At this point in time three cores is more then enough.
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At this point in time three cores is more then enough.
checking newegg combos is standard procedure for long-time neweggheads... it's like do you want to pay extra or not
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boneycat
buyers guides everywhere, published by every site, are terrible. do not even bother reading them. they may get the CPU and chipset right for your purpose, but mostly I find myself disagreeing strongly with the rest of the choices (RAM, power, video, storage) both for reliability and performance reasons as well as recent changes in the market, especially in regard to newegg combos and promos. a buyer's guide could only be 2 weeks old but that is still out of date and you'll probably spend ~$100 extra for the same parts if only you'd been aware of what you needed and where it was marked down, or wost case the buyer's guide was written by a dumbass and completely steered you wrong. there are always peculiarities in everyone's need for a computer, and that is what dictates what the best value is. generally speaking, the Athlon II X3 is the perfect chip, but if I knew I was building something for a veteran overclocker/power user who had assured me that he would never play an RTS game while folding proteins, I would probably say get a i3+gigabyte P55 for ~$220. definitely more expensive than the Athlon II but if you have the desire, a 4.7+ GHz dual core nehalem with HT is possible and faster. In fact the i3 is faster clock-for-clock than the Athlon II X3 - even in some encoding scenarios, so it must be difficult to imagine what an additional 2 GHz would do. Put simply, no Athlon is competitive with that kind of performance per thread. The only thing (as far as overclockers care) AMD has going for them is the low cost. it's basically impossible to mention specific cases at such depth like this in a published buyer's guide, and no one would read them.
the general rule is that the widest CPU will last the longest in a computer because of its execution resources, but for the time being a staggering majority of programs are still not multithreaded and a very high frequency clarkdale is an intriguing interim solution, especially if it's a secondary computer and you already have a high-freq yorkfield or i7. this is all the 32nm we're getting this year so you may as well enjoy it. the funny part is that an intel dual core with HT is pretty much within the margin of error compared to a native AMD quad. except AMD has an absolute top end around 4 GHz and clarkdale's is 5 ghz.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=80&p2=118
your best bet if you want a good machine is to go on the forums here or at anandtech.com and make a thread. tell people what you need and what you do with the computer and just let them debate it until a settlement is reached. the benefit is twofold because they use realtime pricing/promos rather than data from 6 months ago. eventually someone like me or nater or learux chimes in and you wind up with a good build. it's just that nobody does that.
Well, if you know what you're talking about, why did you imply NVidia's floating point was better than ATI's? If there's any difference in transcoding quality, it's a software issue, not a hardware issue, and I have yet to hear you admit that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
WOW! your computer hardware experience goes all the way back to 2000! That's REALLY impressive. As for me, well, I was learning to program in assembly language back in 1979 on my Texas Instruments 99/4A - first 16bit home computer. After that, I had an Apple II clone with a 6502 8-bit processor running at 2MHz (instead of the 1MHz clock rate Apple IIs used), a Commodore64 in 1983, an Amiga 1000 in 1985 with which I was doing ray tracing, an Amiga 2000, an Amiga 3000, then my first PC, which was an AMD 386/40MHz in 1991. I will not list all the processors/video cards I have had since then, since it would take up a couple of pages, but HOLY CRAP you need to realize there are people on this forum with more experience and background than you have. At least TRY to be respectful once in a while: you never know who you're talking to...Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
So you're not a fanboi and you only buy what's best. That's not really compatible with "It'll probably be nVidia" since you haven't actually seen the performance of their cards yet, and you're already talking about buying one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
Then it's a good thing I never said that. Obviously, the hardware architecture is the primary factor, and at this point, AMD hardware is faster than NVidia, so really, it boils down to some coding for ATI - something that is picking up real steam right now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
And all you can do is skirt the issue that for some people, going AMD makes more sense than buying all new hardware to go Intel.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
Intel's speed does NOT make up for the extra cost for certain situations. I'm not going to repeat this again. There are some people who can simply plop a Phenom II into their existing rig and be good to go. For many, many of them, that's the smartest choice. If you can't concede this, you're too immature for me to continue debating this issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
Good god, I thought that you'd had enough of it. My computing experience goes back to the 386, but just because you've been doing something longer doesn't mean that you know what you're talking about.
