When will amd release mobos with pcie 3.0 ?

[diablo24life]

i dont see any pcie 3.0 motherboards yet from amd, are they waiting for a new line of processors to come out first? apparently amd is releasing there vishera cpus in q3 of this year but its still going to run off am3+

 

[alvine]

"AMD’s Komodo CPUs were supposed to have up to ten Piledriver x86 cores based on the Bulldozer architecture and carry a new FM2 socket design. The chips were also reported to have an integrated PCI Express 3.0 controller "
http://www.pcwhipped.com/amd-alters-its-cpu-roadmap-vishera-instead-of-komodo.html

 

[blazorthon]

AMD doesn't have PCIe 3.0 in the works right now, as far as I'm aware. Don't worry about it because PCIe 3.0 doesn't matter too much for us consumers right now and probably won't for a while.

Either way, AMD's processors aren't looking too good right now, Intel is better for most use. If you don't do highly threaded work (most applications and games are only single or dual threaded) then I don't recommend going AMD.

AS I said, PCIe 3.0 doesn't seem to be a high priority for AMD. Don't expect it until the end of 2012, at the earliest.

 

[blazorthon]

Komodo was discontinued. Besides that, eight cores and six cores are already more than most people can use reasonably unless they are doing some serious multitasking. Most software (especially games too) uses only one or two threads so more than four cores suffers rapid diminishing returns in performance benefits for the majority of computer users.

Ten cores would mean that half of the cores or more would be more or less idle most of the time, making them next to useless unless used in a server or other professional environment. Going beyond four is a poor idea for most and going beyond six is means you must be do some highly parallel work to keep the extra cores beyond four, five, or six off of idling and wasting performance.

Most people benefit from a fewer amount of faster cores (Intel's current method) than a higher number of slower cores (AMD's current method).

 

[jaquith]

AMD, who knows they jumped on their Samurai sword. If you want PCIe 3.0 today, it's going to be on the Intel LGA 2011 or Ivy Bridge whenever Intel gets in the mood to release it, it's been delayed, and if I were Intel I'd drag my feet to profit as much as I could from AMD's demise-- Tick Tock is dead.

Basically, x8/x8 PCIe 2.x is fine for ANY GPU out there, and I cannot imagine any time soon that PCIe 2.x x16 will be saturated -- IMO many, many years...

 

[diablo24life]

Komodo was discontinued. Besides that, eight cores and six cores are already more than most people can use reasonably unless they are doing some serious multitasking. Most software (especially games too) uses only one or two threads so more than four cores suffers rapid diminishing returns in performance benefits for the majority of computer users.

Ten cores would mean that half of the cores or more would be more or less idle most of the time, making them next to useless unless used in a server or other professional environment. Going beyond four is a poor idea for most and going beyond six is means you must be do some highly parallel work to keep the extra cores beyond four, five, or six off of idling and wasting performance.

Most people benefit from a fewer amount of faster cores (Intel's current method) than a higher number of slower cores (AMD's current method).

not exactly. theres nothing wrong with having alot of cores like the fx8150. the fx4100 is clocked about the same frequency as the fx8150 and the 8150 is waaaay faster. if your gaming deffinitley go with the 8150 over say the 4100. your going to get alot better FPS and speed even tho all the games out there only use 2-4 cores.

 

[blazorthon]

The speed benefits of the FX 8150 are because it has four modules instead of four cores split into two modules.

Basically, there are simply more resources beyond the individual cores available. The same isn't as true for Intel. Increasing core count beyond 4 on Intel doesn't improve performance because Intel doesn't have a module architecture like FX. To be honest, I think that the improvements of AMD's FX CPUs with greater numbers of cores peaks at 8 cores anyway. That might be why AMD canceled Komodo, or at least put it on indefinite hold.

There are also more cores for other programs and such to run off of, leaving more performance per core for the game itself. FX 6 and 8 core chips are still inferior to i3s and i5s despite the i3 and i5 having fewer cores.

A dual core i3 (all i3s should be dual core) will beat any FX processor because it's performance per core is so much higher, something like 50% higher when at the same clock frequency. Games are often only single or dual threaded with quad threaded and better being less common, although games are becoming more well-threaded.

There's nothing wrong with having huge core counts, but it doesn't scale performance nearly as well as improving performance per core with most software and games unless you have software that utilizes those cores. Most software doesn't and most software that does isn't used by most people.

 

[diablo24life]

The speed benefits of the FX 8150 are because it has four modules instead of four cores split into two modules.

Basically, there are simply more resources beyond the individual cores available. The same isn't as true for Intel. Increasing core count beyond 4 on Intel doesn't improve performance because Intel doesn't have a module architecture like FX. To be honest, I think that the improvements of AMD's FX CPUs with greater numbers of cores peaks at 8 cores anyway. That might be why AMD canceled Komodo, or at least put it on indefinite hold.

