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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
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
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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 ($$$).
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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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.
I just gotta say it. Overclocking is sooo lame. For a 5% improvement in performance you risk losing 50% of service life and reliability. And then end up buying another cpu, which totally blows the performance/price comparison all to hell. You might as well just spend the money increment more and buy the next one that actually has the reliable performance the overclocking gets you. Some people just can't be comfortable unless they are living on the edge, even artificially.
But of course, you do get techie cool points when the thing is working, and sympathy points when it smokes. That must be worth the price of buying a new one, right?
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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.
What is the responsiveness of the system under load? Openssl speed? bonnie++?
"If done properly"
But that is the whole problem. I understand the fun of fiddling around with a system and experimenting with something new. If you want to pay for that kind of fun, go for it. We all know you can push something up to the ragged edge, and over, and have a good time doing it.
But really, it should just work, reliably every day, and without having to watch a temperature gauge or worry if the water pump is going to give out or chase dust bunnies out of the heat sink. And by the way, how much did you save when you bought the cheap processor AND the cooling equipment to keep it alive?
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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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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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no you don't, as demonstrated by the rest of your post.
not all processors/memory are made equal. some handle being overclocked better than others (certain models of high performance memory are designed by the manufacturer specifically to be overclocked). CPUs rated at different clock speeds within the same family are usually manufactured the same way, and often from the same wafer. manufacturers separate processors into different bins based on the standards each unit conforms to as determined through testing.
however, this bin assignment process is far from a perfect science. not every processor within the same bin will perform the same, and the actual performance differences between processors assigned to different bins are not always as significant as the vendor tries to project. in fact, processors may sometimes be relegated to a lower bin while conforming to the performance standards of a higher speed bin just because the manufacturer needs more units to sell at the lower price point.
well-informed overclockers understand these intricacies, and so do hardware manufacturers and system builders. that's why many modern motherboards have overclocking features/functionality integrated into their BIOS. by selecting an appropriate processor (taking into account the CPU family, stepping number, and manufacturing week) and method of overclocking (FSB/clock multiplier), there's no reason why a moderately intelligent user couldn't have a stable overclocked system. all it takes is some careful research and diligent testing.
it's not about pushing anything to "the edge." it's about pushing your system within safe limits to extract the optimal performance out of your hardware and saving money. obviously, if you're completely clueless about computers you shouldn't try to overclock anything. luckily, most overclockers know what they're doing and are able to improve the performance of their system without risking damage to their hardware.
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've got:
amd 64 x2 at 25W (BE-2350)
690G motherboard with onboard graphics (ASUS M2A-VM HDMI)
$165 total in dec 2007
and it runs fanless fine (tho i do have the fan hooked up idling and thermally controlled most of the time). doesn't look like they're still selling the BE-2350, and not sure if there's a current equivalent or if you can accomplish the same thing by underclocking.
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Like I tell people at work, if it doesn't have to produce the correct results, we can make it run as fast as you wish. Just because your system seems stable, doesn't mean that some obscure part of the chip isn't failing in a subtle manner. Intel has insanely expensive test jigs to ensure that their parts meet published specs at their marked speed. You have what?
For games, who cares. For real work, it's absolutely unacceptable.
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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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