The Ultimate Hardware Guide [Last Update: 4-14-06] - Page 4 - CPUs

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Quote :

lol
yup thats perty good,I am thinking you had to build an add on to your case for all 12 120mm fans,you get a building permit for that?

LOL, nah. I'll go into MSPAINT right now and draw a diagram of it and post it. Gimme about 5 minutes, it's worth the wait .

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

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Quote :

Who cares? It should be warranted. Also, GPU's can withstand a lot of heat, although it certainly isn't good for overclocking and I can't see it doing good for PCB lifetime, it can't do too terribly much either.

I for one would like to secure the life of an investment ,sonny. 8)
I hate to break it to you "sonny" but if you really want to secure your investment you might as well just have the company replace it as that's guaranteed whereas putting an aftermarket cooler might invalidate the warranty and you could still get screwed.

Reply to ak47is1337

http://img99.imageshack.us/my.php? [...] ion1kq.jpg

It isn't the best but that's the setup I have, excluding the 10 used for exhaust.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

I should mention the case is one that is basically 2 stuck together, it is designed for workstations/servers. I think it'd be interesting for somebody with the right funds to test the best OC on Air.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

[quote="verndewd"]

Quote :

http://img99.imageshack.us/my.php? [...] ion1kq.jpg

It isn't the best but that's the setup I have, excluding the 10 used for exhaust.

lol,,,,,,,and you motgaged what family member to pay the electricity bill.
youre set for summer with all that air flowin,just do your addition once you get the permit and have a seat right net to the cup;nice an cool with a permanent bad hair day. :?

I shave my head .

The first PSU is a Thermaltake 680w, the 2nd is an Antec TruPower 450w. The fans together drew too much on the +12v and was actually hindering performance of Windows, which is what brought the necessity for the 2nd PSU.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Quote :

I can get you a huge case,,,,my boss has some monsters. seriously big friggin cases.....put all your fans in and use it to cool your house and pc. 8)

I'll just turn my apartment into a case, LOL. Or I could steal a rack and Mad Mod my PC into it, .

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Quote :

Nah make a motorized cubicle case out of one of those golfcarts. :trophy:

I should buy this: http://www.xoxide.com/aeluca.html

You can make some crazy things with that .

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

All sweet, except the cache and fsb (and plz dont take it as a flame or nothing):

Quote :

The Prescott Pentium 4 also has a smaller Level 1 Cache than the Athlon 64, avg. of 48KB Level 1 vs. 128KB Level 1 in the Athlon 64, which I believe is another reason for why the Pentium 4 is not as good in Games as the Athlon 64. The Pentium 4 Prescott has larger Level 2 Cache, 2MB vs. 512KB or 1MB in the Athlon 64. Which is in place to leverage the bottlenecked Front Side Bus, but I personally believe that larger Level 2 Cache does not mean greater performance, and in some cases, I believe it to decrease performance.

Have a look at the P3 coppermine - 16k+16k vs amds 64k+64k - P3 coppermine and AMD thunderbird are clock for clock equal (within 10%, games were actually faster most of the time with Intel by only a few % and slower in other apps then the AMD, no chip was the winnder but the intel was colder and the amd was cheaper) - 1/4 the cache and equal - its the architecture and cache design, Intel cache works in a diffrent manner.

Quote :

Intel seems to think there is an even greater increase in performance, but this is just due to the bottlenecked Front Side Bus in my opinion.

And FSB - P4 made the QDR fsb seem slow but its not too bad (for now, and yeah its not as good as AMDs design and scalibility etc) but as we saw with conroe and the pentium m's its the netburst architecture its self thats to blame, or that P6 is FSB efficent (again the P3 coppermine example - P3 used a 133mhz SDR fsb vs AMDs 266mhz DDR fsb)

It differs from architecture to architecture.

Reply to apache_lives

Quote :

All sweet, except the cache and fsb (and plz dont take it as a flame or nothing):

The Prescott Pentium 4 also has a smaller Level 1 Cache than the Athlon 64, avg. of 48KB Level 1 vs. 128KB Level 1 in the Athlon 64, which I believe is another reason for why the Pentium 4 is not as good in Games as the Athlon 64. The Pentium 4 Prescott has larger Level 2 Cache, 2MB vs. 512KB or 1MB in the Athlon 64. Which is in place to leverage the bottlenecked Front Side Bus, but I personally believe that larger Level 2 Cache does not mean greater performance, and in some cases, I believe it to decrease performance.

