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Intel Quad-Core Price and Performance Showdown
ThinSkin writes "The folks over at ExtremeTech have had enough time on their hands to benchmark Intel's entire quad-core lineup to determine which has the best performance for the dollar. While prices range from $183 to $1399, the real bargain is with Intel's latest Core i7 architecture which outpaced many other more expensive processors. For comparison's sake, Intel's fastest dual-core CPU was thrown into the mix and was, at times, not even competitive, which suggests that we're beginning to see more and more multi-threaded applications take advantage of four cores."
http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a%253D235027,00.asp
If going with the i7-920 is it better to go with 1066MHz ram or 1300Mhz? I plan to overclock the chip since lots of people have had great success with air cooling.
Full print article should anyone not want to deal with the multipage click-through: http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a%253D235027,00.asp
Informatus Technologicus
I just don't understand why there aren't more consumer boards with a lot more sockets, using FB-DIMM or registered DDR. You have to go to server boards for that ($$$).
Last I checked, DDR3, which i7 requires, still had quite the premium over DDR2. Also, the motherboards, last I checked, started from about $300, while Core 2 motherboards can be obtained of course much cheaper.
And the benchmarks are a bit silly. How many people spend most of their time encoding video and running photoshop plugins? Gaming, OK, but other than that more realistic benchmarks for the average user would be more appreciated. Not just benchmarks that are designed to showcase multi-core processors.
Summary in short is that the Core i7 series is the way to go unless you just run office apps in which case the dual-core processors are sufficient.
The Q-series seems to be expensive and slow compared to the Core i7. And unless they can make a considerable price reduction on them it's no idea to select a Q-series processor.
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For Canadian prices, add $40-140 (wtf, man)
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Its a bit stupid to do a price performance without any consideration to anything else. Someone else mentioned DDR2 VS DDR3 and price and availability, also if anyone does one whit of looking you will see that you can have a nice dual-core or quad-core motherboard for like 150-200$. I looked a few weeks ago for the 7's and the cheapest was like 350-375$, most seemed to be over 400$. Which to me, is simply nuts.
Anyway like a good slashdotter I didn't RTFA, so it may be that the 7's are the bees knees. However I would caution anyone from basing their decision on a benchmark and a price tag, as there is more involved that that. Anyway my two cents...
What benchmarks would you like to see? Because off the top of my head, media encoding, photoshop stuff and games are exactly the sort of things that home users would be doing to require that kind of CPU oomph.
Sure, there are plenty of other things people spend lots of time doing, but most of those (at least as far as home apps go) would run just fine on practically any reasonable new processor.
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At 2x the price, Core i7 was not a consideration for me at this time.
The choice between the E8400 and the Q6600 was a tough one. I could have gone either way. Quad-core is great for threaded applications like media encoding. But the E8400 outperforms the Q6600 for the majority of what I do (including Photoshop CS3). I am not convinced that threading will be widespread enough during my 3-year upgrade cycle. A common argument on the forums is that the Q6600 can be overclocked to 3GHz such that single-threaded is the same as the E8400. While I do not overclock, the E8400 supposedly can easily get to 4GHz on air.
It's also wrong, I have a Core 2 Q6600 the slowest chip in their roundup and I never tax all the cores. Games don't need that much CPU and I can encode video while playing games so I don't care how long it takes.
Unless you are spend all day running benchmarks it's silly for most people to spend all that much on a CPU.
http://www.extremetech.com/image_popup/0,,iid=223387&aID=235027&sID=27866,00.asp
This would mean that my Geforce2 256 is better at games than my ATI 4870, which does not seem quite right.
What is the responsiveness of the system under load? Openssl speed? bonnie++?
Yeah a lot of people are still running 32 bit OS's, but almost all desktop hardware now being shipped is 64 bit-- we're in something like the tail end of the Windows 3.x era. I think most serious users will run 64 bit OS's pretty soon. The Mac Pro uses FB-DIMM and has 8 sockets (wish it had 16) and for a big class of data crunching tasks, what matters most is the amount of ram you can throw at it. The recent collapse in ram prices has been amazing. If enough sockets were available we could fit out $5000 boxes (think of a fully loaded Dell Precision or Mac Pro, not exactly a mass market consumer pc, but not a high end Sun server either) with 128GB or maybe even 256GB. That really extends the range of problems you can attack. But, the bottleneck even in server boards seems to always be ram sockets.
Um, I'm sorry but isn't Xeon still an Intel brand? There are quite a few offerings in the Xeon line that are quad core. In fact, I'm building a Socket 771 machine now with dual Xeon procs, and was interested to see how the Xeon quad 2.5GHz was going to stack up, (what I can afford) but no. Fail.
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I've averaged 13% CPU utilization this week. That's on an Athlon XP 1600+....
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I use to have 7 computers. I did a lot of work for World Community Grid and was averaging around 20 results a day. I purchased a q6600 motherboard and soon found that it could do more than 10 times as many results as my slowest computer(ironically a celeron at the same speed of 2.4GHz) I now have 4 quad computers and averaging 40+ results a day and have experienced a significant reduction in my electricity bill.