I never said nVidia's floating point was better or implied so. I said nVidia cards were better at raw compute due to both hardware and software reasons in the majority of situations both consumer and professional. They don't have a decent video encoder, their F@H performance is horrible compared to nVidia (F@H is the only GPU compute code regularly used in the consumer world), they don't have robust CS solution, you don't see oil and gas companies running servers with Firestream cards. AMD has never had a decent software solution for running compute code in on their GPUs and they still don't, it shows.
Secondly, I don't recommend people buy nVidia cards for gaming right now anyway. That throws the whole fanboyism out the windows right there. If I was, I'd be trying to make the argument for Physx or some other ridiculous reason.
Finally, yes AMD presents a better value proposition if you're weren't bright enough to dump them after the Conroe came out. The only reason to build AMD is because they're less expensive, it always has been with a few exceptions. A Ford is cheaper than a Honda, but that's about all it has going for it. We all thought that AMD could compete with intel (finally) when they built the original K8. We were all wrong. Intel owns x86 and without a massive dose of hubris, they won't relinquish their performance edge again. It's pretty telling that AMD has resorted to law-suits instead of engineering to compete with intel. Usually when that happens, it's the beginning of the end. Luckily for AMD, intel can't really let them die.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Timman_24
I personally think that article is a bit twisted. All the benchmarks are ran at 1280X1024 which most enthusiasts know the intel chips are faster. Its when you hit 1680x1050 and higher that they both even out almost exactly the same. Those are the resolutions that most of us gamers play at. In which case it dosent matter which chip you use. My general consensus is that if you just game and use basic desktop apps then an AMD chip will be more than sufficient. From what ive read, the core i7's do a bit better with multi-gpu setups as well but personally I dont care because if im running 2 high end cards ill be getting killer fps anyways. If you do anything with mid-high end multimedia then the core i7's will rock your socks off.
I do light movie encoding (nero9 and handbrake) and damn I wish my 4th core unlocked lol. But it still dosent warrant me jumping on a brand new i7 setup. Which is why im jumping on AMD's hexacore the moment it comes out. See for me, the reason why I stuck with AMD is because I had an old 570 chipset AM2 board that allowed me to throw in a x3 720be and oc it to 3.6 gig which made it easy to just grab an AM3 board and some tasty DDR3 when I had the money 6 months later.
Personally I think people really chew into benchmarks way to much. 90% of people with alot of enthusiasts as well wont hardly notice the difference unless you do high end multimedia like I said before. Synthetic benchmarks show the raw performance and 90% of the time (again unless your doing mid-high end multimedia) your not using the raw performance of your chip. Benchmarks are fun, yes. But they dont tell the whole story. Im sure most of you are smart enough to realize this but it seems like sometimes we forget lol. I do it to.
6 months ago if one of you told me that intel was the same price I would have told you to F off but now it seems totally viable. Honestly, if I was building a gaming rig for a friend I would go with whatever had a good deal on newegg or frys.
Yeah, but ain't it fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by taggart6
Now I remember carrying around long boxes of punch cards! Other than u549, who probably was at the Alamo, anyone else remember putting those big Xs across the side of the cards with a big ink pen so you could get an idea where one card went back into the pile?
Oh, and sadly, I recall my first external hard drive better than my first GF. She was a 10mb beauty (the HDD) from Warp Nine Engineering for only $995. :D
Well, good god, I thought you would never concede buying AMD can sometimes make sense for some people. Congratulations on being able to finally to (grudgingly and critically) say so:Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
Well, people who bought socket AM2/AM2+/AM3 will likely be able to go from, say, an A64 dual-core or Phenom I chip to a 6 core Thuban chip with the same hardware later this year. Yeah, that WAS pretty damned stupid of them to buy AMD... Well, at least it only took you until page 4 of the thread to make that tarnished concession, but hey, better late than never. See, I thought like me, you were here to help other people pick computer hardware, or to have good-faith discussions about computer hardware. It sounds instead like you're trying to wear me down through sheer obstinacy or something.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
I heartily agree. In fact, I would never have mentioned the extent of my experience until you decided to whip our your e-penis first in a silly attempt to intimidate me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
O.K., good points. I can see where you're coming from. It's in the pipeline, but yes, ATI is not yet their with there GPU compute support. They obviously will be very shortly, since their entire corporate strategy revolves around fusion of CPU and GPU computing, but you are right about this right this very minute.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