Have a look at the P3 coppermine - 16k+16k vs amds 64k+64k - P3 coppermine and AMD thunderbird are clock for clock equal (within 10%, games were actually faster most of the time with Intel by only a few % and slower in other apps then the AMD, no chip was the winnder but the intel was colder and the amd was cheaper) - 1/4 the cache and equal - its the architecture and cache design, Intel cache works in a diffrent manner.

Quote :

Intel seems to think there is an even greater increase in performance, but this is just due to the bottlenecked Front Side Bus in my opinion.

And FSB - P4 made the QDR fsb seem slow but its not too bad (for now, and yeah its not as good as AMDs design and scalibility etc) but as we saw with conroe and the pentium m's its the netburst architecture its self thats to blame, or that P6 is FSB efficent (again the P3 coppermine example - P3 used a 133mhz SDR fsb vs AMDs 266mhz DDR fsb)

It differs from architecture to architecture.

I should hope no chip was a "winnder". This was designed to be factual/my opinion, which is what I have stated several times. I asked people to post about wrong things that are facts, not stating your opinion on performance or design. Re-Post when you find something wrong in there, and I will be happy to fix it.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Maybe something to add to your very fine article,

If one really looks at how is data transfered from Main memory to CPU, it might be interesting to compare both platform Intel and AMD. For sake of simplicity we can put everything in the PCI bus category, PCI-E , AGP, SuperIO etc etc...

With Intel, it is true that the IO, GPU, PCI is closer to the memory, generally Controller (PCI) -> NB -> Memory, this in theory makes it good to transfer information from outside to inside. The bottle neck between processor and memory comes in when there is a lot of data to be processed and returned to memory, just like in scientific calculation. It is even worst when the data has to go from core to core passing by the FSB. For games where DMA , bus mastering and other external controller can handle themselfs it is actually a better architecture. CPU -> NB -> Memory. It is interesting to note that the Intel processor has a quite good ratio of memory / operation ratio, close to 15 ops / fetch. In this case someone will need a lot more cache as it is used not only to mask long latencies but also main memory BW.

AMD, The memory controller is attached to the switch, this switch in the case of a 2xx or 8xx Opteron also connects other processors. The BW of this switch is really high, in fact higher than the FPU can handle in the case of a y=N*scalar case. the balance is about at 8 to 12 fetch / operation. The interesting part is in the case 2xx, 8xx, the memory controller scales very well, if data is on some other processor the data goes from CPU1 -> CPU2 switch -> Memory, basically the 2nd CPU becomes a "North bridge" for memory. In the case of a 8xx CPU, we can have 2 NB with 128bit path for both. The bad thing here is that the IO is actually one further away from the memory. The crossbar itself can already pass a lot of data to the memory without disturbing the CPU. We might want to consider that latency for IO is maybe not as bad as latency to memory unless the Video card is the IO, we can consider the local memory of the GPU as a "cache".

In my opinion I think that AMD should get rid of the memory controller straight on the CPU and just make more Hyper transport interfaces available. For example, let's say the 8xx CPU would have 4 Hyper transport instead of 3 + memory controller. It would be possible to make a motherboard with 25.6GB/s BW total, where 6.4GB/s would be going to IO and 19.2GB/s would go to Memory. In a very IO based configuration someone else could design a 12.8GB/s memory and 12.8GB/s IO, or again 19.2GB/s IO and 6.4GB/s memory bus (very nice in some applications I have here)... The memory could then be handled by a specific memory controller that connects to the Hyper Transport.

I would also bet that AMD could put even more hyper transport if they would get rid of the memory controller. They could also change memory technology as fast as intel. while keeping a reasonable amount of pins for the processor. Also keep in mind from what I have seen routing Hyper transport signal would be easier than routing DDRx * 128 or 256 bit wide.

For Intel, they tried it with rambus, having the memory controller separated from the North bridge, the rambus thing was pretty bad politically. Getting rid of the Northbridge memory controller and incorporating this Transport in the CPU itself would make sense.

Feel free to use it, add it, edit it, erase it... what ever !

Reply to tchiwam

Quote :

Maybe something to add to your very fine article,

If one really looks at how is data transfered from Main memory to CPU, it might be interesting to compare both platform Intel and AMD. For sake of simplicity we can put everything in the PCI bus category, PCI-E , AGP, SuperIO etc etc...

