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Core 2 Extreme 40% faster than Pentium EE 965?
Marc writes "As far as I know, this is the first time that Intel has talked about what we can expect from its new gaming CPU, Core 2 Extreme. For once, there is no word on power consumption on this new chip, but Intel talks about raw speed and a 40% gain over the current 3.73 GHz Extreme Edition 965 - which would be rather impressive and could indicate a problem for AMD. In this interview with TG Daily, Intel also claims that a Core 2 Extreme-based enthusiast PC will leave the pixel power of a Playstation 3 in the dust. Gamers, this appears to become the most exciting year for you in a long time!"
The article summary states:
"Intel also claims that a Core 2 Extreme-based enthusiast PC will leave the pixel power of a Playstation 3 in the dust.
but then I also see in the article:
"[I don't know off the top of my head] the number of polygons it can draw versus a Cell, but I think it's going to be higher, because there's a lot more bandwidth on the quad system than on the Cell system."
That doesn't sound like much of a claim to me.
x86 isn't less efficient. In some cases its even more efficient- you need less cache on common instructions. And some very complex things can be done in silicon with 1 instruction, saving overhead of multiple instuctions. FOr example, memcpy and memcmp are single instructions.
x86 is more complex. Its much harder to write a decoder for, and more difficult to debug the hardware. That adds cost (and a lot of extra transistors in the decode phase). But its a matter of complexity and cost, not efficiency.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
AMD's Athlon 64 is 36% faster than Pentium 965 EE in UT2004 http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&m odel1=238&chart=71&model2=329
Is Intel's new Core 2 Extreme only as fast as AMD's FX-57?
Okay ... I admit I'm not that familiar with the internals of Windows, and I also understand that (at least here on /.), Windows is widely seen as a product of programmers who were deprived of oxygen during critical stages of fetal development. But in what universe does having icons in your Start menu translate to having more running processes?
That's like the people who think their computer is slow because they have too many icons on the desktop...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You'd have to pry my mouse and keyboard out of my cold, dead hands.. but on the other hand, this Red Steel trailer does make the first person gameplay with the Wii controller look pretty damn fun. (Then again, having to freeze time to tag each location to shoot the pistol is a cool effect, but it just makes me think how with a mouse you'd have those 6 shots off before the Wii controller had even tagged one of those guys)
Actually it's the "Start Up" program group, which means background tasks and stuff. Obviously when you have half-a-zillion background apps sucking CPU like only poorly-written Windows apps can do, you're going to lose some gaming performance.
I don't game much, yet I strip my background processes to the bare minimum.. If nothing is wiggling onscreen, and I'm not running any apps, I want that CPU activity to stay at Zero. Windows follows the "include everything" school of thought, loading services that most people never use, but for that odd windows admin who uses it in a Fortune-500 network, it's there waiting for him. Better for MS to waste CPU cycles invisibly, than have to deal with the average shit-brained corporate Windows IT guy trying to fix a problem he doesn't understand, thus can't explain, involving a daemon whose name he doesn't even know.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The problem with this is that power requirements will impact performance when you've reached a certain envelope. You can only reliably deliver so much power across the pins to a CPU and it's even more difficult to filter that power so that transcients/ripples don't cause all the signals that it powers to become noisy. At that point, you've hit a wall and can't make that processor run faster. So yes, lower power is important, because it means you can add more to boost performance.