Newbie question

[soulskorpion]

Hi. I'm doing some research on what CPU to get for a new computer. Rather than just get an Intel and go by the clock speed, I've decided this time to look at benchmarks to get an idea of what's faster for what prices.

Anyway, I found http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html which looks like exactly what I was looking for. The thing is, I don't know how to read all of the information used to describe the CPUs.

For example:

Intel Pentium D 960 Presler, 3600/200, I975X, DDR2-667

From what I've been able to figure out, "Intel Pentium D" is the brand and product line, "960" is the model number and "Presler" is the internal name for the particular CPU architecture. It's the rest of it that I can't figure out. I think the 3600 is the clock speed, but what do the rest of the fields mean?

While we're at it, I've noticed that these seem to be only relatively high-end CPUs. Is there anywhere I can find benchmarks for lower-end CPUs? I'm probably going to buy something relatively fast, but I'm curious about exactly how much difference a good CPU makes. If I'm reading the chart correctly, the slowest Intel CPU on it is 2800Mhz - that's faster than my current pile of junk.

Thanks in advance.

 

[drcroubie]

Yeah, you're nearly there:
Intel Pentium D 960 Presler, 3600/200, I975X, DDR2-667
Brand - Intel
Line - Pentium D
Model Number - 960
Core Codename - Presler
Core Frequency (MHz) - 3600 (3.6GHz)
FSB Frequency (MHz) - 200 (Or FSB 800, meaning 800 million transfers per second)

Chipset on motherboard used for This Particular Benchmark - Intel 975X (currently the best intel chipset available)
RAM type and speed used for This Particular Benchmark - DDR2-667


And on THG's CPU Charts, none of those CPUs are particularly High End. They don't include the value segment (Celeron / Sempron), or the servers (Xeon / Opteron), but what's there is pretty much all that is available new these days (actually, i'm finding it hard to get any single-core Pentium4 5xx and 6xx CPUs anymore).
Unless you're on a ridiculously tight budget (in which case, get something second hand rather than entry-level new), or building a server, those CPUs are the only ones to choose from.

 

[drcroubie]

Oh yeah, and besides just looking at the benchmarking, look at price/performance here


And in terms of age, to easily tell on the CPU charts, AMD processors with DDR2 are newer than DDR, and Intel's Core 2 are newer than Pentium D 9xx, are newer than 8xx (and unless you can get one really cheap, don't bother with single core 5xx or 6xx).
In general, it's better to get a newer CPU, although you might pay more for it (check out the link above, though), and make sure you get a motherboard than supports it (especially if you want a Core 2 CPU)

 

[gOJDO]

There are a lot of threads about what you are asking. Its better to use the search engnine before you open another thread about the same topic.

 

[soulskorpion]

How do you get from a FSB number of 200 to 800mhz? That's part of the reason I couldn't figure out what that number was. I tracked down an Intel list of processor specs, which reported the FSB as 800mhz for that CPU - there's no 800 in the list of specs from this site and there's no 200 on the Intel chart (so just matching up the number to find out what it was didn't work).

A pity there aren't benchmarks available for the lower end stuff. The other reason I wanted them is because I'm basically going through catalogues and looking at\for benchmarks for ones available.

There are a lot of threads about what you are asking. Its better to use the search engnine before you open another thread about the same topic.

Right on cue. Thank you for being civil - on other forums I've seen this age-old response delivered very nastily. Before I posted I tried the search and found nothing (and for some reason I got a "no results found" page when trying to go past the first page of results), as well as running a google search on the website, and on the Internet at large. I also tried Wikipedia. For all my searching, I couldn't find anywhere else using the same notation as that chart.

 

[sillywabbit]

Judging from his post, it looks like he put some effort into researching his question. Cut him some slack and if you don't have answer for his question, then ignore the post instead of a reply that helps him in no manner whatsoever. Other people will help him out.

 

[bga]

How do you get from a FSB number of 200 to 800mhz?

Well, the Front side bus (FSB) of most current Intel desktop CPU's is really using 200MHz signaling - which means that the clock signal on the bus changes 200.000.000 times a second. But bus is "Quad-pumped", which means it transfers data 4 times each clock cycle, which in marketese changes into a 800(MHz) frontside bus.
The new workstation/server class 5100 series Xeon processors build on the Core2 architecture uses a 266 or 333MHz FSB which translates into a FSB of 1066 or 1333 FSB in marketese.

 

[soulskorpion]

How do you get from a FSB number of 200 to 800mhz?

Well, the Front side bus (FSB) of most current Intel desktop CPU's is really using 200MHz signaling - which means that the clock signal on the bus changes 200.000.000 times a second. But bus is "Quad-pumped", which means it transfers data 4 times each clock cycle, which in marketese changes into a 800(MHz) frontside bus.
The new workstation/server class 5100 series Xeon processors build on the Core2 architecture uses a 266 or 333MHz FSB which translates into a FSB of 1066 or 1333 FSB in marketese.
Is the marketese what to compare it on, though? Is a "quad-pumped" FSB speed of 200mhz on an Intel comparable to a whatever-they-do-to-it FSB speed of 200mhz on an AMD? (or does that vary depending on the particular CPU and I'd need to look up more details)?

 

[bga]

Is the marketese what to compare it on, though? Is a "quad-pumped" FSB speed of 200mhz on an Intel comparable to a whatever-they-do-to-it FSB speed of 200mhz on an AMD? (or does that vary depending on the particular CPU and I'd need to look up more details)?

You really can't compare the FSB speeds between AMD and Intel. They have chosen completely different architectures. Newer AMD chips has the memory directly attached to the CPU, as the memory controller is included in the CPU. Intel CPU's communicates everything through the FSB to the Northbridge part in the motherboard chipset, which in turn communicates with the memory. The AMD approach gives more memory speed, while the Intel approach favors flexibility. Intel CPU's are not directly affected by the speed of the memory, as they run completely asyncroniously with the memory clock, while AMD needs to run the CPU clock at a multiplier of the memory speed.
This quickly gets very technical, and at present a rather academic discussion (oh no, I WILL get flamed for this 8O ). If you do not overclock, you will not need to fiddle with memory frequency and timings, and system performance will not be affected beyond the 10-15% range, whatever your choice of memory architecture and speed. At present it looks like the best price/performance is the Core2Duo with 200/800 FSB and lots of value "800" Mhz DDR2 memory. If you plan to overclock, then you WILL need to pay closer attention to memory specifications.

 

[soulskorpion]

Right. I guess there's even less point in comparing the numbers when I'm comparing benchmarks, anyway. I'm not going to overclock whatever CPU I do end up getting, anyway.

Thanks for the help, everyone

 

[purdueguy]

How much do you plan on spending on the computer? What are your goals with it? Looking for more multitasking or gaming? This will help in getting your questions answered.