With Intel, it is true that the IO, GPU, PCI is closer to the memory, generally Controller (PCI) -> NB -> Memory, this in theory makes it good to transfer information from outside to inside. The bottle neck between processor and memory comes in when there is a lot of data to be processed and returned to memory, just like in scientific calculation. It is even worst when the data has to go from core to core passing by the FSB. For games where DMA , bus mastering and other external controller can handle themselfs it is actually a better architecture. CPU -> NB -> Memory. It is interesting to note that the Intel processor has a quite good ratio of memory / operation ratio, close to 15 ops / fetch. In this case someone will need a lot more cache as it is used not only to mask long latencies but also main memory BW.

AMD, The memory controller is attached to the switch, this switch in the case of a 2xx or 8xx Opteron also connects other processors. The BW of this switch is really high, in fact higher than the FPU can handle in the case of a y=N*scalar case. the balance is about at 8 to 12 fetch / operation. The interesting part is in the case 2xx, 8xx, the memory controller scales very well, if data is on some other processor the data goes from CPU1 -> CPU2 switch -> Memory, basically the 2nd CPU becomes a "North bridge" for memory. In the case of a 8xx CPU, we can have 2 NB with 128bit path for both. The bad thing here is that the IO is actually one further away from the memory. The crossbar itself can already pass a lot of data to the memory without disturbing the CPU. We might want to consider that latency for IO is maybe not as bad as latency to memory unless the Video card is the IO, we can consider the local memory of the GPU as a "cache".

In my opinion I think that AMD should get rid of the memory controller straight on the CPU and just make more Hyper transport interfaces available. For example, let's say the 8xx CPU would have 4 Hyper transport instead of 3 + memory controller. It would be possible to make a motherboard with 25.6GB/s BW total, where 6.4GB/s would be going to IO and 19.2GB/s would go to Memory. In a very IO based configuration someone else could design a 12.8GB/s memory and 12.8GB/s IO, or again 19.2GB/s IO and 6.4GB/s memory bus (very nice in some applications I have here)... The memory could then be handled by a specific memory controller that connects to the Hyper Transport.

I would also bet that AMD could put even more hyper transport if they would get rid of the memory controller. They could also change memory technology as fast as intel. while keeping a reasonable amount of pins for the processor. Also keep in mind from what I have seen routing Hyper transport signal would be easier than routing DDRx * 128 or 256 bit wide.

For Intel, they tried it with rambus, having the memory controller separated from the North bridge, the rambus thing was pretty bad politically. Getting rid of the Northbridge memory controller and incorporating this Transport in the CPU itself would make sense.

Feel free to use it, add it, edit it, erase it... what ever !

This is geared towards those who have little understanding, I think that is a bit advanced, but good job and thanks for suggestions, I'll probably take some snippits out and modify them into lamens.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

For an everyone comment we could say that there is 2 main reason for having cache, Bandwidth and latency. One of them is how fast the train goes as in 300km/h, while the latency is how far is the train from it's destination.

If you look at the itanium who need huge L3 caches, it is quit obvious that they need it for BW and latency. On the P4 and Conroe familly the big L2 cache will free as much as possible the single FSB. While on the AMD the cache is mostly to covering the latency in non stream cases. That's why more cache is not always better, it really depends on how the information goes from memory to the CPU and IO.

Reply to tchiwam

Quote :

For an everyone comment we could say that there is 2 main reason for having cache, Bandwidth and latency. One of them is how fast the train goes as in 300km/h, while the latency is how far is the train from it's destination.

If you look at the itanium who need huge L3 caches, it is quit obvious that they need it for BW and latency. On the P4 and Conroe familly the big L2 cache will free as much as possible the single FSB. While on the AMD the cache is mostly to covering the latency in non stream cases. That's why more cache is not always better, it really depends on how the information goes from memory to the CPU and IO.

Exactly, have more L2 Cache is not always best, most of the time, with larger L2 Caches, alot of that goes unused in some users environments, it really depends on what you're doing to warrant more cache.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Quote :

All sweet, except the cache and fsb (and plz dont take it as a flame or nothing):

The Prescott Pentium 4 also has a smaller Level 1 Cache than the Athlon 64, avg. of 48KB Level 1 vs. 128KB Level 1 in the Athlon 64, which I believe is another reason for why the Pentium 4 is not as good in Games as the Athlon 64. The Pentium 4 Prescott has larger Level 2 Cache, 2MB vs. 512KB or 1MB in the Athlon 64. Which is in place to leverage the bottlenecked Front Side Bus, but I personally believe that larger Level 2 Cache does not mean greater performance, and in some cases, I believe it to decrease performance.