O.K., here's where I really have to say something. My 30 years of experience might not make me automatically more knowledgeable, but it does give me tremendous overview. I've been hearing people like you predict AMD's permanent submission to Intel for nearly 3 decades. When Intel released the 386, people thought AMD would be screwed. Same goes for the 486, and then, with the Pentium, pro-Intel idiots were saying 'O.K., now AMD's REALLY going down. Intel's in charge and STAYING there!' When AMD released the Athlon, these same fools looked pretty pathetic. The Pentium IV was supposed to bury the Athlon XP... until the Athlon 64 and A64 X2 crushed Intel's chips. Now, Intel has once again regained the upper hand, you pro-Intel enthusiasts are once again (for about the 5th or 6th time in 20 years) squawking about Intel's permanent superiority.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
Try to imagine how you must sound to me when you say that it's likely Intel will continue to dominate into the future. It sounds ridiculous. AMD has, for over 20 years, been constrained by the need to coordinate design updates and releases with chip production capacity and technology updates within their own in-house manufacturing - no longer. AMD can now sub-contract to one of several different facilities and even release multiple product revisions within months of each other. They are no longer chained to the financial restrictions of having to produce chips in-house. To make matters worse for Intel, AMD probably has the very best microprocessor design team on the entire planet. These guys designed the Digital Alpha processor, and shortly after AMD gave them all jobs after Compaq bought out DEC, they designed the AMD Athlon and the Athlon 64. Now, the head of that Digital Alpha design team is at the helm of Advanced Micro Devices as CEO! Dirk Meyer is not some economist or marketing guru like most CEOs. The man is a microprocessor engineer, and he's now completely in charge AMD. Try to imagine how that changes the game here.
As strange as it may sound to you right now, I actually almost feel a little bit sorry for Intel, because what has been a serious but somewhat constrained competitor, AMD, is about to unleash some serious competition on them the likes of which they've never seen before. I predict that you're going to see AMD shattering sampling and product release schedules (like this):
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3736
in an almost unbelievable way, and that AMD's products are going to steadily out-maneuver and outperform Intel's over the coming months and years, but only time will tell.
It isn't ridiculous to assume intel will dominate the future when they have dominated the past. AMD has had a clearly faster processor for 3 years in 27 years of building x86 chips. They've been competitive on performance for a total of six out of 27 years. 11% and 22% of the time. Now they have no aces in the hole. They can't pillage the carcass of Alpha to build a new chip, they have to do it entirely on their own. They're not doing well.
AMD spent 1.8 billion on R&D in 2007, intel spend $5.9 billion. That's what it boils down to, intel has a lot more money. They have better fabs, they have a lot more engineers, they have a lot more resources. Intel builds a new microarchitecture every two years, AMD every four.
I've never once said that they would go away, simply because it is not in intel's interest to get rid of them. Without AMD, intel gets hit with massive anti-trust investigations. Much more serious charges than they're facing now. They'd face the real possibility of being split apart.
Intel wants AMD pushed to the margins and at under 20% market share. That's where they are now. Since they've dropped back to their usual spot in the market place, intel has stopped it's most aggressive pricing (look at the unusually high prices of Clarksdale desktop processors) and have relaxed the Tick-Tock cycle (Sandy Bridge to Q1) that was murdering AMD.
Could AMD pull a miracle again and produce a better chip than intel? Yes. Is it likely? No. Intel vs. AMD isn't like AMD(ATi) vs. nVidia. AMD has always been about cheap chips and intel has always been about performance. I don't see why people can't accept that. There is historically no trading of the performance crown, Intel almost always has it.
Well, Nater, I must say this last post actually has the aura of civility about it that I was hoping for. Kudos to you for ratcheting down the bombast.
It's not merely a question of percentages of times over the last 40 years that AMD has been ahead, it's the pattern of their trajectory. Until 1999, AMD was only ever playing catch-up. Before the Athlon, AMD never had the very fastest x86 processor: for the first 30 years (1969-1999) of AMD and Intel's existence, AMD was never ahead of Intel in terms of x86 performance at the top end. Then, with the Athlon, AMD actually moved ahead for the very first time ever, even if only briefly (they got to 1GHz before Intel in 2000). Then, with the Athlon 64 and the Athlon 64 X2, AMD actually moved ahead of Intel and remained there for 3 years. Yes, Intel regained the performance crown with the Conroe, but if this trend continues, AMD may regain the lead again and hold it for a while the next time it happens.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
Well, I hardly call borrowing features from your OWN design pillaging. I'd call that re-using a good idea. Pillaging is grabbing features from a competitor's processor, like Intel ripping off Hypertransport, monolithic cache architecture on a multicore CPU (Phenom):Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-cpu,2041.html
and x86-64 instructions from the Athlon 64. Now THAT'S scavenging. But before you bury your fingers deep enough into your keyboard to draw blood rushing to respond, yes AMD ripped off Intel's original x86 architecture, too, and the 286, 386 and 486 designs. Nobody's innocent here.