There are also more cores for other programs and such to run off of, leaving more performance per core for the game itself. FX 6 and 8 core chips are still inferior to i3s and i5s despite the i3 and i5 having fewer cores.

A dual core i3 (all i3s should be dual core) will beat any FX processor because it's performance per core is so much higher, something like 50% higher when at the same clock frequency. Games are often only single or dual threaded with quad threaded and better being less common, although games are becoming more well-threaded.

There's nothing wrong with having huge core counts, but it doesn't scale performance nearly as well as improving performance per core with most software and games unless you have software that utilizes those cores. Most software doesn't and most software that does isn't used by most people.

no the reason the fx 8150 is faster and better then the 4100 is because of the amount of threads it has. 8 cores and 8 threads. no cpu being built has less threads then there core amount. you can take a high end 6 core cpu from intel and it will have 12 threads. always go with a higher core processor. having a 6 or even an 8 core proessor is not overkill for gaming or even browing the web.

 

[blazorthon]

All of the six core Intel CPUs are shown to be identical to their quad core i7 brethren in gaming. The FX's extra cores don't matter a whole lot in games that can't use the cores. The FX is faster because if a game uses four or fewer threads, each thread can have more resources to itself while four of the cores are closer to idling than the other four.

Windows 7 doesn't do a good job of this, but Windows 8 is supposed to do an even better job of this that will show why the 8 core FX and 6 core FX is better than the quad core FX, yet the same is not true for 6 core i7s vs. quad core i7s and six core Phenom IIs vs. quad core Phenom IIs and Core 2 Quads.

You could have a 16 core Interlagos CPU for all that it matters, it won't be able to go faster than the 8 core FXs simply because even if it were at the same clock frequency, games just don't use too many cores/threads.

Browsing the web? are you kidding me? Firefox uses one thread so it won't see any benefit going from a quad core to even a 16 core of the same architecture. Chrome is single threaded too, but spawns many processes so it can make some use of multiple cores, but going beyond a quad core will simply mean you have so much performance that the light load of web browsing can't load up the CPU anyway, so once again. increased core counts won't help much here either.

Internet Explorer does a similar thing to Chrome, but IE sucks in so many other ways so I don't care. I'm not sure about Opera, but I think it is like Firefox. Maybe I'll check later.

For regular web browsing, even with large numbers of tabs, anything more than a dual core is unnecessary. I have my older laptop with a Turion 64 x2 @ 2.00GHz and I use as many as hundreds pf tabs without a slowdown until I run out of memory, not an easy thing to do in Firefox anyway.

Even a Phenom II or Core 2 Duo or even an FX would be like twice as fast per core, maybe a little less or more depending on their clock frequencies. Intel's i3s and up would be like triple, maybe more, the performance that I have for lightly threaded work such as Firefox web browsing. Despite all of this, I can do it without a problem.

That tells me that even a quad core is way overkill for web browsing even with single threaded browsers like Firefox and well threaded browsers like Chrome right now, let alone six or more cores of ANY modern-ish architecture. Please remember that my CPU is a mobile, cut down Athlon 64 x2... Not even a mid end CPU for it's time, let alone a low end CPU now. It is slower than the slowest processors you get notebook/laptop computers with now. Even the Celeron G530 ($52 on Newegg, 2.4GHz dual core Sandy Bridge CPU for LGA 1155) can shred my CPU by like 100%.

 

[blazorthon]

Do you have any idea how many programs would need to be open to make a difference between a quad core and an eight core CPU? More cores do NOT make the OS any smoother when it already has more performance than it knows what to do with.

I have Firefox, Chome, and a VM that has 512MB of memory allocated and has Chrome inside the VM, all running at once on my little laptop with an old dual core and 2GB of DDR2-667 and it doesn't slow me down much at all. Even then, the biggest performance hits I'm taking are caused by lack of memory.

If I had 4GB of memory then everything would be even smoother. Having an FX-8150 wouldn't make much difference at this point. It takes some more intensive work than web browsing and such to stress even a single, slow core, let alone eight faster ones than mine. I estimate the FX 8150 to be about twice as fast per core as my laptop and having four times more cores meaning it should be very roughly eight times faster.

You don't think that I will have my browser running even twice as fast, do you? I ask because it simply won't. Will it run faster? Of course. Much faster? not until I have even more tabs open than I do now and/or cycle through more tabs at a time.

If I had eight Firefox instances, each with over a hundred tabs, and 16GB of memory so the memory doesn't bottleneck me, then it would obviously see a difference. However, I highly doubt you nor the OP will do something like that.