Have a look at the P3 coppermine - 16k+16k vs amds 64k+64k - P3 coppermine and AMD thunderbird are clock for clock equal (within 10%, games were actually faster most of the time with Intel by only a few % and slower in other apps then the AMD, no chip was the winnder but the intel was colder and the amd was cheaper) - 1/4 the cache and equal - its the architecture and cache design, Intel cache works in a diffrent manner.

Quote :

Intel seems to think there is an even greater increase in performance, but this is just due to the bottlenecked Front Side Bus in my opinion.

And FSB - P4 made the QDR fsb seem slow but its not too bad (for now, and yeah its not as good as AMDs design and scalibility etc) but as we saw with conroe and the pentium m's its the netburst architecture its self thats to blame, or that P6 is FSB efficent (again the P3 coppermine example - P3 used a 133mhz SDR fsb vs AMDs 266mhz DDR fsb)

It differs from architecture to architecture.

I should hope no chip was a "winnder". This was designed to be factual/my opinion, which is what I have stated several times. I asked people to post about wrong things that are facts, not stating your opinion on performance or design. Re-Post when you find something wrong in there, and I will be happy to fix it.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

well facts AMDs bigger L1 cache is NOT quicker for games but there design benifits more from the size, and L2 the same deal.

The P4 FSB is not crap P4 is crap - conroe proves and intel explains why they keep a fsb with no ht like style and IMC for flexibility.

and btw the MMM^3 on your logo = MMM x MMM x MMM? WTF

Reply to apache_lives

The interesting way to make a benchmark that uses and understand the P4 / AMD differences is actually quite simple. One has to make a work growing slowly in size, I use dataset of size 2K, 4K, 8K , ... , 512KB , 1MB, 2MB, 4MB, 8MB, untill I have covered all of the data size of local memory and in the case of an AMD numa enough to reach all memory banks.

Then also increase the number of operations with 2 read -> 1 write let's call it A op B -> C.

Then continue to increase the number of ops/ fectch+write until you get the number of OPs you can do to saturate the FPU / Branch / ...
for a FPU example I would do:

K is a register constant.
A+B -> C
AK+BK -> C
AK+AK1 + BK+ BK1 -> C
... until I would have reached my peak FP/s

After that you can try to analyse how many streams can be handled, so we go by A op B op C -> D ... try to balance the write streams and read streams too.

Once all of this is done, one can make better code for each platform considering these values. It will show how each of the caches are used, who each of the needed Operation unit are needed, which one starves and which one is a bottle neck.

I have learned very soon that without these benchmarks I never get close to the real potential of performances, AMD or Intel doesn't mather, this hold true even for Crays / Power5 / SX6 ... Then running a code of one arch compiled on another arch just goes wrong. Once I am finished I can normally use -O1 or -O2 wihtout performance differences.

Honestly the only clock anyone human care is the wall clock, Flops, GPU, CPU, L1, L2, L3, Mips, Spec2000, all of that is a real alphabet soup, at the end doesn't mather.

Reply to tchiwam

Poeple talk hardware and mips etc.... but am i wrong thinking that software is less and less hardware friendly ? :roll:

I remember playing not so bad games on a atari xt and amiga those computer had far less computing power than todays monster ....

Reply to margag_

You're gonna diss me on my Sig now? I spent 10 minutes in Photoshop CS2...I guess you'll always find something to flame me on, least it shows who the bigger man is **hint hint**.

@Marg: That's because nowadays, all developers think about is graphics. I mean, come on, when is the last time a real worthy commercial game came out that lasted more than 5 hours? Excluding MMO's, you got F.E.A.R. that I beat in a few hours and its "Extreme" difficulty was easier than "Normal". CoD2 is awesome, but only a few hours lasting. I know most people say "Multiplayer you idiot!" but there's already tons of good Multiplayer games out there, we need more games like Every Extra Extend and Geometry Wars!

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Hey MadModMike, that is one sweet explanation there. Ok since im having no luck with my AMD and im a huge gamer and multitasker, i decided im going with intel (dont need to bash, intel can play games as smooth as silk too) and of course im overclocking. But do you suggest i should either get the 530 or the 630 intel? Also what motherboard you suggest?