Also, I'd ask you to remember that same Alpha design team now form the nucleus of AMD's processor design team. They did do it on their own before, and they have done it again and again.
Even if you don't agree with me about this, you also have to bear in mind that AMD doesn't have to have the very fastest CPU all the time in order to have the best value proposition at the right sweet spots. Just before the i5-750 came out, the $200-$300 sweetspot was won by the Phenom II X4 965. This is a very important price point, because it represents the best bang for the buck price range most of the time since about 1997. It is here that AMD can compete, and is continuing to do so.
Actually, even you have to admit that's pretty amazing on AMD's part. Currently, AMD has a market capitalization of about $5.4 billion, while Intel's is about $114 billion. So the company who's market value is only 1/21 of Intel's is still able to spend nearly 1/3 the money on R&D. By any standard, I'd say that's impressive! Something else you should bear in mind is that money alone does not buy innovation - something a lot of companies have found out the hard way. If AMD's processor engineering teams are sufficiently well-paid and provided with adequate incentives and a supportive corporate culture, they have already demonstrated themselves able to out-innovate even larger teams with larger budgets. For example, Intel just poured a huge amount of money into Larabee, only to find out that designing a leading-edge GPU architecture is much harder than they thought. Tons of money and tons of skilled people didn't buy them success there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
So what you're really saying is that it's out of Intel's hands anyhow, and it has nothing to do with benevolence on Intel's part. I guess they've learned what every bully eventually learns - that there's always somebody bigger than you are (like national governments with anti-trust laws). Next point.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
Actually, Intel would really like to see AMD at about 1-2% market share but technically still alive, sort of like VIA's x86 business, but they just can't seem to pull that off. The reason why is manifold. First, somehow AMD continues to maintain a competitive product lineup that is price-competitive with Intel's offerings. Secondly, Intel's customers understand what it will mean for them if Intel manages to push AMD right to the wall and out of the marketplace - much higher costs for Intel chips. When Dell, HP and others put AMD processors into several of their laptop, desktop and server lines, it ain't just charity brother, it's self-preservation!Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
The word 'no' and 'almost' are at logical odds in your last sentence. Either AMD has NEVER taken the performance crown (it has), or there IS trading of said crown. Can't have it both ways.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
Still, at least you're sounding civil. It's becoming more enjoyable to debate this subject with you with each reply.
Why would intel want AMD at 1-2% market share? They wouldn't. AMD allows intel to point to regulators and say 'we have competition'. That doesn't work so well when you're competitor has 1% marketshare, but it does when they're at 15-20%. The actual percentage is less important than the market segmentation. AMD is only competitive with intel in extremely low margin, low cost, but high volume processors and in high margin, very low volume server chips. Intel dominates in the segments that make money. Desktop chips above $100, 1S and 2S workstations and severs. Intel makes a lot more money on processors sold than does AMD.
It's patently obvious from intel's current behavior that they; have AMD about where they want them and they don't want to push them any further due to government regulators. Intel could cut the prices for Clarksdale processors in half and take AMD out of the cheap desktop chip game over night if they wanted to. They could go back to a 2-year tick-tock cycle if they wanted to. That would allow them to be pushing out the 22nm Ivy Bridge chips a quarter or two after AMD launches 32nm Bulldozer, an architecture that will probably draw even with Nehalem and Westmere. But they won't because it would draw heat from the EU, Japanese, and the American trade regulation bodies.
The success of the K8 has a lot to do with AMD being smart, but it has even more to do with intel being stupid. Intel wanted to segment the market between the Pentium IV and the Itanium. It wanted desktops running the P4 and it wanted every server to be a mid-range or high-end box running Itaniums. They both had the same problems. The Pentium IV, while still x86 required a recompile to see the best performance. It also consumed way too much power. The Itanium and it's completely new IA-64 ISA didn't work well with the backend applications companies ran without the software vendors rewriting their code. Intel overstretched and AMD took advantage of it.
It wasn't AMD's success that allowed them to produce the best performing chips on the market, it was intel's failure. Intel actually had an architecture just as fast as the K8 in the Banias/Dothan but only used them for laptops. If they'd designed desktop/low-end server chips around that micro-architecture in 2003/4 instead of 2006 AMD wouldn't have gotten the Opteron off the ground.
