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Making Sense of CPU and GPU Model Numbers?
b4dc0d3r writes "How do you make sense of the various model numbers or naming schemes for CPUs, graphics cards, and the related chipsets? All I want is something that will run Oblivion and output full 1080 video to a TV. Last time I built my own computer I just went to Pricewatch, made a few easy choices, and everything came to my door. Do I really have to research the differences among Core i5, Core 2 Duo, Pentium 4, Pentium D, Sempron, Athlon, Phenom ...? And that's just the processor. Is there a reference somewhere? In short, how do you buy a computer these days?"
Anything moderately current will do anything you want. It doesn't really matter what you choose. So set yourself a budget and buy something that fits within that. It will probably do fine.
Even if you know nothing about computers you go look at benchmarks at anandtech and find the one with the biggest bar on the graph that you can reasonably afford.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Try the Ars technica system guide:
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/guides/2009/10/ars-system-guide-october-2009-edition.ars
Clear as mud. Thanks for your help!
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Ditto for CPUs: Best Gaming CPUs For The Money
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Check out http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ and http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ With a pinch of salt you can make a relevant decision based on those two, even if Googling around would make your decision even better. .
I usually find the advice from tech report's periodical System Guide to be very useful and relevant.
Their latest report came out a couple of weeks ago. They focus on a range of options at various price points and requirements.
sorry to attempt to answer your question and not shill Apple.
bah!*@%!
A Core i5 750 costs more than any current AMD desktop processor, so that makes no sense. I can get a quad-core Athlon II for half the price of an i5 750. Sure, it's slower, but it's not slow. Also, it drops straight into my old AM2 motherboard (with a quick BIOS upgrade). Try doing that with Intel.
Remember that this shit completely changes every few years. I used to build PCs for myself and my school as a kid (386/486), then couldn't affort to for a few years, then had to start reading PC magazines when it finally came time to afford a new PC (Pentium 2/AMD equiv). Fast-forward a few years to my next major upgrade, and I'm reading Wikipedia instead of the mags, but I'm still pig-ignorant of the latest tech until I've figured out whether AGP is still current (nope) and which of DDR2/3 will be needed, how many cores are worthwhile, etc etc etc.
Maybe it's easier for those who do hardware support or deal with servers (I mostly deal with routers/switches/firewalls), but I get completely left behind if I ignore the PC components market for more than a few months.
Actually, if you want to run Oblivion with the "must-have" mods (Better Cities, OOO or whichever leveling mod you prefer, some better texture pack), you'll still need a relatively well configured system. The game might be 4 years old, but it can still be very demanding (and IMO still looks and plays great, once mod'ed correctly)
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Just find a reputable computer seller and order a machine that fits your budget. It'll probably run whatever you need it to run. If Oblivion is the heaviest game you're going to run, you can be done for about $500 probably.
If you don't want the same boring standard machine that everybody else has, then you'll have to do some research. I did that 2 years ago. My main resource was Silent PC Review because I was tired of my old jet-engine-soundalike. AnandTech is also a good source, as is Tweakers, if you happen to be Dutch. Lots of articles on those sites will refer to Tom's Hardware, which does benchmark graphs, but really, just get what everybody's recommending.
Two years ago, I went with:
All of this cost me about EUR 1000. Very happy with it. Dead quiet, too. Mind you, this is from 2 years ago. There's probably better, cheaper, quieter, faster stuff around now, but I'm not keeping up.
As for the dual core/quad core stuff: how many heavy CPU-using applications will you be running at the same time? Will your heaviest applications be able to make efficient use of multiple cores? If you don't know, go with dual core. One for the main app, one for everything else. No need to have to extra cores that are only idling all the time.
Another reason to choose AMD over Intel, Intel has some CPUs that support the new virtualization extensions and some that don't. AMD OTOH supports the virtualization extensions across the line. That and AMD quad cores are stupid cheap now. Unless you have a really pressing need for a really high end CPU get the AMD.
The Core i5-750 is only $200. If you're not willing to spend $200 on your CPU, you have no business building a PC instead of buying one.