Oh and you should also show what mobos you recommend, or what chipset at least.

Reply to sepheronx

Quote :

P.S. Would you think a thread like this for Northbridge's would be good? I think I would be able to get it done, just the fact of whether or not it is necessary, there really aren't a huge variety of chipsets compared to the variety of CPU's.

I certainly do think a NB thread would be excellent. I'm pretty new at assembling modern rigs and have plans to build more. (I've done plenty of work building computers for scientific apps like instrument controllers, etc., but that's a different ballgame althogether.) This forum and others have helped me a ton on my current project. For example, a PC Club employee had me talked into Intel Mobo/820D foundation. I'd told him I wanted to do image processing, video processing, Internet access and to have decent gaming performance. But after digging around here, I settled on an Asus A8N32SLI/4400+ combo. Yes, I know that's pricier than the Intel parts I'd been recommended, but I got a great deal on the Asus/AMD ($700 for those two items plus the Zalman 9500 and FS-V7 coolers) and have the capabilities I need. So these forums are a good thing. I've been taking notes lately because my son's birthday is approaching and he wants a desktop that will play games well. The budget will be pretty limited and he's even adding some of his fun money to help out. So to get back to your question, everyone wants the same kind of info and it all relates to compatibility, setup, performance, reliability, cost, capabilities, etc. Different people have their own priorities that lead to buying decisions, but knowledge should be the starting point, not bias.

Great job on the CPU summary, by the way, but now I guess we're putting you back into the sweat house, huh? And you know it doesn't stop at the chipset, sorry to say. VGA performance and compatibility is an obvious followup, then maybe other PCI devices and of course a thorough treatment of setup, optimization, overclocking and all that is required to seal the deal. Sounds like a bible to me.

Quote :

And you can't really choose your chipset like you can choose your CPU.

By that I assume you mean with the degree of independence you get with a CPU, rather than being strapped to the mobo specifics.

Reply to clue69less

Quote :

Sounds interesting...and impossible.

Never use that word. The first minicomputer I worked on had 8K of RAM. When we got an additional 8K from US Govt. Surplus, it was a big enough occasion to have a party. 8K took up about 2 cubic feet of rack space back then. Never say "impossible" about computer performance. It will happen.

Reply to clue69less

Quote :

Hey MadModMike, that is one sweet explanation there. Ok since im having no luck with my AMD and im a huge gamer and multitasker, i decided im going with intel (dont need to bash, intel can play games as smooth as silk too) and of course im overclocking. But do you suggest i should either get the 530 or the 630 intel? Also what motherboard you suggest?

Oh and you should also show what mobos you recommend, or what chipset at least.

No doubt the 630, I've seen 530's @ stock go up to 60c idle, eeks! For motherboard, I recommend the one below.

Motherboard - You can hit 4GHz+ on this board.

PS: I would look into the Pentium D's, get the 805 for $134, it's cheaper and can easily be OC'd to match the 630 but you'll have 2 cores.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Quote :

I don't need a Dual-Core laptop, that is just retarded.

You might be surprised. My trusty Vaio laptop got stepped on by our dog (which weighs 105, crunch) and it snapped the mobo like a potato chip. So I replaced it with an Acer (gasp!) that has a Dual Core. It was such a deal I couldn't turn it down. It's got 1GB RAM, 100GB HD and I got a Bluetooth transmitter and mouse thrown in, all for $1250. This is a sweet little rig! It multitasks better than any laptop I've used. The other night, out of boredom, I tried to get it to latch up by burning a DVD, copying a GB of digital images off of a USB reader through the laptop to an external USB HD, reading a big heart rate monitor file off of my Polar watch through its USB/IR reader, playing itunes and surfing the web all at once. No problema, although the fan was running pretty hard. It was like having an information vortex right there at my fingertips!

Reply to clue69less

Quote :

I don't need a Dual-Core laptop, that is just retarded.

You might be surprised. My trusty Vaio laptop got stepped on by our dog (which weighs 105, crunch) and it snapped the mobo like a potato chip. So I replaced it with an Acer (gasp!) that has a Dual Core. It was such a deal I couldn't turn it down. It's got 1GB RAM, 100GB HD and I got a Bluetooth transmitter and mouse thrown in, all for $1250. This is a sweet little rig! It multitasks better than any laptop I've used. The other night, out of boredom, I tried to get it to latch up by burning a DVD, copying a GB of digital images off of a USB reader through the laptop to an external USB HD, reading a big heart rate monitor file off of my Polar watch through its USB/IR reader, playing itunes and surfing the web all at once. No problema, although the fan was running pretty hard. It was like having an information vortex right there at my fingertips!

