CPU Types 3

[626F62]

Hi there... I work in hardware but have become a little out of touch with the stuff as my Job has mainly gone OS side... trying to keep up im reading about all the new processors and am lost...

can anyone explain each of these / the differances...

Dual Core
Core 2 Duo
Core 2 Quad

details would be handy including things like how many can be in a machine together, the number of cores etc...

thanks

 

[Nelviticus]

Dual core just means a processor with two cores.

Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad are Intel brand names for their last line of consumer CPUs. The Core 2 Duos are dual-core and the Core 2 Quads are quad-core - i.e. they have four cores.

Personally I think it's a confusing set of names. Intel's latest range is called Core i7 and they are (so far) all quad-core.

How many can be in a machine together depends on the motherboard but apart from a few very niche boards - such as Intel's SkullTrail - they generally only support one CPU.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[Nelviticus]

*edit* - my post only refers to consumer-related stuff, server motherboards often support more than one CPU.

Nelviticus

 

[626F62]

Thanks for clearing that up... so if you had a server board, how many CPU's could you have, and am i right in thinking there are new Xeon processors out?

 

[Nelviticus]

I'm not really into server stuff but yes, there's a new range of 5500-series Xeon's out based on the same architecture as the Core i7 CPUs.

How many you can have on a motherboard depends on the board. Dual-CPU is common but you can also get four- or eight-CPU boards.

Intel aren't the only players in town - AMD also has its consumer-oriented Athlon X2 (two-core), Phenom X3 (three-core) and Phenom X4 (four-core) processors plus its server-oriented Opteron range.

Nelviticus

 

[wahnula]

Intel aren't the only players in town...

Hi Nelviticus,

Right now the Core i7 is maybe not the ONLY player, but it's the BEST player in town. It's in a league by itself, both performance and TDP. While I love AMD stuff, the latest AM3 Phenom II X4 is only competitive with the Core 2 Duo & Quad series. With Core i7's under $300USD (920 quad, 2.66), there's no comparison for performance.

AMD does excel in getting good "bang for the buck" and it's where I look when I'm building a budget office system, but for myself it's Core i7 for my next rig. I just need to find the right excuse to abandon my current Core 2 Duo E6600...

Tony

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[kmcferrin]

Right now the Core i7 is maybe not the ONLY player, but it's the BEST player in town.

I hate it when people make unqualified statements about the "best". It creates the impression that there is somehow a right and wrong answer, and there's not. If you want top performance at any cost, go with Core i7. If cost factors into things, AMD is typically more competitive on the price/performance ratio. Of course, if you have a socket 775 mainboard and are looking for a new CPU, AMD is probably out of the running regardless of price/performance ratios.



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[cdogg]

I applaud AMD for remaining competitive, especially when you take into account the die size comparison. AMD's Phenom 940 (258 mm²) is about the same price as Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9400 (164 mm²) but yields a 36% size advantage to Intel. Some of the Phenom X3's are in an even worse position yielding as much as 68% to similarly priced Intel CPUs. So it is just amazing to me that they are able to keep the prices as low as they have. Although I have to question how long they can sustain it, I won't hesitate to say that the Phenom X3's and X4's have done well against their Intel counterparts.

However, in the high-end market as Tony seems to have touched on, it's hard to say you wouldn't spend an extra $50 or even $75 to get a significant performance boost with the Core i7 which at the moment does appear to be in a league of its own. That boost is often around 20% and goes as high as 40% in some benchmarks that I've seen. Only as you slide down the totem pole into the mid-tier market, the real price advantage that AMD has to offer begins to shine. So obviously it depends on the situation. AMD should definitely remain in strong contention for budget-oriented, high-quantity purchases.

~cdogg
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[kmcferrin]

If it were only an extra $50-$75 I would agree with you, but it's not. The top of the line AMD is the Phenom II X4 940 at $215. The lowest end Core i7 is the Core i7 920, which is still faster but is $65 more.

But then you look at the motherboards. The least expensive motherboard that I could find that supports the Core i7 is made by MSI and retails for $189.99. The are MANY boards that will accommodate the Phenom II X4 940 for well under $100. Even a real nice board that supports Crossfire, onboard RAID 5, etc, runs only $109. So there's another $80 there.

Then there's the memory. The Core i7 uses triple channel DDR3. So a reasonable set of 6GB PC10666 DDR3 will run you about $100 for the cheap stuff (G.Skill). You can pick up 6GB of PC8500 DDR2 for about $70 from the same manufacturer. Again, this is cheap memory, but still that's another $25.

Suddenly for $50-$75 is starting to look more like a minimum of $175, or more depending on what components you want. I don't know about you, but you're looking at paying 43% more at the minimum for a Core i7 system over AMD's fastest. How much more is that extra performance worth to you?

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[Grenage]

The price difference is there, and nobody can argue the fact, but it's a case of courses for horses.