$200 is too much for a CPU. Unless you're eager to waste money to get more power than you can possibly use, $100 gets you everything you need.
Make sure that the CPU you buy supports hardware virtualization, for running virtual machines. Every computer enthusiast should want to run virtual machines!
I think all current AMD CPUs support hardware virtualization. But Intel in their infinite market segmentation wisdom has decided to randomly disable hardware virtualization on various CPUs in their lineup, so look before you buy. The funny thing is that very few computer salesmen know for which CPUs hardware virtualization is enabled, so the only result of Intel's market segmentation is confusion and dissatisfied customers.
Perhaps. To each his own. I'm leaning towards a Core i7-860 myself, because it performs about 90% as well as the $1000 Intel procs for only $280, and I plan on only upgrading my computer every 5-6 years... that is, I'm replacing a 6 year old computer now, that's been more than adequate because I put in just an extra $100 when I bought it, and it has been a net saver of money.
FanFictionRecs.net
Wow, what nonsense!
I personally build almost all my family's and my company's PC's, from simple $300 desktops to $5000 servers and the only cases where I have bought pre-built (hence the "almost all") were towards the latter ($5k) category. I find it much more important to built a cheap pc yourself, because you control exactly where the limited budget goes and you end up with a much better pc for your intended use for the money.
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This. Also, during the 1990s computer performance increased dramatically, as in it went from 10MHz to 1000MHz. Since then things have sort of reached a level of "good enough". For instance, I kept my motherboard and processor the same from 2002-2007, simply because it was still able to run most current software just fine. The only things which really prompted an upgrade were Oblivion and a desire to play with a 64-bit OS.
And as the parent says, that was a long enough wait to have lost touch with motherboard, memory and graphics card technology.
I recently built my own computer for similar purposes. I needed a box that would download things all day and output via HDMI to my TV, but I placed an extra constraint on my system: Linux compatibility, or at least a reasonable degree of compatibility. So, I researched available parts, using price as the first method of siphoning all the dreck. I live in China, so, for example, the processor's price ranged from a few hundred yuan (about 50 bucks) to about four thousand yuan (closer to $500). I decided not to pay more than 400 yuan for my processor, and right there, I cut out about 90% of the processors I had to research. I decided from then that I wanted a 64-bit processor and I would only look at the top 3 FSB's out of those processors, and I chose Intel because my previous experiences with Linux and AMD procs was somewhat dubious. Everything else kind of fell into place after simply choosing the proc, save for the GPU, which I chose for it's Native HDMI port, high-ish (1GB) dedicated memory and driver support in Linux. So that part was even easier.
Your situation seems a lot simpler than mine though, since you only have two constraints: Oblivion (don't know what it is) and 1080 video to a TV. Basically, what you need is any computer matching the requirements for playing Oblivion (I would go a little beyond recommended specs for running it) and with a NATIVE HDMI port. If you spend time worrying about complex names for different series of nanometer sized pieces of wire hypersolderized together, you will drown in the hopelessness that is marketing and advertizing and general rhetorical BS. Find out what specs you need to do what you want, if you're using Linux then check for compatibility issues in the forums of the distro you use or plan on using, and what you need to buy should pretty much be spelled out for you in pretty simple choices. If you're using Windows, you have a lot less to worry about since you don't really have control over those sorts of things, just take whatever has an HDMI port and enough RAM and cycles per second to run your game.
I don't have this problem with recent AMD processors, but I certainly do with Intel's. With Athlons it basically comes down to Athlons in 2 and 4 core variety, upper end is Phenoms with 2, 3 or 4 cores the Black edition of those which are supposedly for better overclocking, Opterons for sever and workstation, Semprons for budget computing. there's different dies and configurations But Intels, I can't even begin to name. I guess there's Celeron Pentium and Core. All of those have vastly different configurations, but b with Core it got really confusing cause they went from core2 to I7 and then I5 and now I3. WTF, Intel? Can you make this easier, please? This is a large part of the reason I completely over look your processors.
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The Core i5-750 is only $200. If you're not willing to spend $200 on your CPU, you have no business building a PC instead of buying one.
B.S.