Stuff like web browsing also have other bottlenecks, specifically the internet connection's latencies and bandwidths. Doing the work load that you have stated would not make much difference between going from the FX-4100 to the FX-8150, if any at all. The encoding might run faster, but not the OS and not Firefox.

You can argue that it will be smoother, but I can tell you why it won't.

 

[blazorthon]

I'll say that if you try running several more intensive programs than web browsing and the like, then yes you will see a performance difference. However, I have a machine with a Phenom II x6 1090T and it is hard for me to load it up with casual work and it is slower than an FX-8120 and FX-8150.

Now if I have something like several multi-GB archives being extracted to and from different hard drives so that the hard drives don't bottleneck it much, then yes, I can load up my Phenom II x6 after I also have some other things going like a larger VM and Firefox+Chrome, both with many tabs open and a few other things running.

You underestimate the performance of quad core CPUs and you underestimate the performance of eight core CPUs, but you also overestimate the impact that they have because you don't seem to realize that your example programs are light programs and the OS is also not very heavy, unless you have Vista. You also underestimate the impact of other bottlenecks on the system.

There's memory capacity, bandwidth, and latency. There are the bandwidths and latencies of the Internet. There are the hard drives and other storage mediums. There is also the graphics cards. Then there is the CPU, assuming that you don't have other problems like an overstressed PCI bus (although that isn't common, especially with the increasing rarity of PCI cards) and more.

The remaining bottlenecks are mainly software. If you are having such problems that it takes you an eight core CPU to show benefit over a quad core CPU for regular, casual work, then there is obviously something going on with your machine.

Perhaps you have Vista and/or have too much background work being done. You might want to look into optimizing your system because it is probably wasting a lot of performance on stuff that shouldn't be running. You might even have malware problems, or your anti-malware is garbage like Norton or Mcafee.

 

[diablo24life]

All of the six core Intel CPUs are shown to be identical to their quad core i7 brethren in gaming. The FX's extra cores don't matter a whole lot in games that can't use the cores. The FX is faster because if a game uses four or fewer threads, each thread can have more resources to itself while four of the cores are closer to idling than the other four.

Windows 7 doesn't do a good job of this, but Windows 8 is supposed to do an even better job of this that will show why the 8 core FX and 6 core FX is better than the quad core FX, yet the same is not true for 6 core i7s vs. quad core i7s and six core Phenom IIs vs. quad core Phenom IIs and Core 2 Quads.

You could have a 16 core Interlagos CPU for all that it matters, it won't be able to go faster than the 8 core FXs simply because even if it were at the same clock frequency, games just don't use too many cores/threads.

Browsing the web? are you kidding me? Firefox uses one thread so it won't see any benefit going from a quad core to even a 16 core of the same architecture. Chrome is single threaded too, but spawns many processes so it can make some use of multiple cores, but going beyond a quad core will simply mean you have so much performance that the light load of web browsing can't load up the CPU anyway, so once again. increased core counts won't help much here either.

Internet Explorer does a similar thing to Chrome, but IE sucks in so many other ways so I don't care. I'm not sure about Opera, but I think it is like Firefox. Maybe I'll check later.

For regular web browsing, even with large numbers of tabs, anything more than a dual core is unnecessary. I have my older laptop with a Turion 64 x2 @ 2.00GHz and I use as many as hundreds pf tabs without a slowdown until I run out of memory, not an easy thing to do in Firefox anyway.

Even a Phenom II or Core 2 Duo or even an FX would be like twice as fast per core, maybe a little less or more depending on their clock frequencies. Intel's i3s and up would be like triple, maybe more, the performance that I have for lightly threaded work such as Firefox web browsing. Despite all of this, I can do it without a problem.

That tells me that even a quad core is way overkill for web browsing even with single threaded browsers like Firefox and well threaded browsers like Chrome right now, let alone six or more cores of ANY modern-ish architecture. Please remember that my CPU is a mobile, cut down Athlon 64 x2... Not even a mid end CPU for it's time, let alone a low end CPU now. It is slower than the slowest processors you get notebook/laptop computers with now. Even the Celeron G530 ($52 on Newegg, 2.4GHz dual core Sandy Bridge CPU for LGA 1155) can shred my CPU by like 100%.

the thing is that when theres more cores theres more threads. theres no such thing as overkill with more cores with intel or amd. your going to get more threads and that means faster speeds.

 

[blazorthon]

the thing is that when theres more cores theres more threads. theres no such thing as overkill with more cores with intel or amd. your going to get more threads and that means faster speeds.

No, there's room for more threads to work at once. How many "threads" a CPU has just means how many it can run at once. When we say threads in the software sense, we mean the actual threads being run. Yes, Windows can move itself out through more than four threads, but it's most intensive threads can't do that so there is little difference with the OS going from 4 to 8. All Windows can do is run more of it's small threads at once, and really, that doesn't make a difference, it just means that there is like .3% more CPU power for other stuff on each core.