Pay no attention to that remark, I said that when I was pissed @ somebody, I did it to get them to shut up =/. I've used lots of Dual-Core and SMP systems to know more CPU's = Fun Fun Fun!

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Quote :

FYI... i just bought this whore of a PSU.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817194004

/me luvs enermax. ;-)

I'll let you know how it turns out... if you'd like.

-mpjesse

That's the same PS I've been using. Rock solid so far, no problem powering 4 HDs, 2 ODs, etc., but I have not done SLI yet. Hopefully after the tax return arrives...

Reply to clue69less

tchiwam,

Your idea is nice however you are forcing the procs to NOT use the L anything cache.

Cache infers that you are placing data OFTEN used in a quick response area. Constantly changing the data causes the cache to NOT be used. I guess the fetch of A B and K would be cache dependent but those would more than likely be a very quick L1 fetch. Really not going to stress the arch in that manner. You have to find what triggers cause the transition from L1 to L2 then to L3 if available and finally to System Memory. Once you know the triggers you could write something that forces those triggers.

The hard part would be making those trigger events be "as similar" as possible between procs.

You would also have to TRACK you cache hit ratios to identify you are indeed stressing the full arch.

And to do a complete stress you would have to have an idea to have a non-cache event as well thrown into the mix.

Reply to Ches111

Quote :

tchiwam,

Your idea is nice however you are forcing the procs to NOT use the L anything cache.

Cache infers that you are placing data OFTEN used in a quick response area. Constantly changing the data causes the cache to NOT be used. I guess the fetch of A B and K would be cache dependent but those would more than likely be a very quick L1 fetch. Really not going to stress the arch in that manner. You have to find what triggers cause the transition from L1 to L2 then to L3 if available and finally to System Memory. Once you know the triggers you could write something that forces those triggers.

The hard part would be making those trigger events be "as similar" as possible between procs.

You would also have to TRACK you cache hit ratios to identify you are indeed stressing the full arch.

And to do a complete stress you would have to have an idea to have a non-cache event as well thrown into the mix.

Yes, the idea here is simple really we want to process as much data as possible, most of it will come from ethernet port , hard disk, ... and will go out to display, hard disk, ethernet or ...

The idea here is to know how many ops are needed to stuffs the processor, and how much is needed to stuff the Memory bandwidth. Once you know that ratio for every memory(L1, L2, memory) and storage (HD), you can start evaluating how much stuff can be reused in the caches. Messaging between processor can also be tested in a similar way but I usually try to make my code wihtout mutex, so that reading is from a constant source for everyone and writing is not dependent on the previous action. It is not easy and require quite acrobatic math.

Ultimately every thing comes from outside the computer and goes outside the computer, the wall clock is the thing we care about. Unless you really like to trow everything to /dev/null.

One thing I forgot to mention, when you grow the dataset, repeat the action as many time as possible so that the data is reused. sorry my bad.

Reply to tchiwam

Update. Refer to 1st post for changes.

Look for any errors please, I want to make sure all information I added and that has been there for awhile is correct. Thank you.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Update. Look to first post for changes.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Update. Refer to 1st post for changes.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Quote :

Last edited by MadModMike on Thu Mar 23, 2006 8:35 pm; edited 30 times in total

Can't you get it right the FIRST TIME?!?

J/K

Lookin great man!

so is the canadian dudes avatar, just spins to fast.

marqaq_: set it to show a new layer every .2 seconds, not .1 (if you actaully made it)

Reply to crizazykid2

Update. Refer to 1st post for changes.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Update. Refer to 1st post for changes.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

bump ehehhehe.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Nice one Mike I liked it.....I liked it......I really liked it a lot..... I'm totally agreed with you that lesser cache is better in gaming...

So MODS what are you waiting for..............Make this a STICKY

Reply to ShortyNumber45

Quote :

Nice one Mike I liked it.....I liked it......I really liked it a lot..... I'm totally agreed with you that lesser cache is better in gaming...

So MODS what are you waiting for..............Make this a STICKY

It's more fun to constantly bump .