What the point of wasting $200 on CPU when you can get for >$100 a CPU which performs in real world >5-10% slower?? And most applications (even games) are pretty happy even with half/quarter of the performance???
I'm not per se against the Intel CPUs. Some of their CPUs are cheaper and faster than the AMD ones. But for whatever reason, at least in Europe, the MBs for Intel CPUs are on average 10-25% more expensive than those for AMD CPUs. And upgrade-ability of the AMD systems is magnitudes better: one can get cheap CPU today and upgrade it few years later.
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AMD capable motherboards tend to be a lot cheaper, that can easily save you enough money on a highly capable gaming system to replace the HD with an SSD, and that will have far more influence on game performance then the Intel chip will. In gaming, AMD performs a lot better. Always make sure to read the entire review of a CPU for the stats that are relevant to you. For instance, if you once in a blue moon use Office and never use a database on your PC, what do you care about how fast/slow your CPU is at them?
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It's so nice to see that snobbery is alive and well in the nerd world
There is no -1 disagree
Perhaps the point of his question to slashdot....you know, a technical news/information site, with a technically savvy audience...is to get an answer, not to get excoriated for having the question?
You know, your point "3. Research what components will achieve the expected result."
I think his question is valid - it used to be a fairly simple task to equate processor speed with power, to come up with a reasonable expectation of performance for a task. But to everyone (except, apparently, you), it perhaps isn't intuitive that a quad core at a lower speed will or won't perform better than a duo core at a higher speed. (Answer: sometimes it will perform better, sometimes it won't. How is he supposed to know, oh swami of computer tech?)
So you could offer actual advice or click through to the next news article, instead of bitching that someone asked a very valid question.
-Styopa
I had issues back on XP, but on Vista/7, the opposite seems to be true- NVIDIA has the buggy drivers.
As part of some Vista capable lawsuit a while back, it was found that NVIDIA drivers caused the most BSODs. Even if you scaled ATI's marketshare at the time (I forget the month, but I looked it up- the Steam Hardware survey is as reasonable of a guess as you're going to get) to make the crash percentages ceteris paribus, NVIDIA drivers still crashed on Vista 50% more.
On Windows 7, I haven't had any driver related issues...
But if you're looking at the long term, wouldn't it make even more sense to buy a processor at the optimal price point rather than a high-end one? In a couple of months, there'll be cheaper processors that are just as fast as the i7-860.
I know Macs have model numbers and I know they have CPU's which also have model numbers. I don't know any of those numbers.
You can hand in your five-digit Slashdot ID now.
Using (and developing apps for) Windows, Macs, Linux, Win Mobile, Palm, Blackberry and the iPhone, I must respectfully disagree with you on your anti-Mac recommendation. They are not without flaws, as I don't know of any complex systems such as IT as being without any flaws of some sort. However...that said...I have: an iMac (G3) still faithfully fully running OS 10.3; an eMac (G4) still faithfully fully running OS 10.4; an iMac (G5) still faithfully fully running OS 10.5; a MacBook Pro (Intel, 2007) still faithfully running OS 10.6; a 2nd MacBook Pro (Intel, 2009) still faithfully running OS 10.6. These machines cost me, at point of purchase (including Apple Care Protection Plan on the last three) under $10,000. I've invested maybe $1000 in various hardware or software upgrades for the combined lot. I have never had to reinstall the OS - ever. On the total lot of machines, which represent 12+ years of Apple Innovation, I have had a total of 15 kernel panics. On the two Mac Book Pros I run virtually, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 of various flavors. The Windows OS runs better on Apple Hardware than it does on my two latest HP Machines (business class). I also maintain a Win 2003 Enterprise server, and a separate Win 2008 Enterprise server, but I run both virtually from within Linux distros (Fedora and Ubuntu, respectively). Users can certainly have a simplified UI experience with OS X, but to say that OS X takes a "dumbed down" approach is patently false. OS X, out of the box ships with many more tools, features and uses than Windows does, at a fraction of the cost. My point is that there are those of us who know that in our experience the Total Cost of Ownership is significantly lower when we invest in Apple Hardware and software, generally, than when we don't. Next in my purchase que is a custom configured XServe that I fully expect to get at least as long of a life span out of that hardware as I have from my original iMac (1998).