You don't seem to understand how hardware and software work very well. A thread count in the sense of hardware is just how many threads it can work with at once. A thread count in the sense of software is how many cores it can effectively use. If you have a CPU that supports more threads than the software, then there won't be a big difference than a CPU of the same speed per core with the amount of cores that equal the amount of threads uses by that piece of software.

Web browsing is just working with relatively small amounts of data that is bottlenecked by the browser itself, the hard drive/storage medium where the browser is located and it's cache is located, and the internet connection's bandwidths and latencies. Getting a faster CPU with more cores makes no difference if you are bottlenecked by any of the above or you don't use hundreds of tabs in a browser that makes use of multiple cores (as I said, Firefox does NOT make use of multiple cores right now nor in the near future).

A CPU with more threads available than software uses just means that some of the stuff like OS work and background tasks can execute on a different core than the software in question and all of it can work at once. This does not make a notable difference unless you have a LOT of background work being done.

Like I said, the only ways that something like that would make a difference is if you have a setup with Vista and/r crap like Norton/Mcafee and/or malware problems, to name a few possibilities. Also, if you have unnecessary services and such running then you are also losing performance and might notice a difference from a CPU upgrade. However, the same difference would be noticed if you fix the problems at the source instead of working around them.

 

[diablo24life]

No, there's room for more threads to work at once. How many "threads" a CPU has just means how many it can run at once. When we say threads in the software sense, we mean the actual threads being run. Yes, Windows can move itself out through more than four threads, but it's most intensive threads can't do that so there is little difference with the OS going from 4 to 8. All Windows can do is run more of it's small threads at once, and really, that doesn't make a difference, it just means that there is like .3% more CPU power for other stuff on each core.

You don't seem to understand how hardware and software work very well. A thread count in the sense of hardware is just how many threads it can work with at once. A thread count in the sense of software is how many cores it can effectively use. If you have a CPU that supports more threads than the software, then there won't be a big difference than a CPU of the same speed per core with the amount of cores that equal the amount of threads uses by that piece of software.

Web browsing is just working with relatively small amounts of data that is bottlenecked by the browser itself, the hard drive/storage medium where the browser is located and it's cache is located, and the internet connection's bandwidths and latencies. Getting a faster CPU with more cores makes no difference if you are bottlenecked by any of the above or you don't use hundreds of tabs in a browser that makes use of multiple cores (as I said, Firefox does NOT make use of multiple cores right now nor in the near future).

A CPU with more threads available than software uses just means that some of the stuff like OS work and background tasks can execute on a different core than the software in question and all of it can work at once. This does not make a notable difference unless you have a LOT of background work being done.

Like I said, the only ways that something like that would make a difference is if you have a setup with Vista and/r crap like Norton/Mcafee and/or malware problems, to name a few possibilities. Also, if you have unnecessary services and such running then you are also losing performance and might notice a difference from a CPU upgrade. However, the same difference would be noticed if you fix the problems at the source instead of working around them.

ROFL uh what are you trying to say here? what is your point with these 4 paragraphs you wrote????

 

[blazorthon]

If you don't understand the point yet then I guess you could leave. What would you rather have, a 16 core Interlagos CPU at 2.6GHz, or a quad core i5-2400 at 3.1GHz, ignoring any price difference?

 

[diablo24life]

If you don't understand the point yet then I guess you could leave. What would you rather have, a 16 core Interlagos CPU at 2.6GHz, or an i5-2400 at 3.1GHz, ignoring any price difference?

i started this thread. it takes you 4 paragraphs to make an "attempt" at explaining something. you claim to know everything about computers, yet you dont even know that more cores equal better performance because it will have more threads. have you ever heard of the core2 duo?? did you know that was a 2 core 4 thread processor? thats the reason they were more succesful then a dual core. do you even know what te job of threads are in a processor??? gotta love these 12 year old it techs who come on toms hardware and forget what the heck they were talking about, then decide that writing 5 paragraphs must mean they know something.

 

[blazorthon]

MY GOD did you just tell me that a Core 2 Duo is a 4 thread CPU?!?! It is NOT!! That would mean that it had hyper-threading and NO Core 2 CPU had hyper-threading. All Core 2 CPUs have equal amounts of threads and cores. Core 2 Duos have two threads and two cores, core 2 Quads have four cores and four threads. I know a LOT about CPUs. For example, a Core 2 Quad is actually two Core 2 Duo dies on a single chip.

Multiple threads per core on Intel CPUs is called Hyper-threading, first debuted on some older P4 CPUs. After the P4, it was also used on some extreme edition Pentium Ds that had two cores and four threads. After that there was Core 2 that ditched hyper-threading completely. Hyper-threading was next seen in Nehalem dual core i3s and i5s as well as quad core and six core i7s.

