Value Propositions of Current CPUs Put to the Test

J. Dzhugashvili writes "Processors are typically compared by their performance alone. However, the folks at The Tech Report have put together an article that attempts to quantify the value propositions of AMD's and Intel's latest processors. The article takes 16 processors through an extensive battery of tests that range from gaming and video encoding to Folding@Home and energy efficiency, and examines the value they offer in each. The results may surprise you."

Comments

Wait for the next price drop

[cerqon]

In a few weeks the E6600 will be at $170, quite a bargain...

Re:Wait for the next price drop

[pushing-robot]

And the Q6600 will be $266, not $530. It'll be a much different playing field.

At least they lay out all the figures so you can recalculate price/performance when the big drop hits.

Re:Wait for the next price drop

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Coincidentally, I started serious research into building my next PC last weekend. I initially looked into the E6600, Asus P5B, DDR2 combination that has been popular in recent months, but was rapidly warned off by others because the next round of hardware is starting to hit.

As an aside for anyone else who's in the same boat and hasn't found the info yet: Intel 3-series chipset motherboards are already available, 6x50 Core 2 chips are due any time now, and DDR3 RAM is starting to filter through the retail channels. All of these like a 1333MHz front-side bus, which potentially brings quite large performance benefits. There are advantages in terms of power consumption and overclocking potential as well. Also, they bring major price cuts in older kit: one retailer here in the UK was listing a much lower price for advance orders of a top-of-the-range E6850 chip than they are listing for buying an E6700 today, which presumably means the price of the latter will plummet when the 6x50 chips arrive.

All of this makes it an odd sort of time to run a data-based comparison like TFA. There are things that matter about processors beyond raw performance and price, but those are the dominant factors. Similarly, you can always say something better is just a few months away in this business, but right now, the annual upgrades are literally starting to arrive in retail channels as I type this and in less than a month many of the data points used in the article will be obsolete. That said, some of their notes are likely to remain valid, so it's worth a read for anyone not familiar with the recent processor line-ups. Some of the results are counter-intuitive if all you do is look at the theoretical numbers and go for what looks like the best price performance: the relative lack of advantage of a Q6600 over an E6600 for many applications because the extra cores aren't used effectively in practice is one example.

Re:Wait for the next price drop

[RMingin]

DDR3 is worthless so far. It's hotter, burns more juice, same speed, and expensive. In time it'll become desirable, but that time is still quite a ways off. If you're really horny for 1333FSB (which isn't the second coming of performance Christ, BTW), you can do what I did two months ago: Core 2 Duo e6600. I got it for about 220$. eVGA nForce 680i. All the checkboxes, official 1333FSB, and as low as 150$ with a good mail-in rebate. 2GB or more of DDR2-667. I got DDR2-800 because I hadn't done all the math first, and I like headroom. Once set to 1333FSB, your e6600@2.4 magically becomes an e6850@3GHz. Say hello to 1333. While you're here, you'll want to make sure your ram is set to sync with the FSB, which puts it at 666MHz. What's that you say? You simply must have DDR3-1333? Hell no. The FSB is QDR, the ram is DDR. FSB=RAM*2 for a proper sync. Your FSB won't be able to meaningfully use more than that, you'll just be nudging the FSB saturation up from 99% to 99.5%, for a performance gain of near 0. The price cuts next month will rework this a bit, mainly I'll swap out the e6600 for a q6600 and attempt to get the same settings. 4 cores at 3GHz each ought to be possible, and I'm looking forward to it.

The most useful information

[WuphonsReach]

Ignoring the game-based benchmarks - which are somewhat interesting, I think the most useful information is the Windows Media Encoding & LAME encoding (page 6). And some of the other charts on other CPU-focused benchmarks.

It shows that for the CPUs priced under $250-$300, there's not a lot of difference in performance for a particular dollar value. Both AMD and Intel seem to be on parity in that market segment in terms of performance per dollar. (One exception would seem to be benchmarks like POVRay/Cinebench where there's a distinct gap between the two product lines, which flips around on the Myrimatch/STARS page.)