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Sorry that's silentpcreview.com
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It's sillier than you realise. Now we can't even RTFA, as it just forwards you straight to pricewatch shopping. What a waste of screenspace ... this is one article Slashdot should just retroactively shitcan (or at least edit out the misleading link).
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I have found these resources indispensable in figuring out how modern CPUs and GPUs compare to each other:
... primarily because these tables are dynamic: find the part you're currently using (or want to use as your baseline for comparison) in the table, click on it, and then all the other parts in the table are immediately color-coded as to how much of a step forwards or backwards they are from that part, based on a normalized performance rating.
(It's pathetic that the marketing departments at the companies that make these things are so incompetent that we need tools like these to sort out what exactly they're selling us, but until they get on the ball I'm glad these tools exist.)
Read my blog.
Motherboard and PSU. Don't try to save money on these two by buying cheaper.
Everything else is determined only by how much money you have to spend.
Also, everything else can be upgraded/replaced without having to replace other components.
Pay close attention to PSUs 12V amperage - don't buy cheap Chinese ones that have hundreds of theoretical Watts but give only about 20 Amps on 12V.
12V is for all of your coolers, hard-drives (including external ones), optical drives and anything else you attach to it that has a motor or movable parts.
Buy ULTRA or Corsair (if you can't afford a ULTRA).
With motherboards, pay extra for the Deluxe or Pro model - however they call it.
Compare it to the "regular" version of the motherboard.
If it looks almost the same with maybe another PCI or USB slot added - the pricier one is the one that actually works as intended/advertised.
The cheaper "regular" model probably couldn't quite cut it, so it got downgraded from the original intended specs.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If you're playing hot new games, a hot CPU is handy. So is a hot video card.
Not true. You need a better cooler.
I recently did a semi-extensive study of the various quad core desktop processors available on NewEgg, leveraging the public benchmark results from PassMark to gauge their overall relative performance. I used the NewEgg prices and simply computed the number of benchmark points you get per dollar.
The only Intel chips that are competitive with AMD's on this metric are the Q8300, the i5-750, and the Q8400.. in that order, with only the Q8300 ranking better than ANY of the AMD chips on this value metric.
Here is the actual list I made up. Score is the PassMark score, the price is the NewEgg price, and the calculated value is score/price. Higher is thus better.
The Intel linup:
Core2 Quad Q8200, score = 3255, price = $184, value = 17.69
Core2 Quad Q8300, score = 3570, price = $150, value = 23.80
Core2 Quad Q8400, score = 3668, price = $170, value = 21.58
Core2 Quad Q9400, score = 3756, price = $190, value = 19.77
Core2 Quad Q9505, score = 4016, price = $240, value = 16.73
Core2 Quad Q9550, score = 4291, price = $260, value = 16.50
Core2 Quad Q9650, score = 4559, price = $330, value = 13.82
Core i5-750, score = 4219, price = $195, value = 21.64
Core i7-860, score = 5570, price = $280, value = 19.89
Core i7-870, score = 5871, price = $540, value = 10.87
Core i7-920, score = 5590, price = $289, value = 19.34
Core i7-950, score = 6309, price = $570, value = 11.07
Core i7-960, score = 6727, price = $590, value = 11.40
Core i7-975, score = 7101, price = $970, value = 7.32
The AMD lineup:
Phenom II x4 940 "Black", score = 3645, price = $156, value = 23.37
Phenom II x4 945 "Black", score = 3500, price = $150, value = 23.33
Phenom II x4 955 "Black", score = 3876, price = $160, value = 24.23
Phenom II x4 965 "Black", score = 4253, price = $180, value = 23.63
If you dont need the horsepower, then the Q8300 is the best at $150. The i5-750 makes a strong showing ay $195, but it is NOT a better processor for the money than AMD's Phenom II x4 965, which is both cheaper at $180 and scores better.
Note that these are also the "Black" edition AMD's which have unlocked multipliers, so they are also an overclockers dream if thats the route you might want to take.
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