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

We gots da update! Refer to first post for zee changes.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Update. Refer to 1st post for changes.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

aight like many others before me - this is THE sh*t! Great job M3! Total ownage hahah.

btw..im gettin a new rig. bt have trouble choosin the processor. basically im on a tight budget. in regards to lesser cache being better, im considering either a 3200+ or 3500+. The price gap aint nothin big, itz rather fractional. Not intending to overclock. I'd b doing some graphics work (photoshop, flash animation etc), plenty of 3d design & abit of animation (poser, 3dsmax, blender, maya etc), AND loads of gaming. Sounds like i need the fx60 :lol: If only money grew on my meat

Bt then again, do u recommend the bigger 1mb cached 3700+ when the element of graphic design is also a factor? I'v also noticed u either use 3200 or 3700 as reference/recommendation, leaving the in-between 3500. Tht leads me to think of the 3500+ as an outcast? :|

Reply to tridart

Quote :

aight like many others before me - this is THE sh*t! Great job M3! Total ownage hahah.

btw..im gettin a new rig. bt have trouble choosin the processor. basically im on a tight budget. in regards to lesser cache being better, im considering either a 3200+ or 3500+. The price gap aint nothin big, itz rather fractional. Not intending to overclock. I'd b doing some graphics work (photoshop, flash animation etc), plenty of 3d design & abit of animation (poser, 3dsmax, blender, maya etc), AND loads of gaming. Sounds like i need the fx60 :lol: If only money grew on my meat

Bt then again, do u recommend the bigger 1mb cached 3700+ when the element of graphic design is also a factor? I'v also noticed u either use 3200 or 3700 as reference/recommendation, leaving the in-between 3500. Tht leads me to think of the 3500+ as an outcast? :|

For the programs you're noting on, you look like you're going to do a bit of Multi-Tasking and use applications that are Multi-Threaded, so I would recommend the AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual-Core, it's basically 2 3200+'s and it's reasonably priced.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Mike, this is a very well written document. Thanks for taking the time to develop this resource that is of professional, encyclopedia-like, quality.

Reply to TechnologyCoordinator

Indeed, this is well done.

Reply to iterations

I did at FIRST agree with this thread as it was presented in a non-biased manner. It has moved far from that after many updates to the first post.

Re-reading the first post after the last few updates has changed my opinion of this thread. It is now a very biased piece that needs review by the originator if he TRULY intends to shed light on his topic. The references on AM2 and Conroe are nothing more than speculation on his part.

Mike if you want credibility in any forum then providing facts that support your statements greatly helps. When you first released this I actually agreed with your content (but then again who am I). Problem is it has quickly turned into a platform for you to PREACH AMD.

I guess what I am saying is that if your facts remain unbiased, when you suggest AMD because of the X reasons then it would make a whole lot of sense. It is then based on factual information and not a rant.

Just so you know I agree, that in the current gen of procs the X2/Opterons can not be beaten. But the future remains to be seen and maybe the Conroe will make strides maybe not. Maybe AM2 will make strides as well. Maybe not.

Reply to Ches111

Also,

For this to be the Ultimate Guide it would have to accurately reflect the capabilities of the Hardware that is reviewed.

Speaking of review.... Is this information compiled from reviewing the hardware or reviewing an AMD site?

Are your suggestions for hardware based upon actually having used the equipment? Or does it reflect your reading these and other forums?

Just curious as to where this Ultimate Information is coming from....

Also could you post your credentials? Who am I/We receiving this information from? A college grad? A chip designer? A guy on the street? A guy with 10+ years of hardcore usage of each of these types of hardware?

I think I would be more likely to read the THG CPU charts and gather my information from people who have the JOB to review hardware (actual hardware that they have had in house). From people who have provided a Baseline of testing for which they then can discern actual changes in performance based upon the repeatable testing characteristics.

YOU WANT THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO CPU HARDWARE STAY RIGHT HERE AND REVIEW THE CPU CHARTS YOURSELF. They still may not be perfect but they will give you an UNBIASED testing environment with a Known Baseline.

Reply to Ches111

having read the post for the first time, i can honestly say i did not spot any particular pro-amd or pro-intel statement. he shed light on all aspects equally & mostly in a neutral manner. i mean hey..itz gd tht first-time readers wont get any "x-is-better-than-y" idea right? rather itz for them to draw a conclusion frm the whole analysis. i dont think mike wants to feed others. n personally i find both intel n amd r gd, bt since iv used intel, i would try amd. itz somethin new. mayb i'd get an intel nxt time. pros n cons r everywhere in everything.

thx mike. i'v given it a thot..it seems like i multitask alot bt it nvr crossed my mind. i'd save up abit more for a dual core then.