My office workhorse is a Phenom II X4 and I really couldn't be happier with it; £400 got me a very powerful computer. At home, where I do like to play games now and then, I would have to give i7 some consideration. Like you say, kmcferrin, "how much more is that extra performance worth to you?". A lot of computer/game enthusiasts will pay twice as much to get a relatively small boost in performance.

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[cdogg]

kmcferrin,
Very good point. I didn't take all that into consideration. It's been several years since I've built a new system for myself. I think with the information here, I will certainly have to give some serious thought into the Phenom X4 for my new rig.

~cdogg
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[kmcferrin]

Of course, if you're in a business environment it's a lot easier to figure out what that performance buys you. If your job involves doing image rendering or recompiles, or even running large reports or data analysis, have a faster CPU might save you 10 minutes a day in run time. Take 50 minutes a week, times 52 weeks, you get 2600 minutes (or 43 1/3 hours). In the context of having a job where you spend time waiting on your computer, it probably would be more cost-effective to spend a couple hundred dollars more to potentially save a week's salary. But it's all about context.

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[wahnula]

I hate it when people make unqualified statements about the "best"

...like I hate the way people ignore irrefutable empirical data...and that even the top-of-the-line AMD CPU is at best a competitor for Intel's 2006 "tock", the Core 2 Duo. Plus I'm an AMD fan, but facts is facts. When there is no competition, something is considered "best". And price? Closer every day, and by no means prohibitive.

Phenom II, while an excellent part (see my previous posts pimping it), cannot hope to compare to the Core i7. AMD admits that, and the benchmarks confirm it.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[kmcferrin]

...like I hate the way people ignore irrefutable empirical data...and that even the top-of-the-line AMD CPU is at best a competitor for Intel's 2006 "tock", the Core 2 Duo. Plus I'm an AMD fan, but facts is facts. When there is no competition, something is considered "best". And price? Closer every day, and by no means prohibitive.

Phenom II, while an excellent part (see my previous posts pimping it), cannot hope to compare to the Core i7. AMD admits that, and the benchmarks confirm it.

As I said...you're making an unqualified statement about what is "the best". It's unqualified because you're not taking into account any considerations other than performance. Some people prefer performance per watt. Others prefer performance per dollar. Some prefer performance under a certain price point. Others prefer the most performance they can get in a CPU that fits in their existing system. In most of those cases, Core i7 isn't "the best", or even in the running. What CPU is "best" is purely a function of the selection criteria that you are using, and there is not single selection criteria that applies to all users across the board.

And for the record, the Phenom II way outperforms the 2006 Core 2 Duo (Merom). They perform at roughly the same level as Intel's Penryn release (which is about the same age, market-wise, as Phenom II) at about 60-65% of the price of Penryn. I don't think that anyone here was claiming that Phenom II was faster than Core i7. I'm just disputing that Core i7 is somehow "the best" hands down.

The simple fact (that most people who post on Internet forums completely ignore) is that the overwhelming majority of CPU sales are not at the high end. The majority of sales are solidly at the mid-range to low end. It doesn't matter so much that AMD doesn't have a CPU that competes with Intel at the $400-$1200 price points, because only a minute percentage of CPU sales actually come from that price range. What CPU is the fastest overall is generally irrelevant, unless you're trying to win a benchmark. It's like saying that a Ferrari is "the best" car available because it's the fastest. If it were true, there would be a lot more Ferrari's on the road and a lot fewer Hondas and Toyotas. It's the same with Core i7. If it truly were "the best" then it would also be the best selling CPU out there. But it's not, not by a long shot.

As far as costs go, it's night and day. If I wanted to upgrade my current PC (Athlon X2 5600+ on an AM2 board with 4GB of DDR2-800) how much is it going to cost me?

Let's compare:

Phenom II X4 920 - $196.00

vs.

Core i7 920 - $289.00

A cost difference of $93.00. That doesn't seem prohibitive. But let's look at motherboards:

GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P - $110.00

vs.

ZOTAC X58SLI-A-E - $195

I'm comparing a nice, mid-range name brand AMD board here that supports RAID 5, Crossfire, etc, with the absolute cheapest no-name Socket 1366 board that I could find. The problem here is that most people would probably opt for a more expenseive, brand-name board for the core i7, which run another $20+. Conversely, there are plenty of solid name-brand boards available for the Phenom II that run $20-$30 less than the one that I quoted. So lets just say that there is a very conservative cost difference here of $85. Now let's look at memory:

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Desktop Memory - Retail - $43.00
+
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail - $32.00

vs.

Crucial 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail - $160.00

I specced them both out at 6GB, since we're limited to using triple channel memory on the Core i7 and most people wouldn't opt for only 3GB of RAM. So that's a price difference of $85.