You do NOT want to use 4GB ram for an i7. It has to be in multiples of 3GB since the i7 uses a triple channel ddr3. Some mobos have 4 slots (eg Intel DX58SO), however populating that last slot will sacrifice triple channel with single channel performance.
Nobody in their right mind should get an i7. A 30% performance-per-clock increase over the Core 2 series is not worth doubling the cost of the CPU and motherboard. DDR3 is also more expensive than DDR2. On top of that, Intel are getting into the power-sucking height of the Pentium 4s again; the Core i7s have a TDP of 130 watts. For any desktop use - including highest-end game machines - anything another other than a Core 2 Duo is just a waste of money.
While we're bitching about the format, why the hell are they connecting the points on the line graph? Their X axis is meaningless, the order of those chips is arbitrary, so the slope of the line connecting the points is absolutely meaningless.
This is what bar charts are for.
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My summary is: I don't have a clue because the memory configuration is ambiguous and incomplete for the i7.
I don't normally reply to AC's and this one maybe trolling but PC2-6400 (DDR2-800 SDRAM) runs at 200Mhz. Also running your FSB at 400Mhz is taking you back to P-IV levels.
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The choice between the E8400 and the Q6600 was a tough one. I could have gone either way. Quad-core is great for threaded applications like media encoding. But the E8400 outperforms the Q6600 for the majority of what I do (including Photoshop CS3). I am not convinced that threading will be widespread enough during my 3-year upgrade cycle. A common argument on the forums is that the Q6600 can be overclocked to 3GHz such that single-threaded is the same as the E8400. While I do not overclock, the E8400 supposedly can easily get to 4GHz on air. Photoshop CS3 is multithreaded now, and theres even a CUDA version coming out. http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/Photoshop/CUDAFilters4.pdf
New slashdot layout sucks.
I was playing Battle for Middle Earth (an RTS) and was trying to find out what component was affecting performance. I had a desktop with a mediocre processor and good graphics card and a laptop with a good processor but mediocre graphics card.
The high res, high quality graphics staggered the laptop, but showed fine, in small quantities, on the desktop. But when I played on medium graphics settings on both computers, when actual battles came and there were large amounts of units on the screen, it was the laptop that handled it far better than the desktop.
So processing power does make a difference -- though this is in the days of modest Pentium 4s (1.6 GHz). I've got a now also modest Athlon 3700+ (single core) and it runs BFME and BFME2 just fine no matter what's on the screen.
I have no doubt that CS3 is multithreaded. However numerous benchmarking sites have shown the E8400 outperforming the Q6600 in Photoshop CS3. Obviously this will depend on what aspects of CS3 were exercised during the benchmark. All multithreaded codes have serial portions, and I suspect that a substantial portion of CS3 is still serialized.
CUDA filters will work the same regardless if you are dual- or quad-core (well, there is some CPU overhead for transferring data to/from the GPU, so maybe this would benefit from an additional thread).
Why is this idiot getting modded up? Widespread ignorance is fun! Listen up mods. Nothing this guy said is true; literally nothing. What the guy described is a fantasy that NEVER happens, he is simply an imbecile with outdated preconceptions. People don't tend to read about things they don't like, and he seems to be following this trend quite nicely with an opinion on overclocking straight from 1994.
I'm sure it was perfectly valid back then, but in no way does it apply to the modern Intel chips we are actually talking about.
There's absolutely no reason NOT to overclock Core2s. The small investment required to avoid cut-rate bare-bones parts gives you faster clock at stock/lower voltage with lower temperatures and much higher reliability.
For goodness sake, you're using a CPU that has to perform reliably in machines cobbled together by *OEM* suppliers who have to slash their costs to the bone and use the cheapest possible components in order to not go immediately out of business. There's enough headroom in the designed ratings to massacre rated performance levels. Have you ever looked inside a Dell?
Thus, my design philosophy is twofold: Excellent performance at a reasonable price with high reliability. For these reasons, I'm already going to spend more than a bare-bones system, so overclocking potential is a freebie!
In my view, the most critical components for reliability in a system are, in order:
Motherboard: Proven, tested, highly-rated enthusiast-quality mobo from a top-notch manufacturer. Abit IP35 Pro, +$80 over barebones.
Power Supply: Well-reviewed supply from a top-notch manufacturer, with at least 100w headroom over expected use. Antec TruePower Trio650, $40 over barebones.
RAM: Quality manufacturer, rated for where you expect to overclock to. - 4GB OCZ Platinum DDR2, say +$20, RAM is cheap.
Case: Antec 900. No reason to get anything else from a performance standpoint, they're on sale regularly for sub-$100.
Oh, and $15ish for a no-frills CPU fan that doesn't suck.
So, $200-ish over a barebones system for massively higher reliability. What did that get me, a YEAR ago?
Core2 E6750 OC'd 27% to 3.4GHz, 100% stable at stock voltage, running much cooler than the stock cooler did at 2.66GHz.
