Clock speed compare help

[chrislay]

I am building a computer for my friend, he is going to use it for Audio editing, creating music, producing and all that fun audio stuff, i want to go with the new duo but I have a budget so I can only choose from

Intel® Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe Processor 2.13GHz, 1066FSB, LGA775, 2MB Cache
and
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor Prescott 3EGHz, 800MHz FSB, Socket 478

I could go with AMD, but i dont know much about there differences with intel, I really want something that is smooth and fast and that is up to date, could any please suggest something under 2 hundred dollars, nothing more than 220dollars, thank you!

 

[o29]

Stay far away from Prescott. There's more to a processor than its clock speed. It's called the IPC (instructions per cycle), and the Core 2 architecture is vastly superior to Netburst in this respect (and almost every other respect).

 

[m25]

Stay far away from Prescott. There's more to a processor than its clock speed. It's called the IPC (instructions per cycle), and the Core 2 architecture is vastly superior to Netburst in this respect (and almost every other respect).

Not only Core2, every CPU architecture, from Pentium3 to K7, fron Northwood to K8 has a more decent IPC than the Prescott. I just hate that failure, and hate the way Intel used it for GHz marketing, shouting to the winds they had a 3.8G CPU, and the poor buyers, most of them knowing nothing more than GHz getting really bitter surprizes, especially by non HT prescotts.

 

[Julian33]

Not only Core2, every CPU architecture, from Pentium3 to K7, fron Northwood to K8 has a more decent IPC than the Prescott. I just hate that failure, and hate the way Intel used it for GHz marketing, shouting to the winds they had a 3.8G CPU, and the poor buyers, most of them knowing nothing more than GHz getting really bitter surprizes, especially by non HT prescotts.

It is quite annoying the way Intel used to sell GHz, but it may well come back to haunt them now - despite clearly now having the superior architecture, how do they now sell an E6300 at 1.86GHz to your average consumer as opposed to an X2 at over 2GHz or a Prescott over 3GHz, having told customers that more GHz is better for years?

 

[306maxi]

Not only Core2, every CPU architecture, from Pentium3 to K7, fron Northwood to K8 has a more decent IPC than the Prescott. I just hate that failure, and hate the way Intel used it for GHz marketing, shouting to the winds they had a 3.8G CPU, and the poor buyers, most of them knowing nothing more than GHz getting really bitter surprizes, especially by non HT prescotts.

It is quite annoying the way Intel used to sell GHz, but it may well come back to haunt them now - despite clearly now having the superior architecture, how do they now sell an E6300 at 1.86GHz to your average consumer as opposed to an X2 at over 2GHz or a Prescott over 3GHz, having told customers that more GHz is better for years?

More Ghz IS better. When you're of course comparing two CPU's from the same family with the same amount of cache and everything the same

The things is most people who have no idea just buy from companies like HP and Dell. As long as the ad says next generation blah blah blah they just buy a PC and it's faster than their last one and they're happy.

Then there are enthusiasts like us who know which is the best CPU.

The only people who have problems are the people who have some idea. They build their own PC and might go for something stupid like a P4.

Not something I see being a problem for Intel tbh.

 

[Julian33]

More GHz is only better between CPU's of the same architecture. I don't think anyone would argue a 3GHz P4 is better than a 2GHz C2D.

To answer the original question, definitely go for the Core 2. In addition to the fact that it will blow away any P4, I've also just noticed that the model you posted is a S478 chip, which has no upgrade path.

 

[306maxi]

More GHz is only better between CPU's of the same architecture. I don't think anyone would argue a 3GHz P4 is better than a 2GHz C2D.

Which is what I said. Why do people need to repeat what other people say?

 

[m25]

Not only Core2, every CPU architecture, from Pentium3 to K7, fron Northwood to K8 has a more decent IPC than the Prescott. I just hate that failure, and hate the way Intel used it for GHz marketing, shouting to the winds they had a 3.8G CPU, and the poor buyers, most of them knowing nothing more than GHz getting really bitter surprizes, especially by non HT prescotts.

It is quite annoying the way Intel used to sell GHz, but it may well come back to haunt them now - despite clearly now having the superior architecture, how do they now sell an E6300 at 1.86GHz to your average consumer as opposed to an X2 at over 2GHz or a Prescott over 3GHz, having told customers that more GHz is better for years?
Yes, 4 or 5 years ago, when architectures were so much alike and the only thing shaking the ground was the introduction of MMX or SSE, you could even make such comparision but I am surprised how, after all thast time, people still ask about it. I understand market inertia to continue for 1 year but this is simply too much, I don't advice people to get half mad like we do but a tech. article once in a month would be healthy enough.

 

[o29]

Intel could pull a marketing move where they explain the concept of instructions per cycle by saying that the Core 2 is a breakthrough in architecture which now allows them to reach much faster speeds (and thus lower energy consumption) with a much lower clock, and this would all be true, if not slightly misleading.

They don't need to explain that AMD had been doing this for years prior to now, and by conveniently ignoring that fact, it makes it look like Intel had some radical breakthrough, and they're the first company to do this. The average consumer would certainly be satisfied with that explanation.

Maybe it would almost be a good thing for us, considering that I think we'd end up with less people asking why Netburst CPU's provide higher clock speeds for cheaper.

I don't think AMD would like this very much though, but that certainly wouldn't stop Intel.

 

[Julian33]

Yeah, I guess they could do this. At the moment however your average person seems to be a bit confused as to what the benefits of multicore are. I've had several people ask me is a 2.4GHz dual core as fast as a 4.8GHz single core. I hope Intel has learned from their mistakes and dosn't sink as low as to try and imply this to your average customer.