It's the same for everything

[Colin Smith]

Buy last year's hardware at a fraction of the cost and let someone else take the depreciation hit/development cost. You benefit from lower depreciation and usually, better reliability. There's always a dogleg increase in cost for the latest and greatest.

Works for cars too.

Re:It goes to show

[SwordsmanLuke]

I agree... for first person shooters. It's hard to match the accuracy and agility you can get with the mouse/keyboard combo with a couple of thumb sticks (or one thumb stick and a Wiimote). But, I also find that many games (esp. fighting games) work much better on consoles. I think it really just depends on what the game genre was intended for.

FPSes (in their current incarnation. Battlezone[1] doesn't count.) were born on the PC[2] and have evolved to use take advantage of the mouse/keyboard control scheme. OTOH, fighting games (to stick with my example) started out in the arcades[3] and were designed with joysticks in mind. I am a long time gamer and own most of the major consoles from the Atari 2600 to the present and I also have a collection of PC games going back to the original King's Quest[4] series (And yes, I still have an old PC with a 5.25" drive to play them on). I don't think there's any real conflict vis-a-vis PC vs Console games. They're just different platforms with their own strengths and weaknesses.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein_3D
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrior_(arcade_game)
4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_Quest

Re:don't forget the e2160

[sjwaste]

2160 is $91, x2 3600 is $64 (both Newegg prices). That Core2Duo costs 40% more than the x2, so while it's a step in the right direction, its not there yet. Plus, factor in that you can get a good AM2 board for ~70, whereas you have to spend north of 100 to get comparable features for Core2 (ie, Nforce 550 vs 965P chipsets).

Since they both take DDR2 memory, you can quickly add up the cost of moving from one platform to the next (assuming one already has a PCI-E card, just for the sake of argument). Figure $70 for 2 gigs of DDR2, and we're at 205ish for the 3600 system vs 280ish for the 2160 system (figuring a gigabyte 965p board). Definitely not a trivial difference to overcome.

That said, as consumers, we're really benefitting from this. I hope that it can continue, we're getting great CPU's out at a fast pace, and the bottom offerings like the 3600 and 2160 are still VERY good processors. Back in the day, the bottom of the barrel truly sucked.

Re:"The results may surprise you"

[evilviper]

It's not actually a cliffhanger, but pure hyperbole.

I, for instance, wasn't surprised in the least by the results, nor can I see any reason anyone would be.

Re:Summary, and Flawed Analysis

[Bishop]

Your average 250w-300w system does not use anywhere near that much power most of the time. I would guess that at idle either of those systems would use about 60-70w (assuming onboard video). At full cpu load I would expect the system to consume 70-80w. Possibly as high as 90w. A video card will make a big difference. In a system I tested the nvidia 7900 GTX consumed about 40w at idle and much more under load. When looking at yearly power consumption the power usage of the DVD-rw and floppy drive are effectively zero as those devices are so seldom used. (Unless you are running a DVD piracy shop :-)

For most users the systems will be idle most of the time. (Even when playing mp3s my Core 2 cpu is running at its slowest cpu speed.) Either of the above systems will likely consume about 550 kW-hours of electricity a year. If you run Folding@Home the systems will likely consume about 650 and maybe as high as 780 kW-hours. If you estimate electricity at 8cents per kWhr. You are looking at operating costs in the range of $45 a year. Running folding@home would cost $55 to $65 a year. Using the suspend feature can save you a few bucks every year.

If you are running Linux use the "ondemand" or "conservative" speed governor.

Re:Power management still has a ways to go

[Plekto]

How about taking the massive improvements in device design, fabrication, architecture, power management, and so forth that went into these impressive achievements and re-implementing the lowly PIII 1GHz, but at 5-10W maximum power?
****

You can do this with some motherboards by underclocking the processor. That Celeron D 360, for instance, is essentially a 3.6Ghz Northwood with much lower heat. Underclock it and presto - it runs at 20W power(we're talking stock cooler with the fan *off*!) as fast as an old 2.4Ghz P4.

These can make for great appliances.

P.S. - Could Slashdot implement a quote function? Please?