Do you really think that intel will be that shortsighted again? I don't. I don't think that they particularly liked not having the fastest chips running an ISA that they invented. I don't think that they much cared for what it did to their business.
Yes, AMD spends a lot on R&D. Do they get much out of it? Not really. The only world-class semiconductor products that AMD makes are from the ATi division. While intel spends a lot less as a function of their total income, they certainly get more out of it. They have the best x86 chips, they have the best SSD controller on the market, they're the only company that seems to be making any progress on PCM (NAND's replacement), they have one of if not the best RAID ASICs.
Finally, semantics aside, intel and AMD do not trade the performance crown. People seem to think that AMD and intel trade off having the faster chip every couple of years. This is not true. 90% of the time, intel has the faster chips. They have more patents, they have more engineers, they have better fabs, they have more money. It's just that the x86 world order has gone back to it's normal state with intel a generation and node ahead and AMD selling cheap chips. Any lead AMD has in any particular market segment is because either intel is EOLing one product line and getting ready to introduce another (4S/8S) or it's a market that intel sees little value proposition in playing ($50 desktop chips).
Exactly. Intel would love to see AMD crushed, but that would mean anti-trust lawsuits, so like I said, the matter is out of Intel's hands.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
So, AMD didn't actually design the K8? Intel just screwed up and mystically, the K8 came into existence? I'm not sure what you're saying here. Clearly the situation was a combination of Intel making a blunder AND AMD producing an excellent product. AMD had to produce an excellent product in order to take the lead. As far as Banias/Dothan, well, they're really Pentium III chips in their essence - it's amazing Intel ever thought they could improve on the Pentium III with a much longer pipeline. 20 stage vs. 12? What were they thinking?Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
I think you're ascribing too much agency to Intel. It's not merely a question of what they WANT. This isn't Star Wars, and Intel is not able to use the dark side of the force to crush its enemies, this is real life. In real life, large corporations can fail. You would have been laughed out of the room if you'd predicted GM's downfall in 1960, and I'm sure you can't imagine Intel ever failing either, but the fact is, it can happen, and it isn't all up to whether they like it or not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
O.K., I'm not even going to bother with how ridiculous your sweeping and uninformed assessment of AMD's R&D is. You hit on something important, however, and that is AMD's possession of ATI. Intel still doesn't have an answer to the Radeon 5000 series architecture or NVidia's Fermi. AMD has already told everybody they're on a trajectory to integrate their x86 and Radeon circuitry into single processor dies, and establishing themselves as the leader of over-all integer/floating point performance. I don't see Intel making up the lack of ground they've just lost mucking around with Larabee. It's like the Itanium all over again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
I've already made the case for AMD's trajectory, I'm not going to bother typing it again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nater
The big threat to intel isn't AMD, or any other microprocessor vendor. It's the move from PCs to mobile devices. Mobile devices are not a good fit for x86, but perhaps intel's enormous engineering talent can make it work. Even so, it's putting 10 lbs into a 5 lb bag.
That intel doesn't have a competitor to the HD 5000 series or Fermi is of little consequence right now. About 70% of PCs sold ship without a GPU, the figure for servers is probably like 99%+.
AMD's Fusion processor is no threat to intel in terms of performance. Why? Because it's a very low-end GPU first of all, second of all, intel will have very similar functionality in their native 32nm generation (Sandy Bridge) and will have already had experience in shipping processors with integrated graphics functions.
It's pretty ludicrous to claim that AMD will 'have the highest performing CPU for floating point operations'. That would require a program to both use 100% of available CPU power and 100% of the GPU as well. The problem is that both AMD's and nVidia's GPUs are extremely difficult to program. Especially AMD's.
Larrabee was supposed to be the first really programable vector coprocessor you could buy for a PC. Unfortunately for everyone, intel aimed way too high. The chip, with a high-end load-out of 100 processing cores would have needed something like 1.5TB/s of memory bandwidth. That's 6.5 times the bandwidth that nVidia will be offering on the GTX 480 (assuming they use 4.8Gb/s ICs) and about ten times the bandwidth available on the HD 5870. It just wasn't going to work with current technology.
That sucks, because Larrabee would have not only really brought about a super scalar/vector hybrid processing architecture in the PC, but it would have also forced AMD and nVidia to actually make their GPUs fully programable. With intel pushing, GPU compute could have gone to places that it won't with just nVidia pushing it. Certainly it would have forced the change sooner rather than later.
