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What Role Does Transistor Count Play?

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  • Processors
  • CPUs
Last response: in CPUs
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 10:42:46 AM

If there are two processors with the same exacr specs, frequency, cores, but one has more transistors, how much performnce increase is that?

More about : role transistor count play

a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:05:55 AM

Hi OP,

In a processor, there are lot of things to look around. If one thing wants to give you more performance/more power, then it definitely requires more transistors. For example - To make a bottleneck less severe in a pipeline, you need to put in functional units in which, each of those requires more transistors. Hence, the things get done faster i.e., performance increases.

From here, you can also explain parallelism. It means you are adding something in parallel to get the things done in a short span of time, efficiently.
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:13:03 AM

If transistors are important, why do people on this forum never consider transistor count as a factor for buying a CPU?
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:19:26 AM

Nice, thanks for messing up my tiny brain lol.

Well, look at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count

People are not considering the transistor count yet it gradually increases in a order for each consecutive processor. Hence - the more powerful processor you go, more transistor count would play.
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a c 191 à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:21:26 AM

turkey3_scratch said:
If transistors are important, why do people on this forum never consider transistor count as a factor for buying a CPU?


Because it is only tangentially important. Overall performance is what counts.
You can't buy two different versions of an i5-4670k...1 with 28 million 'transistors', and one with 33 million 'transistors'.
Overall performance of the CPU is what counts.

A lot like the Ghz race. A Pentium IV at "3.3 Ghz" is monumentally slower than an i5 at "3.3Ghz".
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:24:26 AM

@USEFRET: So is that why an i3 with the same specs as an i5 would be less powerful? Less transistors?
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:25:35 AM

USAFRet said:

Because it is only tangentially important. Overall performance is what counts.
You can't buy two different versions of an i5-4670k...1 with 28 million 'transistors', and one with 33 million 'transistors'.
Overall performance of the CPU is what counts.

A lot like the Ghz race. A Pentium IV at "3.3 Ghz" is monumentally slower than an i5 at "3.3Ghz".


Nicely stated. Overall performance is vital. It just depends upon lot of factors like -

> Clock Speed

> Bandwidth

> FSB Speed

and so on.

Also- As quoted in my above post, the transistor count increased with the invention of new processors.
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:27:13 AM

turkey3_scratch said:
@USEFRET: So is that why an i3 with the same specs as an i5 would be less powerful? Less transistors?


Factors affecting the performance:

Clock speed, Bandwidth, Heat and Heat Dissipation, FSB Speed etc comes into the play. Also, i3 and i5 have never been same.
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:28:58 AM

So what would a 2Ghz processor be like against a 4Ghz with half the transistors? If they has same cores.
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:31:36 AM

turkey3_scratch said:
So what would a 2Ghz processor be like against a 4Ghz with half the transistors? If they has same cores.


That's why, I stated parallelism. In an electronic circuit, everything happens in parallel. So, in the present world, there will no chance for decreasing the transistors when the processor gets upgraded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count Here's the proof.

Correct me If I'm wrong.
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a c 191 à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:33:58 AM

turkey3_scratch said:
@USEFRET: So is that why an i3 with the same specs as an i5 would be less powerful? Less transistors?


But an i3 does NOT have the same specs as an i5. Even completely ignoring transistor count.
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:34:33 AM

Maybe, OP is considering an instance. Let's make it simple. More Transistors = More Performance yet that's not the only one to affect the performance of a Processor.
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:39:50 AM

Okay, thanks! But I just don't know why transistor count seems to be ignored.
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:43:38 AM

Why do we need it anyway, OP?

There are lot of factors for measuring the performance of a CPU which can be comprehended by any human being and there will be no need to be so geeky on learning them.

You don't go to shop keeper and ask how many transistors are present in each processor lol. You will mess him up eventually.

Basically, if two processors are same in everything but transistor count changes, then there will be a difference in performance. But developers are very smart and they put the upgrades in every consecutive processors. MORE upgrades = more performance and thus more transistor count which is not needed to know because we already knew that there are more upgrades!

Also, there is a fact called parallelism. Two same specs with different transistor counts NOT REALLY POSSIBLE AT ALL!
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a c 191 à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:44:02 AM

turkey3_scratch said:
Okay, thanks! But I just don't know why transistor count seems to be ignored.


Because it doesn't really matter in the overall scheme of things. A 'newer' processor will probably have more transistors than a previous version. It will also have other, better capabilities.

More transistors does not automagically mean better performance for a given task. It simply means there are more transistors.

If you're buying a CPU based on transistor count, that is mere willy-waving, and proves exactly nothing.
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a b à CPUs
August 31, 2014 11:46:39 AM

I was just curious.
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September 1, 2014 2:11:45 AM

Transistor count is inversely proportional with the size of the die. The smalled the die, the more transistors can fit. And since the size of it tends to get smaller and smaller (32nm-> 22n-> 14nm), obviously we would expect to always have more transistors in newer chips. And of course the performance is directly proportional with the number of transistors. The newer the chip, the better the technology involved => better CPUs. Moore's law states that the number of transistors on a die tends to double every 2 years. However, starting with 2013 the transistors and densities are expected to double every 3 years.
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