It has remained on the Sandy Bridge i3s and i7s, but there is no dual core Sandy Bridge i5 so no Sandy Bridge i5s has it. Ivy Bridge is expected to continue Sandy's way of Hyper-threaded dual core i3s and hyper-threaded quad core i7s. The Sandy Bridge E six and quad core i7s also have Hyper-threading, all i7s should have it as of yet as should all i3s.

You do NOT understand CPUs much at all, despite you claiming you do.

Having more threads helps with dual core CPUs because they don't have more cores and threads than most machines know what to do with. It helps in the quad core i7s only if you do some seriously intensive multi-threaded work because unlike four threads, there is even less software that supports 8 threads that quad core desktop i7s offer. Going beyond four cores has been shown to be inferior to improving the performance of each thread for software that does not use more threads than available to it. IE a dual core i3 at 3GHz beats eight core FX CPUs in gaming because games only use one or two threads and the i3's two physical cores are faster than two FX cores are.

The Hyper-threaded threads are also much slower than physical cores are, at best hitting around 30% of the same physical cores on the processor. Because of this, Windows was optimized to schedule intensive tasks to the physical threads/cores and mainly use the hyperthreaded threads when the physical thread is waiting for something.

A hyper threaded thread actually shares a core with a physical thread and can only use the parts of the core that the physical thread is not using. If both the physical and hyper-threaded thread of a core needed the same resources at the same time then the hyper-threaded thread would need to wait for the physical thread to finish some work before it can be executed.

Please answer the question I asked, which would you prefer for a gaming computer, a 16 core Interlagos (that is a Bulldozer server CPU made from two Valencia 8 core dies on a single chip), or a quad core i5 (it is a single die, not two dual core dies on a single chip like Core 2 Quads).

Sorry, but you are NOT going to outsmart me about CPUs. I designed some hardware myself as a hobby, I know how it works.

 

[diablo24life]

MY GOD did you just tell me that a Core 2 Duo is a 4 thread CPU?!?! It is NOT!! That would mean that it had hyper-threading and NO Core 2 CPU had hyper-threading. All Core 2 CPUs have equal amounts of threads and cores. Core 2 Duos have two threads and two cores, core 2 Quads have four cores and four threads. I know a LOT about CPUs. For example, a Core 2 Quad is actually two Core 2 Duo dies on a single chip.

Multiple threads per core on Intel CPUs is called Hyper-threading, first debuted on some older P4 CPUs. After the P4, it was also used on some extreme edition Pentium Ds that had two cores and four threads. After that there was Core 2 that ditched hyper-threading completely. Hyper-threading was next seen in Nehalem dual core i3s and i5s as well as quad core and six core i7s.

It has remained on the Sandy Bridge i3s and i7s, but there is no dual core Sandy Bridge i5 so no Sandy Bridge i5s has it. Ivy Bridge is expected to continue Sandy's way of Hyper-threaded dual core i3s and hyper-threaded quad core i7s. The Sandy Bridge E six and quad core i7s also have Hyper-threading, all i7s should have it as of yet as should all i3s.

You do NOT understand CPUs much at all, despite you claiming you do.

Having more threads helps with dual core CPUs because they don't have more cores and threads than most machines know what to do with. It helps in the quad core i7s only if you do some seriously intensive multi-threaded work because unlike four threads, there is even less software that supports 8 threads that quad core desktop i7s offer. Going beyond four cores has been shown to be inferior to improving the performance of each thread for software that does not use more threads than available to it. IE a dual core i3 at 3GHz beats eight core FX CPUs in gaming because games only use one or two threads and the i3's two physical cores are faster than two FX cores are.

The Hyper-threaded threads are also much slower than physical cores are, at best hitting around 30% of the same physical cores on the processor. Because of this, Windows was optimized to schedule intensive tasks to the physical threads/cores and mainly use the hyperthreaded threads when the physical thread is waiting for something.

A hyper threaded thread actually shares a core with a physical thread and can only use the parts of the core that the physical thread is not using. If both the physical and hyper-threaded thread of a core needed the same resources at the same time then the hyper-threaded thread would need to wait for the physical thread to finish some work before it can be executed.

Please answer the question I asked, which would you prefer for a gaming computer, a 16 core Interlagos (that is a Bulldozer server CPU made from two Valencia 8 core dies on a single chip), or a quad core i5 (it is a single die, not two dual core dies on a single chip like Core 2 Quads).

Sorry, but you are NOT going to outsmart me about CPUs. I designed some hardware myself as a hobby, I know how it works.

