i'll get shot for this...

[Jathyr]

Well i've got nothing when it comes to cpus except lots of questions... which I've searched for but come up empty.

I've got (i'm like 80% sure) that I have an

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 640 with HT (3.2GHz, 2M, 800MHz FSB )

but when I used the interactive charts it gets beat out by a ton of amd chips especially all these 939 socket chips that I see people recommending on the graphic card forums.

but why do amds beat out intels with -- less operating hz, less l2 cache, and a slower RAM??? i know there is a reasonable answer and I realize I'm not educated in cpus at all but it just makes no sense to me.

 

[endyen]

It's a question of how much work a chip can do. The Amd chips have what is called a short pipeline, which allows it to do more work per clockcycle.

 

[Scarchunk]

I woundn't put too much stock in those cpu benchmarks. If paired with a good graphics card, your P4 will play any game out there and it will perform very well in multimedia tasks. After you get above 60-70 FPS in a game your eyes will have a very hard time telling the difference so alot of the benchmark scores don't amount to much. I have a few benckmarks that I keep on an external hard drive that I use on new builds. This is mainly to stress test the machine and verify that it is performing up to its expectations. People desperate to squeeze a few more fps or "points" out of a benchmark are more concerned with the size of their "cyberpenis".

Oh yeah, AMD's outperform the current Intels because they are more efficient. However, in real life with a average user this will amount to a handfull of fps or fractions of a second.

 

[unsmart]

It's not just the cpu. The chipset,ram and even the psu make a big diff in benches. best cpu in a junk board with bad ram will be held back.

 

[angry_ducky]

P4. Yuck. I had a 540. Cross your fingers and hope it doesn't fry.

 

[MG37221]

Many of the benchmarks are synthetic and merely give general ideas of a CPU's potential. Numerous other bencharks are done using real software providing authentic scenarios of the performance of a processor's capabilities.

At present AMD has a real lead, and one you will definitely notice, in a high performance environment such as gaming, in the bulk of these benchmarks. Intel tends to excel in certain video manipulation applications, though as AMD ramps up clock speeds this particular lead is less excessive than in the past. This could change in the near future and rumors to that effect abound but thus far, those rumors are just that, rumors.

If you're in the market for a new build, you may wish to study these performance tests and find the best processor for the types of software you actually use. This processor may be AMD. It may be Intel. You won't go wrong either way as long as you do your homework.

Both AMD and Intel do what they do extremely well. Never before has so much computing power been available to mere consumers and hobbiests. This is an awesome time to be a geek :lol:

 

[Scarchunk]

Ducky how did you manage to fry your cpu, especially a P4? About the only truly "fried" cpu I've had brought to me was due to extreme overclocking and it wasn't a Pentium.

 

[Darkchyld]

I really don't think theres a "bad" CPU out there today. Both Intel and AMD have good products and in a system there are many other things that go together to make a computer. The "benchmarks" used today may or may not reflect real world apps but when you can present the same tasks to two different systems it gives a good referance to judge them buy.
For the consumer,(US!), its a win win situation. You really can't go "wrong" with either. I like AMD personally because I think I'm getting the most for my hard earned dollar. Look at the total package. What is it YOU want in your system and match up the features as a total package, the MB, storage, I/O's..

 

[mr_fnord]

Pipelines are one of the keys. Intel's P4 architecture was designed for Hz. When it was first released, it had clock speeds much higher than P3's, but comparable performance. Intel used a design with a very long pipeline for processing, which is basically a working queue. I don't know what the pipeline size is on the newest P4's, but it was about 22 steps when the P4 was released if I remember correctly. This means that it takes 22 clock cycles for an operation to get from the front of the queue to the end of the queue. This would be a huge performance loss, 22 Hz per operation, so the stages are parallelized, with 22 operations in process at any given time. Now, add branching and dependent logic, ie if A<2 do command x, else command y and you start to run into the problems with a long pipeline. The processor can't fill the pipeline with the next command until this command finishes, so parallelization is lost and you're back to your 22 Hz/command. Intel implemented a very advanced branch predictor, it was something like 98-99% accurate at prediction, but that 2%*22 lost cycles when it misses (probably less than 22 lost cycles, as there are a lot of other things going on to prevent lost cycles...) means there is a lot of nothing going on. Larger L2 caches are required to try and keep this long pipeline filled. The long pipeline makes waiting more expensive, so a cache miss means a lot more wasted cycles.

There are also some differences with memory controllers on die vs on MB. Intel can change memory architecture faster with a MB based memory controller and use newer memory tech, but communication to the MB-based mem controller is much slower than in processor mem controllers.

If you have highly optimized code that takes advantage of all of the capabilities of a P4, it will generally win in raw number crunching. If close attention is paid to keeping the pipeline full and all of your commands in cache those Ghz come shining through. However, this requires a large amount of assembly language tuning and almost no applications are written with these optimizations. Examples that are are typically scientific algorithms, like Folding@Home or similar.

 

[uber_g]

AMD is better with Floating point calculations


so ive heard

 

[Aco]

Its all the same, both are good Amd and Intel, for example: put test between p4 650 and amd eqvivalent on tom's cpu charts and you'll get 2 fps difference, so therefore buy what you like more

 

[YO_KID37]

Its all the same, both are good Amd and Intel, for example: put test between p4 650 and amd eqvivalent on tom's cpu charts and you'll get 2 fps difference, so therefore buy what you like more

Lols, Sorry For decending, But AMD can provide a CPU with lower "RAW SPEED" and at a Lower Price But In Performance and Quality AMD beats a Bleeding Edge "DELL" With A "Former Glorift" Generation DDR setup and Still Compete with the latest Pentium EE And beat it in Majority rangeing from 75%-85% of all Benchmarks you can ever compare them in.

