Intel/AMD Processors

[Don Sweey]

For PC processor discussion and questions.

[wan109]

Should I get an Intel Core Quad?
If so why?

[Don Sweey]

If you're going to be doing a fair bit of encoding and playing the latest games (Alan Wake, Unreal Tournament 3, Crysis, Half Life Episode 2) then definitely. There are some people who believe it is otherwise overkill and some who believe you might as well buy it.

They run quite hot so usually don't overclock as far as a dual core although the Energy Efficient Q6600 is meant to be good for overclocking. They're fairly cheap too.

[wan109]

IntelCore Quad is cheap?
But the performance are twice as Core Duo right?
How cheap is it?
$1000?

[Don Sweey]

No, the performance isn't quite as much. It doesn't work that way. A quad-core has four processors, a dual-core two but some programs don't know how to properly use more than two cores so it can be wasted. That said, IF a program can use all four cores, a 2.4Ghz quad core will match a dual core of a higher clock, perhaps 3Ghz or more.

Supreme Commander, the 'first' game to take advantage of quad-core technology was written well enough to do so in the best possible way. Though it performed better on quad-cores, it was far from perfect in its execution.

Check the recommended e-tailer thread and see what prices you find for your part of the world. It is going to be distinctly different to prices here.

[wan109]

Ok thanks for your time Mr. Don.

[Jesus]

What about the AMD Athlon X2 6000+? I'd rather get an AMD because of the price and back in the day,(a few years ago when I was more up to date with computers) during the times of Athlon 2000+, I remember they were better than the Pentium available at the time.

[Don Sweey]

13/11:

There is no price difference between the two in terms of price any longer. Intel have been the ones announcing price reductions first in order to squeeze AMD's profit margins. AMD have been forced to match them. The difference between the processors is minimal at best in games. Encoding is where the Core 2 Duo will likely pull a gap over that AMD processor until the next set of processors are released which is expected fairly soon. Will likely have more information later.

22/11:

Oh dear.

AMD are now rolling out their new Phenom series of processors including the "native" quad-core 9600 - four individual cores on one die. For months they've been harping on about how their "true" quad cores will be better than the Intel Q series which has four cores that are made up of two paired Core 2 Duo processors (2x2).

First benchmarks of the 9600 (2.3Ghz per core, ~£200) against the Q6600 (2.4Ghz per core, ~£160) have seen the Q6600 comfortably perform better with the only difference being the motherboard during these tests. It is also worrying for AMD (whose recent processors simply haven't overclocked much) that the Q6600 has been overclocked to 3.6Ghz per core by a number of people. That's a big overclock anyway, let alone on a quad-core which runs stupidly hot anyway and if for £30 more users are going to find themselves unable to achieve such an overclock, they're going to be far less likely to purchase.

Further to this, Intel will next year begin to sell their new eight-core solutions, a year before AMD due to advanced research and development. These are likely to be server based only at first with (over-the-top) desktop processors following probably in late 2008. Once true multi-core support is regularly featured in games (some are only written to utilise two cores let alone four or even eight), we'll all be laughing. Until then unless you're doing a monumental amount of encoding or rendering, you're not going to need anything above a quad-core - or even a dual-core.

26/01:

A new update after a while.....

Intel have now released the E8200, E8400 and E8500. They are dual-core processors, as always competitively priced and have stock clocks of 2.66Ghz, 3Ghz and 3.16Ghz respectively all with 6MB L2 cache and a 1333Mhz FSB.

All three are 45nm processes which have lower power consumptions than the E6000 series CPUs and also run cooler theoretically allowing for greater overclocking. That said, the E8200 is limited to an 8x multiplier, the E8400 9x and E8500 9.5x. The latter two are expected to overclock fairly easily to 4Ghz though are then limited by the motherboard's FSB.

Some P35 motherboards can function happily with an FSB of over 500Mhz (as much as 580Mhz according to some users) but by that stage you want water cooling and some expensive DDR3 RAM.

In tests with both the E6850 and E8500 at 3Ghz, the latter performed better at an average of 6% across various tasks such as gaming, encoding and rendering.

Considering the pricing below, the E8400 seems the better option. The .5x greater multiplier of the E8500 doesn't give you much of an advantage - £60 for only 250Mhz if using an FSB of 500Mhz.

UK pricing: E8200 ~£130, E8400 ~£140, E8500 ~£200

[Don Sweey]

Some Intel processor prices dropped this week, others will come down on August 10 when they launch the E8600, a 3.33Ghz dual core 45nm processor.

Nehalem, which Intel claim will be as much of an improvement over Core 2 Duo as the latter was over Pentium 4, launches in September. If they're not lying, it doesn't only add to AMD's current woes (reported a $1bn loss in the last quarter and are now only worth just over $3bn), it propels PC hardware even further into the distance.

[I.N Extasy]

*drools*

Although even then, it would be fucking expensive and most probably not worth the money spent, in the beginning of course. Am I right on saying it would be unlikely that the common gamer/user would find any use to it at the time that a single processor could offer?

[Don Sweey]

*drools*

Although even then, it would be fucking expensive and most probably not worth the money spent, in the beginning of course. Am I right on saying it would be unlikely that the common gamer/user would find any use to it at the time that a single processor could offer?

Dual core is certainly the way for gaming and Nehalem is expected to give improved overclocking plus a faster instruction set which is why a 3Ghz Core 2 Duo (or possibly less) is faster than a 7Ghz Pentium 4. It is with quad core, and its almost non-existent take-up for gaming, that you end up future-proofing. I believe there are advances on the way which will aid developers in utilising multiple cores (not strictly two or four) but a dual core is more than enough for now unless doing heavy encoding or designing and a lot of people have sold their G0 stepping, 65nm Q6600s (overclocks to 3.6Ghz on air) with an E8500, a dual-core 45nm processor that should overclock to 4Ghz on air.

[I.N Extasy]

I have the Q6600 GO. If I could swap it for the Wolfdale, I would. ;)

Four cores aren't doing anything two can't for me now. :mellow:

[Don Sweey]

First review of the E8600 by X-Bit Labs (link below) and some news: it has a new E0 stepping which allowed them to overclock it from the stock of 3.33Ghz to 4.5Ghz on air. Even better news is that the E0 stepping of the E8500 and E8400 should be available from late August.

Link (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-e8600.html)