??? are u serious? so any processor with 4 threads have HT???? are you retarded. the core i 3 does not have HT, thats only in i5 and i7. you might want to go back and double check that. and why are you comparing intel ro amd?? we were talking about the 8150 and 4100 LMAO. ahh god is there nay limit to these 14 year olds embarassment threshold these days? are you aware that the 8150 benchs an average score of 8000 and intels i7 2600k is an average of 9800??? amd and intel have 2 different architectures genius. then explain why the i3 fails miserably compared to an i5 or i7??? the whole world is laughing at you buddy. are you seriously 12 years old?

 

[blazorthon]

I would also like to bring to your attention the fact that a P4 with hyper-threading enabled could actually be slower than with hyper-threading disabled if the software and OS were specifically coded for it. Having more threads does not help without software and OS support. Having more threads per core can be detrimental to performance, so no, more threads is not a deciding factor in performance simply by being a larger number.

Most software is not coded for using many threads, but hyper-threading doesn't normally hurt performance anymore because modern OSs are aware of it. However, it doesn't help performance if the software besides the OS are not also aware of it. Most software is not, your argument is invalid for that software. Besides that, an i7 with four cores and four virtual threads beats an AMD Interlagos or Magny-Cours CPU that has 8 cores or even more.

The performance per core in the i7 is so great that larger amounts of AMD cores can't always beat it, unless they are more than double it's core count. Enable it's hyper-threading and the quad core i7s will beat the eight core FXs, Valencias, and Interlagos CPUs, despite the fact that the virtual threads only increase performance by about 30%.

If you want, I can go MUCH further into detail and even explain why the Intel CPUs beat AMD CPUs that have more cores by delving into the architectures themselves. You're not arguing with some idiot, you are arguing with an expert and you're not getting anywhere with it.I still have my Pentium 3 machine from a decade ago that I built myself. I used to have my even older Pentium 2 machine, but I recycled it already because it failed on me.

I am not a gamer idiot either. My usual desktop has an AMD Phenom II x6 that hangs between an i5 and an FX-8150 in multi-threaded performance despite it's inferior gaming performance to cheaper Phenom II quad core CPUs and even cheaper i3s because when I start up many Virtual machines with several browsers, several compressing/decompressing archives, burning a CD, and watching a movie all at the same time, I like it not slowing down much. It doesn't even have a video card, it uses the integrated Radeon 4290 of the motherboard... That is even weaker than Intel's integrated HD 2000 and HD 3000, and neither of them are fast enough for modern gaming.

I will tell you right now that the 16 core Interlagos at 2.6GHz will not even come close to the quad core i5-2400 for almost all desktop workloads, including gaming and other more intense work. The 16 core CPU will only win in situations that use more than 8 of it's 16 threads, if not it might need 10 threads to beat the i5. Not much home software can use this many threads.

 

[diablo24life]

I would also like to bring to your attention the fact that a P4 with hyper-threading enabled could actually be slower than with hyper-threading disabled if the software and OS were specifically coded for it. Having more threads does not help without software and OS support. Having more threads per core can be detrimental to performance, so no, more threads is not a deciding factor in performance simply by being a larger number.

Most software is not coded for using many threads, but hyper-threading doesn't normally hurt performance anymore because modern OSs are aware of it. However, it doesn't help performance if the software besides the OS are not also aware of it. Most software is not, your argument is invalid for that software. Besides that, an i7 with four cores and four virtual threads beats an AMD Interlagos or Magny-Cours CPU that has 8 cores or even more.

The performance per core in the i7 is so great that larger amounts of AMD cores can't always beat it, unless they are more than double it's core count. Enable it's hyper-threading and the quad core i7s will beat the eight core FXs, Valencias, and Interlagos CPUs, despite the fact that the virtual threads only increase performance by about 30%.

If you want, I can go MUCH further into detail and even explain why the Intel CPUs beat AMD CPUs that have more cores by delving into the architectures themselves. You're not arguing with some idiot, you are arguing with an expert and you're not getting anywhere with it.I still have my Pentium 3 machine from a decade ago that I built myself. I used to have my even older Pentium 2 machine, but I recycled it already because it failed on me.

I am not a gamer idiot either. My usual desktop has an AMD Phenom II x6 that hangs between an i5 and an FX-8150 in multi-threaded performance despite it's inferior gaming performance to cheaper Phenom II quad core CPUs and even cheaper i3s because when I start up many Virtual machines with several browsers, several compressing/decompressing archives, burning a CD, and watching a movie all at the same time, I like it not slowing down much. It doesn't even have a video card, it uses the integrated Radeon 4290 of the motherboard... That is even weaker than Intel's integrated HD 2000 and HD 3000, and neither of them are fast enough for modern gaming.