So total costs:

Phenom II upgrade: $381.00
Core i7 upgrade: $644.00

For a total difference of $263, or 69%. That's hardly what I would call "not prohibitive". Considering that Core i7 performance will be no where near 69% better, I certainly couldn't justify spending that much extra to upgrade my system. That $263 is more than enough to buy a new HD 4890 video card, or an HD 4850X2 card. Or 3TB of storage. Or a 24" monitor. Heck, just about anything else that would make your computing experience a little better.

And that's being conservative. Slightly different motherboard choices could easily put the Core i7 upgrade at nearly twice the price of the Phenom II.

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[wahnula]

I am not arguing that AMD is not cheaper...without a doubt it is.

BUT if you are building a system today would you not want it to be as future-proof as possible, and running the hardware that would be faster (better) and relevant the longest? I would.

I found the MSI X58 Pro LGA 1366 Core I7 Intel X58 that supports Cross-Fire (should support SLI too) and SATA RAID 0/1/5/10 for $189...with a $20 rebate leaving a final price of $169 shipped...
I found the Core i7 920 for $265...
I found 6GB of Corsair DDR3-1333 RAM for $87.50...

=$521.50 including shipping, or ~$141 more than your AMD parts. (Source: Pricewatch.com)

Unless you're pinching pennies, I would say the performance upgrade and future-proofing is well worth the $141 difference...and getting cheaper every day. Plus, your Gigabyte selection does not even support DDR3 RAM, which is the latest standard and will only get cheaper and faster as time goes by. The MSI is triple-channel as well. There is no way to convince me that dual-channel DDR2-1066 is as future-proof as triple-channel DDR3-1600. While today's performance may be similar, going forward there will be no comparison between the two mainboards as the memory standard shifts to DDR3.

Then there's the benchmarks...

I'd say $141 well spent.

Tony

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[kmcferrin]

I'm not arguing that AMD is cheaper, I'm saying that Core i7 certainly can be cost-prohibitive when you take into account the full picture.

On top of that, not everyone wants the most future-proof PC they can get. And if they did, they wouldn't get the i7 920. They'd get the Core i7 965EE at $1000 instead.

But even the term "future-proof" is up for interpretation. If you're doing high-end game, or 3D design, then it costs a lot more to make your PC as future proof as possible. If someone is just playing solitaire, sending email, and surfing the web, they can get a highly "future-proof" PC for a fraction of the cost.

My whole objection is in the unqualified use of the term "the best". What you think is "the best" is not necessarily what anyone else thinks is "the best" because everyone has different selection criteria. Yet when it comes to discussion about computers, most people take the "one size fits all" approach. Everyone needs Core i7. Everyone needs SLI nVidia GTX 295 cards. Everyone needs 8+ GB of RAM, everyone needs WD Raptor hard disks running in RAID0. Most people don't need or want that stuff.

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[SkipCox]

Been reading this thread for about a week now. Just gotta agree with Tony's observations here.

Penny pinchers could use core components like a AMD 780G board, Kuma core 7750, and 4Gb 1066 that would cost about the price difference of 141 bucks outlined above.

However, for raw performance, the i7 simply stomps all over any available AMD equipment; there's no disputing it. It's also the closest gear to "future proofing" for sale now.

I had a lot of fun playing with X2 ans X4 AMD's but the i7 machine I assembled for a neighbor was absolutely amazing. She produces a few DVD's and tells me the i7 is a world ahead of the year old Core2Duo she was using before...something I didn't expect from this very picky woman.

Skip

 

[wahnula]

On top of that, not everyone wants the most future-proof PC they can get. And if they did, they wouldn't get the i7 920. They'd get the Core i7 965EE at $1000 instead.

Not necessarily. "Future proof" means there's an upgrade path, that's all. The $1000 part will fit in the same socket...and in the future, will not cost $1000. Something else will come along, a "tick", that will still fit the socket yet out-perform the current i7.

I have a c. 2004 (I think) Asus MB in one office PC that accepts both DDR & DDR2. Originally fitted with 512MB of DDR RAM, which was about $100 at the time, I recently popped in 2GB of the latest DDR2-800 RAM for about $30. Quite a difference. It's also early socket 775, so I could upgrade the CPU as far as the BIOS will allow, but the P4 3.0 is fine. It also has PCI-e x16. That is how I define "future-proof"

Trouble ahead...I might have convinced myself to upgrade

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[wahnula]

Oh no...there's another $20 rebate on the RAM bringing the whole upgrade kit down to around $500...I found the MB on Amazon as well.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[cdogg]

I just want to add that Intel's move to an integrated memory controller in the Core i7 will likely change the lifespan of the socket architecture making it harder to "future-proof". The days of being able to upgrade from one generation processor to another on the same motherboard are probably numbered.

With that said, I must say you guys have laid out your two viewpoints quite well. I think a lot of us would have to agree with many elements in both. If anything, it will get others to at least pause when choosing an upgrade and not to automatically assume they must buy an Intel processor without first considering their options.

Giving you guys stars for an interesting conversation! We need more of that around here!!

~cdogg
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