 

[bluntside]

Put it this way, AMD are best for games while Intel are used for games but dont compete w/ Amd. Pentium is moslty used in officed for apps, Calculations and other things that business ppl do on thier computers. :twisted:

 

[Scarchunk]

What benchmarks does a comparable AMD beat an comparable Intel by 75-80%?

 

[YO_KID37]

Put it this way, AMD are best for games while Intel are used for games but dont compete w/ Amd. Pentium is moslty used in officed for apps, Calculations and other things that business ppl do on thier computers. :twisted:

AMD sells for less and the Business Sides and the Programming side it can soar as well Because of their better Memory usage and FPU floatpoint and bandwith pushing
and in most systems and businessed efficient and Less powerconsuming wood and could result in 20%-30% energy savings and almost 40% savings in Heating costs. Loll "prescott"

 

[YO_KID37]

What benchmarks does a comparable AMD beat an comparable Intel by 75-80%?

Umm. if you read correctly It says *let me dumb it down a bit more* They beat Intel benchmarks in 75%(percent) to 80%(percent) of all Benchmarks Not "beat an comparable Intel by 75-80%" Sorry If i typed too crudely. :lol:

 

[Aco]

Hey Mr. Vader (YO_KID) take it easy f00l :lol:

 

[spud]

Hey Mr. Vader (YO_KID) take it easy f00l :lol:

He appears to be from Eastern Canada they are all like that.

 

[Scarchunk]

Umm. if you read correctly It says *let me dumb it down a bit more* They beat Intel benchmarks in 75%(percent) to 80%(percent) of all Benchmarks Not "beat an comparable Intel by 75-80%" Sorry If i typed too crudely. :lol:

Learn to type it corrrectly and I'll read it correctly. Thanks for the % clarification. Now I finally know what those funny little signs mean. So where are you getting all these %(percentages) from anyways. Any links or are you making them up? Next question: what is a "Glorift"? Care to dumb that one down for me?

 

[YO_KID37]

Umm. if you read correctly It says *let me dumb it down a bit more* They beat Intel benchmarks in 75%(percent) to 80%(percent) of all Benchmarks Not "beat an comparable Intel by 75-80%" Sorry If i typed too crudely. :lol:

Learn to type it corrrectly and I'll read it correctly. Thanks for the % clarification. Now I finally know what those funny little signs mean. So where are you getting all these %(percentages) from anyways. Any links or are you making them up? Next question: what is a "Glorift"? Care to dumb that one down for me?

Well i don't really need to lead you to Specific links because Tom's site has a very good Benchmark List. And "glorift" in my case meant "Overly Hyped" by Intel, and just turned out to be half-assed of everything it was supposed to be. Lols for Intel DDR2 was a faster version or DDR, And i guess AM2 socket had just realised that when it upgraded

Ofcouse i'm not making this up. Othse wise you know that there are Dozens of INTEL FANBOYS here to beat me down to a pulp :roll:

 

[Scarchunk]

half-assed of everything it was supposed to be.

Kind of like your typing.

I was refering to the %(percentages) in you post concerning power consumption and heating. Any "dumbing" would be appreciated.

 

[tamalsmith]

for my humble opinion, I prefer AMD because current p4's do get enought hot to boil your cofee's water.

global warning is dangerous

but new conroe seems promising to be colder :O

 

[voxel]

but why do amds beat out intels with -- less operating hz, less l2 cache, and a slower RAM???

In day to day operations, these benchmarks don't mean much. For real-work (rendering, database querying, web serving) the benchmarks even lean further towards AMD currently (maybe not true in a year) and matters most because if you can do an operation in 20% less time and 40% less power you've saved buckets of cash.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/print_content.asp?id=paxville

I can vouch for the Maya rendering times - the Opterons are that much faster and also cheaper and also cooler. And Apache is the most popular (I'd say best) webserver out there... Xeons systems can be cheaper if you can negotiate a discount from a vendor like HP or Dell.

For home use, who cares. Buy the cheapest.

 

[voxel]

but new conroe seems promising to be colder :O

I want Intel to continue that trend to force AMD to release their HE models at the same price point. Fast and cool CPUs for everybody!! If you've ever walked into a room full of Xeon CPUs, you'll understand why colder is better.

 

[ak47is1337]

Well i've got nothing when it comes to cpus except lots of questions... which I've searched for but come up empty.

I've got (i'm like 80% sure) that I have an

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 640 with HT (3.2GHz, 2M, 800MHz FSB )

but when I used the interactive charts it gets beat out by a ton of amd chips especially all these 939 socket chips that I see people recommending on the graphic card forums.

but why do amds beat out intels with -- less operating hz, less l2 cache, and a slower RAM??? i know there is a reasonable answer and I realize I'm not educated in cpus at all but it just makes no sense to me.

AMD's have far fewer pipeline stages, therefore the Netburst frequencies are bloated and get nothing done despite the massive clocks.
Also, AMD's have a lot more L1 cache, translating into superb gaming performance. Even without this, however, their current L2 cache's should still easily outperform Intel's due to cache latency being far lower on K8 architecture.
This is also important in DDR2. The memory a chip uses makes little to no difference, provided it is not bottlenecked. DDR1 had low latency and did not create bottlenecks for AMD, thus it was not necessary (and still is not necessary) to switch. For those AM2 fans expecting 30% more performance because you bought a DDR2 set, you are SOL.
In the fields of overclocking, however, Netburst is still king, belive that or not. AMD uses 90nm SOI versus Intel's Strained Silicon, which I find had poorer overclocking yields. The fastest PC's on the planet with cascade cooling are all on Strained Silicon chips, FX series and Intel's, and the best PI times you can find are all on Netburst oriented chips/