these things.
The Core Duo cannot do the same things the Athlon 64 X2 can. Largely because (gasp) it cannot run 64bit code.
What the hell is the point of this comparison?
Say bad words about my book, in cold oatmeal, or I shall sue!
My old Sony VAIO never got as hot as my MacBook Pro does, and it is something that should be considered.
How important is heat, really? Assuming that the machine has been engineered sufficiently well to prevent the processor from melting down, I think it's a minor consideration at most. I agree that my MBP can get hot, and I knew that from reviews before I bought it. But I never even considered not buying one because of the heat, and I can't imagine that heat is a serioius consideration to 99.9% of laptop buyers. And no consideration at all to desktop buyers (and in server rooms where it is a consideration... they'll have an A/C system anyway).
I doubt Intel is going to lose any customers because their chip gets too hot.
"But Yonah also supports the group of 13 new instructions known as SSE3, handles some SSE2 instructing like Shuffle and Unpack up to 30% faster, and is capable of using its instruction-grouping abilities (known as micro-ops fusion) on some SSE instructions, improving overall throughput."
SSE3 has some very nice hardware thread synchronization instructions. These are important (and AMD has them now). As for the instruction grouping, that sounds rather suspiciously like the double dispatch operations that were added to Opteron:
"Appendix C of Opteron's Optimization Guide specifies to which class each and every instruction belongs. Most 128 bit SSE and SSE2 instructions are implemented as double dispatch instructions. Only those that can not be split into two independent 64 bit operations are handled as Vector Path (Micro Code) instructions. Those SSE2 instructions that operate on only one half of a 128 bit register are implemented as a single (Direct Path) instruction."
Assuming AMD can tune Turion64s to be more power friendly, they'll be able to best Intel's fancy new Core Duo. If they can't, then Intel may be the best game in town for the first time in a decade (assuming they price competitively).
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The new Merom-based products (Conroe is the desktop version) were *NOT* designed from the ground up. The Ars Technica article repeated some Intel marketspeak that overstates the case. Merom is a major revision of Yonah, but is derived from the same code base. In fact, it is still technically a derivative of the P6 family that began with the Pentium Pro 10 years ago.
This is more than just a matter of semantics. The major micro-architectural features that defined the P6 are still present in Merom. The P4 architecture (may it rest in peace) was a brand new architecture -- Merom is not.
From the article: ...The T2600 can't quite take the overall performance crown from the likes of the Athlon 64 FX-60 or the X2 4800+, but jeez, it's startlingly close....
Given the T2600 runs at 2.16ghz
Compare this to
AMD 4800+ 2.4ghz
it really does seem the 'Mhz = performance' is well and truely over...and for the first time Intel seems to be saying to AMD "We too can play your Mhz mean 'nuffin game'"
Again...the test results maybe affected by the chipsets used for the different processor architectures, which in turn affected the the types of memory used (DDR2/DDR) etc etc...
The parent is the worst comment I have ever seen. Maybe my morning coffee hasn't kicked in yet.
/.
"It might perform well now, but how long will it last under a load? Will something happen over time that they do not forsee?"
Of AMD Competition? Of continuous 100% CPU utilization? Of OEM bumblings putting on an improperly rated Heatsink fan? If there is any faith in Moore's law, then we will all come to the simple conclusion that this chip is not going to be the best forever. However, is it the best right now? Yes.
Performance per watt, per cycle, overall execution speed have proven this chip is the best x86-derieved architectures. This is a great accomplishment for Intel who's been on the ropes for quite some time.
Now, to say, "Well, they may randomly explode because Intel pushed the envelope too far, I'm going to sit on my hands for another 6 months and wait out the war," is just caution to a fault. Yes, things will happen that people don't forsee. Will it explode? Will it have catastrophic microcode failures which cause hardware damage? Maybe. But then again, you'd just be sitting on your hands waiting for the off chance that you are right.
p.s.
Long time reader, first time poster. Congratulations your post dragged me kicking and screaming into
I have a dell inspiron 9300. They designed it so that the fans don't go up to high speed until it gets really hot (to keep the noise down I assume). Unfortunately, that means it reaches lap scalding temperatures before the fan comes on to cool it off. So although it is a 'laptop' it cannot actually be used on the lap for more than 15 minutes without injury. So heat does matter to some extent. My next laptop will not have this problem, because I won't buy one that does.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
They have pathetic battery life after all the bragging Jobs did at last years WWDC.
The impression I got was that Jobs was trying really hard to avoid mentioning the battery life; the MacBook Pro was still in development and all they had were prototype models, so they actually didn't know what the battery life would be; they were guessing it should be "about the same" (as the PowerBook G4).
They are slow. My old G4 laptops kick the shit out it for media type tasks, about the same for single thread performance, and of course are slower for multi-threaded tasks.
Are you running all native applications? If not, it's not a fair comparison (and if you really need apps that aren't available natively yet, maybe you shouldn't have bought one yet). If you are running native apps, your experience seems to disagree with most reports I've heard.
It seems the speed most people are claiming for the MacBook Pros is due more to the faster video cards and the silky smooth desktop acceleration people weren't use to with their old G4 machines.
I'm really looking forward to this.
It is depressing to think that if Apple hadn't pissed off IBM that we could be running much faster/cooler dual core 970 PowerBooks right now.
If Apple hadn't pissed off IBM? When the G5 was released, Apple announced that they had 2GHz then, but would have 3GHz in one year. What was Apple supposed to do when that never happened? Just wait and hope that IBM figured out how to make something work?
Instead dual boot AMD Windows/Linux systems are looking like the only option for people who don't want to pay twice as much for x86 hardware.
Show me a laptop with comparable specs for half the price of a MacBook Pro. I think you're trolling.
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
How important is heat, really?
Extremely important.
It's blindingly obvious why it is important in laptops - not only because of battery lifetime, but also because the cooling assembly size and weight depends on TDP, and of course for user comfort considerations. Intel started a mobile CPU revolution with the Pentium M, so it's a little disappointing to hear that its latest successor doesn't improve further.
It's just as blindingly obvious why heat is terribly important for servers, where rack heat and power density has long been the limiting factor to packing more servers into less space.
On desktops, to me personally, heat is a premier consideration when choosing any chip. I have no need for something twice as fast as my current CPU if it consumes twice the amount of power. I expect better.
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But if the CPU architecture really is that good, it should be easy to make a cool low voltage version that still has enough power to.. say... run Windows Vista (scnr ;)
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Are you sure about that? I would think it's just the opposite. This article gives the costs of the AMD 65nm facility in Dresden as $2.4 billion over 4 years. I'd be surprised if the digital design expenditure would look significant in comparison. That said, it looks like the fab should come online this year, so Intel won't have that advantage for long. If they were just starting to develop a 65nm facility now, I'd be very worried for them, though.