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Comparing CPU
Right now I'm using a intel core 2 duo cpu at 2.93ghz. I'm getting a new computer that's using an AMD Phenom Quad-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology at 3.0ghz. I've been told that my intel cpu might be better, if not just as good, as the amd cpu. Which is better?
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Well, it is possible that the Intel can do better in games that doesn't use more than 1 or 2 cores, it depends a bit on which Intel processor it is, there is a lot.
So I will just link to Toms hardware charts, where you can check it out yourself.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/processors,6.html
The AMD will do better if you run a lot of different programs at the same time.
Do you really mean a Phenom, or do you mean a Phenom II? The Phenom topped out at 2.6 GHz, and didn't have very much overclocking headroom, so you'd have to be lucky to get one to 3 GHz.
In single-threaded programs, the new processor will be about as good as the old one. But the new processor will have four cores, and the old one only two, so the new one will be twice as fast in programs that scale well to four cores.
It might be better to ask about the whole system than just the processor if you're getting a new system, in case there's something else horribly wrong with it. Such as a cheap junk power supply.
One thing to consider when buying a new CPU is the amount of cache. Simply put, cache is a storage device on the chip. This tiny amount of storage on the chip remembers basic functions without the need to leave the comfy confines on the cpu. These are really basic functions that your computer would have to spend time on calculating. Therefore, the higher the cache the better performance your computer will have over all.
When you look at amd vs intel, the very first thing you look at is price difference. The reason for the huge difference in price, even though they both may offer a 3.0 quad core, is that intel has a huge cache. This is also why intel chips are preforming better in games as far as FPS are concerned.
The next thing you might notice is what happens to the motherboard. Intel supports tri channel ddr3. This is why you commonly see 6 gig intel setups and and 4 gig amd setups. The price steadily rises on an intel setup over amd, but the greater cost offers greater fps.
I have been a huge AMD fan. Now that the i7 chips are out, with tri channel support, I have moved to intel and couldnt be happier. Now, will the average user notice or care about the fps increase? Most likely not, but I am an enthusiast builder. I notice these things and therefore I will spend the money on it.
Which is better.
If the game supports multi cores then the quad > duo.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
While processor cache helps, I think it's better to think of that as just one more thing that feeds into the performance per core per clock cycle figure of a processor architecture.
The only desktop processors with three memory channels are the Bloomfield and Gulftown Core i7s. If that's your budget, then rather than buying a two year old Bloomfield processor, you should wait a month for Sandy Bridge, which will get you something a lot better and a lot cheaper.
As I understood the Sandy Bridge will use a different socket size, the 1155. i would not expect that to lower prices on the 1366 or kill the line, so to speak. I also thought the Sandy Bridge, with its onboard GPU, would be more for office and server environments. Not really geared for gaming or even priced for residential use. Please enlighten me if I am wrong, as I have been known to be several times.
Sure, Intel's integrated graphics is just wasted silicon for a lot of people. But that's true of a lot of things in various chips. Most people don't really need 14 USB ports in a chipset, or double precision floating point support in a video card, or a lot of other things.
A full node die shrink and a markedly better architecture overwhelms that. Compared to Bloomfield, Sandy Bridge will offer better performance per clock cycle, will be clocked higher, will have a more aggressive turbo boost, will be cheaper, will use less power, and will go into a cheaper motherboard.
If that sounds too good to be true, it's really just Moore's Law. Is it really all that surprising that a pretty good processor that launches in 2011 will be so much better than the best processors from 2008? AMD's Zambezi will almost certainly be better than Bloomfield, too. Bloomfield was a great processor in 2008, but its time is nearly done, and there's little sense in getting one now.
Im spinning off the original topic a little, but the Sandy Bridge mention sparks a question Ive been harboring.
How, in all likelihood, will Sandy Bridge do, in a system with a Graphics card?
If there isn't a problem with a Graphics Card, will it matter if the card is an ATI or Intel, or are these all unknowns, at this point?
Apply same question(s) to on board GPU, if applicable.
If you get a discrete video card with Sandy Bridge, the onboard graphics on the Sandy Bridge die won't be used and won't matter. It doesn't matter whether the discrete video card is made by AMD or Nvidia. PCI Express is an industry standard, and if Intel's chipsets didn't meet the standard, they'd shoot themselves in the foot and lock themselves out of a large fraction of the market.
Intel doesn't make discrete video cards. They released one 13 years ago, and it was a disaster. They recently tried again with Larrabee, and that, too, was a disaster, so they canceled it without releasing the card.
Huh I did write Intel did'nt I, man my back really has me messed up, I meant Nvidia.
So ok all is good, Sandy Bridge doesn't in anyway, limit ones video options. I did'nt figure it would, just had to ask.
My computer just came in the mail the other day. The CPU is an AMD Phenom II x4 925 2.8ghz.
Whoever tells you that the Intel is better is a fanboy.
I'm too lazy to explain but I'll make it brief.
Windows runs on threads. Creating processes is a very expensive task for the Windows OS to perform. The DC you have has two threads. The new processor you have has more.
I could expand further onto the architecture of both CPUs but it's gonna blow your brains and everyone else's up, plus it'd be 10 pages long. So just leave it at that. Yes, I have a degree in this shit.
The amount of threads which the program supports is a major factor in which CPU will run better. Most programs right now only support two cores, so getting a quad core has been shown to perform as well or sometimes even slower than a dual core (due to the confusion for multiple cores when the OS doesn't support it).
I have been thinking about getting the I7s with the low-K gate, as that is a pretty drastic improvement on the capabilities of the core, making math computations faster. Right now, I run a Core2Duo on a netbook and couldn't be happier, as it can run most MMOs out there without breaking a sweat.
"The civilized man is rude, as he knows there are laws that protect him from recompense; The savage is not, for his actions can meet a bloody end."
- Robert E. Howard
That reminds me of Joe Biden's famous line, "The Internet is a series of tubes". It's not entirely false, but not the sort of thing that an expert in the field would be likely to say.
Windows has dozens of processes running even if all you've done is to boot the computer. They can't be that expensive to create.
From a hardware perspective, physical cores matter a lot more than threads. Hyperthreading doesn't help that much. What you might have been getting at is that for a single program to use more than one physical core at a time, the code needs to be properly threaded for it.
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Right now, Intel's best processors really are better than AMD's best. SSE4, lower cache latencies, power gating, turbo boost, and HKMG all offer advantages over AMD's best processors.
And that gap is about to grow wider with the introduction of Sandy Bridge. AMD will roughly catch up with the launch of Bulldozer next Spring.
Don't you mean Ted Stevens' famous line?
Apparently so. Though it does sound like the sort of thing Joe Biden could have said. Actually, most things sound like the sort of thing Joe Biden could have said. I half expected him to endorse McCain for President at some point in the campaign.
Knowing that it was Ted Stevens basically tells you what the context had to be, though: more pork spending for Alaska.
Whether or not one agrees with what he says, Joe Biden has a mouth bigger than his home state, and it tends to get him in trouble...
still he's not as much fun to poke at as Ted Stevens
Stevens had a certain out-of-touch senile old man quality to him, where he'd constantly say things, and just get them not quite right. Oh how I miss that man being in politics.
Oh, and for the record, Stevens was trying to end net neutrality with that speech ("The internet is not just something you put something on, it's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes!"), and it really is worth a listen sometime on youtube, because he just gets things hillariously wrong. I think it's also the source of the word internets because whether or not he actually used the word, he implied that there was more than one throughout the tirade. Like I said, definitely worth listening to