I will tell you right now that the 16 core Interlagos at 2.6GHz will not even come close to the quad core i5-2400 for almost all desktop workloads, including gaming and other more intense work. The 16 core CPU will only win in situations that use more than 8 of it's 16 threads, if not it might need 10 threads to beat the i5. Not much home software can use this many threads.

seems like you forgot your entire point? when i asked you before what were you going on about, you couldnt even answer the question because you forgot. you were to busy about writing 4 paragraphs. usually people who write 4 paragraphs to sum up one point are bullshiting. have you ever read an ebook before?? really doesnt look like you can dig yourself out of this one buddy. i think ill stick with an 8150 over a 4100 anyday, you know seeing how it has an average bench of 800 compared to 4000.

 

[blazorthon]

8150 is pointless, 8120 is the same CPU with a lower multiplier. Up the multiplier and it's the same. Like many AMD CPUs, the 8150 isn't really even a higher binned CPU, you just pay to have it pre-overclocked. The 8120 will use the same amount of power as the 8150 and provide the same performance.

I did not forget my point, I got sick of restating it. I explained why more threads does not necessarily mean more performance. If you had read them then you should have known the whole point.

The i5 does NOT have hyper-threading, it is a quad core CPU with only four threads. The i3 is a dual core CPU with hyper-threading and has two cores and two threads per core. You do not know what you are talking about. You could simply go to newegg.com and look at the LGA 155 i3s to know I am right, they are ALL dual core. LGA 1155 is the name of the socket used by Sandy Bridge, it is used by the H61, H67, P67, and Z68 chipsets, all of which support the same processors, but with different connectivity, budget, IGP, and overclocking options.

Celeron = single or dual core CPU without hyper-threading. one or two physical threads and no logical threads (the proper name for hyper-threaded threads).

Pentium = dual core CPU with more L3 cache and higher clock rates at the same power usage than the Celeron and still doesn't have hyper-threading. two physical threads and no logical threads.

i3 is a dual core CPU with more cache and higher clock rates than a Pentium and the i3s have Hyper-threading. 2 physical threads and 2 logical threads.

i5 has four cores with similar clock rates to the i3s and more L3 cache than the i3s, but is without hyper-threading. 4 physical threads and no logical threads.

i7 has slightly higher clock rates and more L3 cache than i5 and has hyper-threading. 4 physical threads and four logical threads.

This is the complete desktop Sandy Bridge lineup. There are also the LGA 2011 Sandy Bridge E processors that go with the X79 chipset that are basically LGA 1155 i7s except with more L3 cache, and instead of a 128 bit memory controller they have a 256 bit memory controller. Some LGA 2011 i7s also have 6 cores instead of 4. They also have hyper-threading. Sandy Bridge E is actually a single die with eight cores and 20MB of cache, but some cache and two or four cores are disabled, depending on the processor.

Sandy Bridge has about 50% more performance per core than FX processors when it is at the same clock frequency as the FX. That means that a six core FX at 3GHz is about equal to a Sandy Bridge i5 that has four cores (all of which do) that runs at 3GHz.

You can further learn from this that at best, the eight core FX CPUs are only 25% faster than an i5 when both are at the same clock frequency. That also shows how an i7 is faster than an FX eight core. This is why that FX processors are called crap by most people, they have worse IPC (Instructions Per Clock, basically means performance per Hz) than Core 2 and Phenom II architectures (bot have about 15% or so more IPC than FX, despite Core 2 being from 2006 and Phenom II being almost as old).

AMD screwed up making the Bulldozer architecture and that is why it has horrible performance per core, forcing AMD to have large core counts to stop Intel from winning in EVERYTHING at the same price point. This method works well in servers, but not so much in the desktop space of most home users because, like I said, most software does not make good use of large amounts of cores.

I apologize because I have been rather rude in explaining this, but I am right. I'm not one of the top 300 members of this site out of about 700,000 members by not understanding computer technology.

 

[diablo24life]

8150 is pointless, 8120 is the same CPU with a lower multiplier. Up the multiplier and it's the same. Like many AMD CPUs, the 8150 isn't really even a higher binned CPU, you just pay to have it pre-overclocked. The 8120 will use the same amount of power as the 8150 and provide the same performance.

I did not forget my point, I got sick of restating it. I explained why more threads does not necessarily mean more performance. If you had read them then you should have known the whole point.

The i5 does NOT have hyper-threading, it is a quad core CPU with only four threads. The i3 is a dual core CPU with hyper-threading and has two cores and two threads per core. You do not know what you are talking about. You could simply go to newegg.com and look at the LGA 155 i3s to know I am right, they are ALL dual core. LGA 1155 is the name of the socket used by Sandy Bridge, it is used by the H61, H67, P67, and Z68 chipsets, all of which support the same processors, but with different connectivity, budget, IGP, and overclocking options.

