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

Accuracy somewhat questionable

[PoliTech]

FTA: "For instance, our Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700 processors are actually a Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor clocked down to the appropriate speeds. Their performance should be identical to that of the real thing."

One must question the accuracy of the results due to the above verbiage.

Re:Accuracy somewhat questionable

[CajunArson]

Maybe you need to look up the term 'speed binning' sometime. The X6800 is simply an e6600 or e6700 only at a higher clock speed. There is no differnce in cache or in architecture so I see nothing wrong with using it in this manner. There is one way in which the results might change, and that would be to differences in memory bandwidth due to messing with the FSB. However, the X6800 has an unlocked memory multiplier (Intel unlocks this on the 'X' series CPU's to make overclocking easier). By changing the multiplier and leaving the FSB alone, the reviewers are able to turn the chip into an e6600 or e6700 for any practical purpose. I mean, there will probably be some minute differences between different batches of the same e6600/e6700 production run that would have miniscule differences just as big as the difference between a properly clocked X6800 and the 'real thing'.

Re:Wait for the next price drop...

[DogDude]

You can say that every single day and still be right. I'm a big fan of buying PC's from my local thrift stores for $20 each. PC's are, by themselves, probably the worst investment that I can think of. Not even American cars depreciate as fast as PC's. I always tell people that unless you're playing games on a PC (which is an insanely expensive hobby), or doing something important, just get the cheapest thing you can find.

Re:Summary, and Flawed Analysis

[MMC Monster]

The problem is now: Is a person is going to use that extra few percent? It used to be (in the days of sub 500MHz CPUs) that everyone could use more power. Now that's not always true. There are people that do fine with a low power, low GHz CPU. And that 30 buck savings may be put to something else (ie: extra hard drive space), and the slower CPU may also waste less electricity as well.

Re:Summary, and Flawed Analysis

[ciroknight]

You mean waste more electricity right? Cheaper the processor, the more goodies they knock out of the chip to keep the price down. That $70 Celeron is built without SpeedStep. The $110 Core 2 has the full sized Smart cache and SpeedStep. The Celeron might be 80% as fast as the Core 2, but the Core 2 will probably use 60% of the energy, meaning the net win (if you can afford to spend $40 more bucks) goes to the Core 2.

In all honesty, it makes the most sense to buy the most "featureful" chip at the bottom of the clock bracket and overclock it. Not only will you have all of the features those chips ship with, you'll likely have more performance than the CPUs at the top of the bracket. You might cut the lifetime of the chip down, but computers today are such commodities that hardly anyone cares if the chip burns out after 3 years instead of 10; they won't be using that chip by then anyways.

Very happy with Dell AMD x2 3600+

[adrew]

You can't argue with the value of the entry-level processors. I bought the system below a couple of weeks ago for $688, including shipping and tax. Dell had a coupon for $350 off any system $999 or more, so I played with the options until it was exactly $999, then applied the coupon.

Dell Dimension E521
AMD x2 3600+, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, nVidia 7300LE, 16x DVD burner, card reader, keyboard, mouse, Vista Home Premium, Dell 22" widescreen LCD

For a home computer, performance is great. Vista is nice and snappy and it runs everything I've thrown at it without any problems. I work at a university, so I bought a copy of Office Enterprise for $30 and it runs beautifully. The speech- and handwriting recognition works great and doesn't bog down the machine at all.

Re:Power management still has a ways to go

[evilviper]

The 100-200 watt idle numbers are wasteful, lets get this down to 10-20 watts.

Stay away from the high-end, and computer are nearly there already, thanks to AMD pushing CnQ/PowerNow on everything (while Intel STILL omits SpeedStep on their low-end chips).

The only real problem/exception seems to be GPUs, so for now, you have to go for a lower-end, (preferably fanless) video card to be safe.

Re:Summary, and Flawed Analysis

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

You mean waste more electricity right? Cheaper the processor, the more goodies they knock out of the chip to keep the price down. That $70 Celeron is built without SpeedStep. The $110 Core 2 has the full sized Smart cache and SpeedStep. The Celeron might be 80% as fast as the Core 2, but the Core 2 will probably use 60% of the energy, meaning the net win (if you can afford to spend $40 more bucks) goes to the Core 2.

The problem is that you're looking at Intel, whose low-end CPUs suck. AMD's $59 Athlon 64 X2 3600+ has the latest process (65nm), power saving features (Cool n Quiet), full AMD-V support, and two cores.

Oh, and the X2 3600+ is massively overclockable, too. Mine hit 2.85GHz (300x9.5) with no trouble - and it probably would have gone higher if my mobo supported higher LDT frequencies.

My system is 100% stable (as far as I know, based on a 36-hour two-process Prime95 run that pegged both cores at 100%, and based on a 12 hour Memtest86+ run). My motherboard is a $49 GeForce 6100 chipset board (right now, my board plus an X2 3600+ sells for $94 on Newegg). My heatsink is a $10 Arctic Cooling Alpine 7. My memory is cheapshit Kingston DDR2-667 (2x1GB).

Including my HDD, DVD burner, GeForce 8600GT, Motherboard, CPU, DDR, and case, I've put maybe $500 into my machine.

Re:Is AMD faster for 64-bit?

[ceeam]

I have Radeon 8500 in this machine - is that old enough? Where do I get a "fully working" (as in "beryl works great and does not hang") open-source driver? The one in xorg is not it IME.