As for the K8, yep AMD designed it. Still, it wouldn't have been nearly the success had intel decided to use a Banias/Dothan style architecture for their desktop and low-end/mid-range server processors instead of NetBurst. No doubt about it. Why? Because everyone knows that the said architecture was just as fast as K8. When intel updated it for use in desktops and servers, AMD's marketshare started falling about as fast as it's stock price.
This discussion makes me sad. Let's wrap it up:
1. Intel will probably not destroy AMD soon, and AMD is probably not going to dominate Intel anytime soon. Just like the earth will probably not crash into the sun anytime soon. Intel needs AMD for competition, AMD is very competitive at the low end but has miserable marketing and a massive manpower deficiency and tiny budgets and a huge market that basically lives as Intel's permanent finger puppet. All this means that the status quo will continue until there's an upset probably from a source not related directly to the current competition.
2. Anubis has spent several pages arguing that one place AMD makes sense is when you're already invested in the platform. It's a fair point that AMD's mobos are a great long-term value whereas Intel tends to deep-six its sockets on a regular basis. It's also a fair point that it isn't hard for AMD to seem competitive when they have a $100-300 mobo (and in some cases RAM) pricing advantage. Less flaming and more constructive discussion would make it a lot easier to note these two reasonable and opposing points in one civil post rather than 50 uncivilized ones.
3. I'm only 27. I've been alive for less time than some of you people have been looking at punch card porn (admit it - it exists, you liked it, and the first time you saw ASCII porn you dumped your girlfriends and never looked back) and let I'm perfectly capable of looking at the current market trends in a reasonable, analytical fashion. I hope we can all put aside our abacus lunchboxes and get back to the current simple discussion. Speaking of which...
4. Yes, there are price points and workloads for which AMD makes sense. Not many, but they are out there. Examples:
4a. Budget gaming. X2 250 and X3 435 are both significant improvements over the E6300. You can make an argument for the 255 as well.
4b. Budget multicore via ACC. If your workload is multicore-friendly, you'd have a hard time finding better budget-segment value than a $100 X2 555 that turns into an X4 940 with a simple BIOS option and an X4 965 with a moderate OC. Clarkdale/Lynnfield is inarguably a better architecture, and AMD is inarguably competing on price... but that doesn't mean they aren't competing.
Right now the 555 is $100. It turns into a 965 with minimal hassle. Anyone wanna suggest an Intel CPU that can outperform an X4 965 for $100 in an SMT-friendly workload? Didn't think so.
I should note that AMD no longer has an argument for platform costs even in the budget segment. H55 boards can be had for $85 before bundle discounts. You can spin that to an AMD advantage by comparing it to DDR2 785G boards, but of course there are plenty of cheap DDR2 LGA775 boards. For all intents and purposes, mobo pricing is balanced these days.
So, to summarize: Intel has the upper hand in the market and in architecture and they will, barring unforeseen catastrophic events, be keeping both advantages for a good long time. Intel is inarguably a better option at most price points and for most workloads, but not all. There are a few select cases where AMD makes sense even in a new build. We're all OCers here so it makes sense to compare overclocked results. This generally puts Intel in an even better light since their chips are ridiculously OCable, but it does validate AMD's budget ace-in-the-hole with ACC. $100 for a 3.2GHz quad is simply an unbeatable deal if you need multithreading on a tight budget.
That said, I don't see much value in any of the AMD X4 line. Intel competes with higher clocks, higher OC, and better speed per-clock vs the Athlon X4 and low-end Phenom X4. It doesn't always win with that strategy (as a quick check of Anandtech Bench will confirm) but it usually does and often by very convincing margins. And of course, the higher-end Phenoms have to deal with Lynnfield where they can compete by being a bit cheaper... but cheapness doesn't hold as much weight in the $200 segment as it does in the $100 segment. Lynnfield doesn't have the OC power of Clarkdale, but it's still more power efficient and faster in most workloads.
There's a market for the 965... but it's very small and frequently limited to people who have $180 but can't come up with the $195 for an i5 750, and for some reason don't care that they'll make up the $15 in energy costs.
The rest of that market is going to be citing some very specific workloads in Anandtech Bench.