Celeron = single or dual core CPU without hyper-threading. one or two physical threads and no logical threads (the proper name for hyper-threaded threads).

Pentium = dual core CPU with more L3 cache and higher clock rates at the same power usage than the Celeron and still doesn't have hyper-threading. two physical threads and no logical threads.

i3 is a dual core CPU with more cache and higher clock rates than a Pentium and the i3s have Hyper-threading. 2 physical threads and 2 logical threads.

i5 has four cores with similar clock rates to the i3s and more L3 cache than the i3s, but is without hyper-threading. 4 physical threads and no logical threads.

i7 has slightly higher clock rates and more L3 cache than i5 and has hyper-threading. 4 physical threads and four logical threads.

This is the complete desktop Sandy Bridge lineup. There are also the LGA 2011 Sandy Bridge E processors that go with the X79 chipset that are basically LGA 1155 i7s except with more L3 cache, and instead of a 128 bit memory controller they have a 256 bit memory controller. Some LGA 2011 i7s also have 6 cores instead of 4. They also have hyper-threading. Sandy Bridge E is actually a single die with eight cores and 20MB of cache, but some cache and two or four cores are disabled, depending on the processor.

Sandy Bridge has about 50% more performance per core than FX processors when it is at the same clock frequency as the FX. That means that a six core FX at 3GHz is about equal to a Sandy Bridge i5 that has four cores (all of which do) that runs at 3GHz.

You can further learn from this that at best, the eight core FX CPUs are only 25% faster than an i5 when both are at the same clock frequency. That also shows how an i7 is faster than an FX eight core. This is why that FX processors are called crap by most people, they have worse IPC (Instructions Per Clock, basically means performance per Hz) than Core 2 and Phenom II architectures (bot have about 15% or so more IPC than FX, despite Core 2 being from 2006 and Phenom II being almost as old).

AMD screwed up making the Bulldozer architecture and that is why it has horrible performance per core, forcing AMD to have large core counts to stop Intel from winning in EVERYTHING at the same price point. This method works well in servers, but not so much in the desktop space of most home users because, like I said, most software does not make good use of large amounts of cores.

I apologize because I have been rather rude in explaining this, but I am right. I'm not one of the top 300 members of this site out of about 700,000 members by not understanding computer technology.

ROFL this guy is cutting and pasting other topics from toms hardware onto this thread lmaooo no wonder what you say makes no sense. so do you still think the 8150 is worse then the 4100? you do realise that ALL FX processors are the EXACT same. these change the clock speed and disable cores if there going below a 8 core. its funny you say that because you just said that the i3 has HT which is wrong.

 

[blazorthon]

I never said that the 8150 is worse than the 4100. Of course I know that they all have the same 8 core die, the 6 and 4 core FXs are just with one or two modules disabled. The i3 has Hyper-threading, you are wrong and if you simply go to newegg.com (the favorite site for buying new computer parts of most Tom's members) you can learn this fact. If you simply look through ANY article here on Tom's you will know I'm right. If you ask anyone else, including the moderators here on Tom's you will know that I am right.

The 8150 isn't worse than the 4100, quite the contrary, but it is a poor purchase nonetheless. If you truly want an 8 core CPU (it doesn't help much unless you do massive amounts of work or work that is highly threaded) then you should have gotten the 8120 instead and upped it's multiplier, it would have then been identical to the 8150 in everything but name, but almost $100 cheaper despite being identical.

AMD is known to not do much binning on their processors like Intel does so lower end versions of the high end CPUs are identical to the high end CPUs, just with a BIOS setting, the CPU multiplier, set to a lower number. The voltage could also be lower, but this is also easily fixed by imputing the voltage of the 8150 if necessary and that is an easy figure to look up.

All i3s have Hyper-threading. All of them. You can go anywhere you want to and check be it Newegg as I suggested, asking another member of Tom's, or even going to Wiki or even to Intel's own website.

In fact, I have no idea what could have given you the idea that i3s don't have Hyper-threading. All of them have it and if you check ANYWHERE you should see that I'm right.

The Nehalem/Westmere (roughly the same architecture, Westmere is a die shrink of Nehalem) i3s have it, the Sandy Bridge i3s have it, and the Ivy Bridge i3s have it. There are no other i3s.

Even all of the mobile i3s from each architecture have hyper-threading. There is no i3 that lacks it.

Also, I am not cutting and pasting anything nor am I bringing up other topics here. Everything I have said backs up what I am trying to explain to you about cores and threads, but you aren't listening.

 

[blazorthon]

All i3s have hyper-threading.

 

[blazorthon]

I checked Wiki's list to make sure and double checked with Intel's own specifications sheets on intel.com, all i3s have Hyper-Threading.

Even the first generation i3s have it.