I'll take that any day.
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I have no problem filling up 8 gb of memory. I run several virtual machines on different sides of my compiz cube in Ubuntu.
But I'm a fucking weirdo. I doubt very much that anyone else is using that much ram that often. :)
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You expected a Price/Performance showdown to give you recommendations on energy efficiency?
The choice between the E8400 and the Q6600 was a tough one. I could have gone either way. Quad-core is great for threaded applications like media encoding. But the E8400 outperforms the Q6600 for the majority of what I do (including Photoshop CS3).
Totally off-topic, but how hot does your E8400 run? In a cool environment, my non-overclocked CPU ran at 49C idle and 63C active with the stock cooler. I bought an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro (my first and only foray into non-stock cooling) and saw that drop to 40C idle to 49C active.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
At some point in time processing power made a difference when gaming, but saying a single 1.6GHz P4 had troubles says little about a quad core cpu at 2.4Ghz with 8Mbytes of cache. For a tiny fraction of people buying a 20,000$ workstation is a great idea, but for most things like playing FPS at normal resolutions it's just not that taxing for modern CPU's.
If you're concerned about money but still want a screamer, I'd recommend the Xeon 3550 (the exact same as the Q9450, except reputed to run at lower temps, taken from better batches, etc). When I purchased one, it was the same price as the Q9450.
Pair this with decent DDR2 RAM (not DDR3, it's still expensive and not worth the gains) and you'll save a bunch o' money. In my case, the system overclocks reliably to 3.6GHz.
So if you want something better than the cheapest option, but don't want to spend bazillions - this is a decent way to go.
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100% stable at stock voltage
Queue some petulant twat whinging about how it might, maybe, undetectably, subliminally, possibly, almost be unstable in 0.0000001% of circumstances (maybe) and therefore you should never ever use it oh my god you're overclocking, dear GOD!!!
They didn't say anything wrong. That's how it's shown in my BIOS too: 400Mhz FSB, 1600Mhz effective because it's four bits per clock. Likewise the DDR2 speed is the FSB clock multiplied by some number you can select.
They almost always do, this is an exception.
Off the top of my head the TDPs are:
Ci7: 130 watts
C2Q: 95 watts
C2D: 65 watts
If you want something quiet, get one of the 45nm dual cores.
While we're bitching about the format, why the hell are they connecting the points on the line graph?
Or, given that we're comparing price and performance, a scatter plot.
I decided to replot some of the graphs properly. Here are the results.
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however populating that last slot will sacrifice triple channel with single channel performance.
/good idea/.
No, it won't. For some time now, Intel's RAM controllers have had some way of interleaving that buys you most of the performance of the 'correct' X-way setup, even with mismatched bank sizes.
That said, Intel have lost the plot if they think that encouraging this sort of thing is a
You're doing it wrong.
Thank you! I don't know anyone that compares price/performance using a double line chart.
Well, I guess that's a lie. Whoever made up the idiotic charts for this article is probably a first.
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Yeah, you can't ignore the total platform cost. I can get 8GB (eight!) of DDR2 for under $100. I'll take that, a budget Intel mobo (P43?), and a Q6600 over an i7 system right now.
And if gaming is your thing, the graphics card is what matters.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
There's absolutely no reason NOT to overclock Core2s.
What if I want a quiet-to-silent system that can run with minimal cooling and use as little power as possible to do its job?
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
They're owned by Ziff Davis, makers of PC Magazine. They're never going to respect their readers.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
I wish I had never made a choice at all. I had high hopes when I got a quad core system, but the current state has disgusted me.
It turns out I still can't run matlab, watch a flash app, and move the mouse all at the same time in Vista on my Core2Quad HP box. Maybe if I'm running 3 instances of matlab maybe I'll see an improvement the quad core over say my dual core laptop, but based on everyday uses the upgrade in systems was an infuriating waste of money.
Sometimes the quad core system can't even handle updating the mouse position! I'm keeping my f***'ing P3 plugged in for now.
Then UNDER-clocking might be your thing =)
Ha! You thought this was binary : to overclock or not to overclock, well sonny, I've got news for you, there's a new guy in town !
My friend's been having this 1GHz PIII running on 750MHz for over 6 months now, and it's AB-SO-LU-TE-LY 100% stable !
(ps: genuinely true story : the BIOS battery-connection is broken somehow and the thing boots by default on 750MHz. Although I explained how to set the right values in the BIOS, he simply got tired of it and claims "it's just as fast".)
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All of which is a perfectly reasonable thing for people to run on a quad-core box; indeed practically tailor made for it.
But that's a webserver, not a desktop app or game like the article is talking about.
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I just got 20,676 in 3Dmark Vantage. I can run crysis max settings 1920x1200 with 4x AA and i get 40fps. before I couldnt even have everything max at 1920 with no AA, same GPUs but a e6700 dual core. so it made a huge difference for me and was worth it.
Why does everyone on slashdot act like high end gaming doesnt exist or is unimportant? I thought this site was for nerds...
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