I'll freely admit I'm a mild AMD fan, and I have an AMD laptop. It's a Gateway NV53 and I bought it because it's $100-150 cheaper than an i3 with comparable onboard graphics so I can run the occasional Dawn of War. I happily sacrificed a bit of battery life and a bit of CPU performance - the M300 is a nice boost over the QL-65 but the i3 still smokes it. If I had to make the purchasing decision again, the $100-150 price advantage and comparable light gaming experience would still put me in AMD's corner... but I fully recognize that my market segment is tiny, and if an i3 machine with similar specs was within $50 I'd snatch it right up.
Apologies for a longish post but I hope this cleared things up a bit and we can go back to being nice now :)
I do not believe in comparing a 2 core cpu to a 4 core Intel. Even if you can do so simply in the BIOS.
The Intel I7 920 is only $200 so well worth it :)
http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0302727
Wow, wish I was near one of their stores, that's $90 cheaper than newegg.Quote:
Originally Posted by Colossus
We all know how to OC. The discussion is about best value for the money and areas where buying AMD makes sense. It makes sense to buy AMD if you need budget quad-core and you don't mind doing some light tweaking. The value of what is essentially a a $100 X4 965 is unbeatable in the budget quad segment... ACC + OC is a small price to pay and everyone notes Intel's OC abilities as a positive so it makes sense from that perspective too.Quote:
I do not believe in comparing a 2 core cpu to a 4 core Intel. Even if you can do so simply in the BIOS.
Well lets compare apples to apples. The X4 965 is $185, while the I7 920 is $199. Hmmm hard choice for a $14 difference! NOT!
Actually the 965 is $180 at Newegg. Details.
Anyway, like I said, we're comparing overclocked value. I mentioned the 965 because the 555 can easily attain that level of performance and it makes for easy benchmark comparisons.
The OC ability of the Intel chips has been widely cited as a benefit in this discussion, yes? ACC unlocking falls in the same category as OC in terms of maximizing the value of your purchase.
The point is that you can get the performance of a $180 965 for $100. That's a steal of a deal. Of course, we'd compare to an OC'd chip on the Intel side, but an OC'd Lynnfield/Nehalem isn't price-competitive and an OC'd Clarkdale isn't performance-competitive. Given that we're going to OC, Intel cannot match AMD at the ~$100 level.
Also, the i7 920 is crippled by platform costs. Cheapest X58 board on Newegg is $160. H55/785g boards are $85ish. Go ahead and add another $75 to the cost of that 920.
So, to compare platform costs:
i7 920: $200 i3 530: $125
X58: $160 H55: $85
TOTAL: $360 TOTAL: $210
965: $180 555: $100
785g: $85 785g: $85
TOTAL: $265 TOTAL: $185
Since you can get 965 performance out of a 555, it essentially means you can get a 965 for half the platform cost of an i7 920. That premium will be worth it to some people, but not to everyone.
To be fair, I should be mentioning OC'd values for Intel chips too, but in this case it doesn't matter. A highly OC'd Clarkdale is still not competitive with 965-level performance in multithreaded tasks (and Clarkdale is still $25 more expensive than the 555 too). Lynnfield at any clock speed is not cost competitive with the 555+ACC. That means there is a market segment that the 555 combo will appeal to. Make sense?
You still cannot compare them. I do not rely on a fluke of a BIOS hack to change it. Which can change anytime.
So comparing your numbers above the price difference is less then $100 for a better setup. I920 + Board over 965 + Board.
If you need to think about it, you are a lost cause.
Colosus, with all do respect. Obviously looking at your signature you are a power user and want bleeding edge hardware. When I put my rig together the savings for building a AMD versus intel were about$125.
For me that was about 25% of total cost. Most intensive thing I do is game and the cheaper 955 was more then suffice.
I would have loved to have an i7, cost couldn't justify it.
To each its own, no matter how you look at it $100 for a lot of people is a lot of money.
Now lets go shoot at each other in BF:BC.
Fluke of a BIOS hack? You mean like overclocking in general? Note that I specified that this comparison is for SOME PEOPLE who MAXIMIZE VALUE by OVERCLOCKING. My argument isn't that everyone should buy the chip, but that it makes sense for some tweakers looking to maximize value in a cheap machine.Quote:
You still cannot compare them. I do not rely on a fluke of a BIOS hack to change it. Which can change anytime.
And it can change any time? What are you smoking? It's a BIOS setting, just like overclocking.
