Phenom IIs, Core I7-920 Win Out In Value Analysis

An anonymous reader writes "We've all seen processor benchmarks, but how do today's enthusiast CPUs look when you account for performance per dollar? Using a smorgasbord of charts, scatter plots, and performance tests, The Tech Report attempted to single out the highest-value offerings out of 16 popular Intel and AMD processors. The results might surprise you: AMD's 45nm Phenom IIs (both triple- and quad-core) prove to be strikingly competitive with Intel's Core 2 Quads. And, on the high end, Intel's $266 Core i7-920 turns out to be a compelling step up despite the higher costs of Core i7 platforms in general."

Comments

Suprise?

[AnonGCB]

Really, who doesn't know that AMD is higher performance per dollar.

Re:Suprise?

[nicolas.kassis]

Dollars are meaningless GIVE ME RAW SPEED!!!!

Bottom LIne

[cybrthng]

Its about your investment.. For me Phenom II was a no brainer because of AM2+ compatibility. Once newegg put those suckers at 200 bucks i jumped. Its like i have an entire new PC and that was upgrading from the 9600 quad core.

Oddly enough i didn't have complaints about the performance of the 9600.. i just figured encoding times and processing times would be reduced enough that it would accelerate my work and well, for 200 bucks its done so and more so than i expected.

i7 is a nice platform but i'm penny pinching right now and looking for better ROI vs bragging rights.

Re:Bottom LIne

[gad_zuki!]

>i7 is a nice platform but i'm penny pinching right now and looking for better ROI vs bragging rights.

I wonder if penny-pinching will be more common with the economic downturn. If AMD can price itself lower then ROI will be very tempting, even if the Intel product is faster.

AMD price : performance linear

[jbeaupre]

What stood out to me is that AMD seems to have a fairly consistent price:performance ratio. Is this policy?

Most of their offerings fall pretty close to a line (not quite a zero crossing, but close). If this holds true for all their current and future offerings, you don't have to have test metrics for every processor. You can use price as a reasonable estimate of performance. i.e. Double the price gets you twice the performance.

Intel on the other hand, you can't trust price to indicate performance. A lot more research is involved. OR else you have to assume there's a high likelihood that the AMD offering for the same price will be better.

Re:AMD price : performance linear

[giverson]

It's because Intel dominates the high end. AMD can't sell a processor with a premium pricetag because its performance would compete with Intel's midrange which is priced pretty reasonably.

AMD is the loveable underdog, but don't forget how expensive their X2s were when they were dominant. AMD isn't cheap because they're doing us a favor, they're cheap because they have to be.

Re:AMD price : performance linear

[Bill Dog]

Indeed. Something that stood out to me (from that scatter graph) is:
* If you don't want to spend more than $100 on a CPU, AMD wins.
* If you don't want to spend more than $150 on a CPU, AMD wins.
* If you don't want to spend more than $200 on a CPU, AMD wins.
* If you don't want to spend more than $250 on a CPU, AMD wins.
* If you don't want to spend more than $300 on a CPU, Intel's (cheapest) i7 wins by far.

Re:Price is all-important

[644bd346996]

Buying a faster chip is a lot cheaper and faster than rewriting something to be multithreaded.

Re:Price is all-important

[ArcherB]

But buying a faster multi-core (as in, 3 or more cores) chip isn't going to do you any good if your application only runs on one or two threads.

Very true if your system only runs that single application. However, everyone I know runs multiple applications just by booting their OS.