Are you ignoring my words? I'm comparing tweaked value. 555 = 965 performance with a simple, reliable tweak. Ditto for a 920 that can run at 950+ speed with OC.Quote:
So comparing your numbers above the price difference is less then $100 for a better setup. I920 + Board over 965 + Board.
Also, your argument ignores maximizing value. 920+X58 = 200+160 = $360. 965 (to humor your non-argument) + 785G = 180 + 85 = 265. $95 is enough to jump from a 5770 to a 5850, which will make a helluva lot more difference for gamers than a 920 upgrade could ever hope to. Knock off another $80 by going with the tweaked 555 and you're almost at a 5870. I think any reasonable person can at this point see the potential value of tweaking a 555 rather than buying a 920.
I don't need to think about it. You're clearly not responding to my argument that a tweaked 555 makes sense over a 920 SOME OF THE TIME for SOME PEOPLE. If I was a ****, I might tell you you're a lost cause or something. Instead, here I am like a civilized person trying to explain the very simple concept that some people like to maximize their available budgets through tweaking, which you seem very resistant to acknowledging.Quote:
If you need to think about it, you are a lost cause.
My argument: "If you don't mind tweaking, this is a good value."
Your argument: "I don't like tweaking."
My argument: "Good for you. Some people do like tweaking, and they will save money for doing it. Have a cookie. The rest of us will save $180 for near-equivalent gaming performance."
The argument of bios changes is the same argument back in the day about a bios flash on an ATI card that brought what was it a 9600 to a 9800 in performance?
Sorry not the same.
So the less then $100 difference for a quality chip and board over AMD anytime of the week. Video card only makes a difference depending on what resolution you can game at. So you are incorrect about that :)
Heck if you want to talk about performance get a I920 and spend the extra $100 or less. Overclock to an easy 4GHz and totally blow over the AMD. But we dont want to compare overclock to overclock =) Which takes us back to square one. 965 vs I920.
Don't take this too serious but your avatar says it all:)
Bottom line is still $125, your argument about the quality chip and board holds no ground and you know it.
Really? You aren't seriously grasping at this straw are you? Tell me you forgot the /sarcasm tag.Quote:
The argument of bios changes is the same argument back in the day about a bios flash on an ATI card that brought what was it a 9600 to a 9800 in performance?
Sorry not the same.
So the less then $100 difference for a quality chip and board over AMD anytime of the week. Video card only makes a difference depending on what resolution you can game at. So you are incorrect about that
Heck if you want to talk about performance get a I920 and spend the extra $100 or less. Overclock to an easy 4GHz and totally blow over the AMD. But we dont want to compare overclock to overclock =) Which takes us back to square one. 965 vs I920.
The goal of budget gaming is to find a CPU fast enough to keep the graphics card happy for as little money as possible, so as to maximize leftover funds for a good gfx card and monitor. You know this. I can get a few extra fps here and there in... uhh, what games care about the CPU that much? A few hardcore flight sims and maybe SupCom 1?
Or I can jump from a 5770 to a 5870. Go ahead: Tell me I'm better off with a 920 and a 5770 over a 555->965 and 5870.
And yet again, I'm not saying the 555 is better for everyone and we should dump the 920. I'm only saying THERE IS A REASONABLE ARGUMENT for the tweaked 555.
Your platform: $360; my platform: $180
That's a $180 difference, not a sub-100 difference. Check your addition skills.
My platform will perform just about as well as yours for half the price. The saved money buys a much better graphics card.
As Learux said, the platform argument mostly died with the 690 and we buried its remains with the 780. Buy it, run it for a year or two until the next gen chips hit and drop in price, then craigslist it and get a new one.
FYI, 780G and H55/P55/X58 all seem to generally sit at four-star reviews on Newegg, indicating roughly similar quality.
Now stop being ridiculous and just admit there's a reasonable argument for people who'd rather change a BIOS setting than pay an extra $180 for a few more fps in a few games.
The 555-> 965 will keep anything short of a 5970 happy in most every game on the market and be just as functional. Your 4GHz Nehalem is certainly faster... but most games don't care at all. If you can keep the graphics card filled, you're good to go. 555->965 fills the card, 965 fills the card, 920 fills the card, and 920 @ 4Ghz fills the card. 920 will have benefits here and there, but the benefits won't be worth it to most people, especially gamers. If you have deep pockets and a real need for speed, then by all means grab a 920 and OC the crap out of it. For the rest of us, price/performance is important and there's very little payoff for super-fast processors.
Come on man, this is simple stuff. You usually make good posts - why is this so hard to comprehend?