Reply to tridart

Quote :

having read the post for the first time, i can honestly say i did not spot any particular pro-amd or pro-intel statement. he shed light on all aspects equally & mostly in a neutral manner. i mean hey..itz gd tht first-time readers wont get any "x-is-better-than-y" idea right? rather itz for them to draw a conclusion frm the whole analysis. i dont think mike wants to feed others. n personally i find both intel n amd r gd, bt since iv used intel, i would try amd. itz somethin new. mayb i'd get an intel nxt time. pros n cons r everywhere in everything.

thx mike. i'v given it a thot..it seems like i multitask alot bt it nvr crossed my mind. i'd save up abit more for a dual core then.

Don't mind Ches, I think he's either PMSing or is Jealous that my Guide pwns him . (hehehehe, my juvenileness coming out ).

Yea, Dual-Core will be the best bet for you, that 3800+ X2 Dual-Core will suit you just fine, the one I have is pretty darned snappy.

@Ches: I've had a chance to use quite a bit of hardware in my life, but by no means have I used ALL hardware, but as you'll notice, I have not said specific hardware, the only specifics I have noted on are CPU's, in which I have used so many it becomes mind boggling really...Most of my information is taken from a general concensous from myself, my friends, colleagues, work associates, past teachers, and from the communities of Forums and abroad the Internet, but by no means am I making anything up or putting my Opinion on this, but if you could please point out specific parts in the thread where I was BIASED, I will be happy to accomodate you.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

First read today Mike. Maybe the mods are waiting for my approval...being as I'm so cool and stuff (kidding of course)...so MODS, MAKE IT STICKEY.

Anyway, just a couple of things. Maybe it has been brought up before, sorry I did not desire to read the other 8 pages of comments--but you recommended a S939 CPU, and not a 754 CPU. Granted I see the point you have with it, as Athlon 64's are best on the s939 and therefore the S939 has the best Athlon64 CPU but...well if not on the stickey, what S754 CPU would you say is best bang for the buck?

Thing 2: I have a Socket A mobo that died recently, and am looking to find a S462 mobo to fit that still working Athlon XP 2600+ CPU and 512MB PC2100 RAM. Got a PSU and system case as well as an old GeForce 4 4200Ti AGP card, so why not have an extra system just for kicks?

Point: Socket 462/A systems are still being made, therefore IMO they might need at least brief mention in the article. New Northwood CPU core's also being sold (though not for long) in mfr. systems, and could use some other mention.

OK I lied. Thing 3: Consider adding the number to the Opteron chart (e.g., Opti 165 2.0GHz...or is it 2.2GHz? Well this is exactly why the numbers might help lol) as most ads and online stores advertise the numbers then show the GHz in the cluttered specs. section.

Thanks for reading, you have a long post so I understand if you do not put any of my suggestions into action. Heck, you cannot detail everything about every processor on this one thread--that'd be a book!

Reply to bourgeoisdude

Quote :

First read today Mike. Maybe the mods are waiting for my approval...being as I'm so cool and stuff (kidding of course)...so MODS, MAKE IT STICKEY.

Anyway, just a couple of things. Maybe it has been brought up before, sorry I did not desire to read the other 8 pages of comments--but you recommended a S939 CPU, and not a 754 CPU. Granted I see the point you have with it, as Athlon 64's are best on the s939 and therefore the S939 has the best Athlon64 CPU but...well if not on the stickey, what S754 CPU would you say is best bang for the buck?

Thing 2: I have a Socket A mobo that died recently, and am looking to find a S462 mobo to fit that still working Athlon XP 2600+ CPU and 512MB PC2100 RAM. Got a PSU and system case as well as an old GeForce 4 4200Ti AGP card, so why not have an extra system just for kicks?

Point: Socket 462/A systems are still being made, therefore IMO they might need at least brief mention in the article. New Northwood CPU core's also being sold (though not for long) in mfr. systems, and could use some other mention.

OK I lied. Thing 3: Consider adding the number to the Opteron chart (e.g., Opti 165 2.0GHz...or is it 2.2GHz? Well this is exactly why the numbers might help lol) as most ads and online stores advertise the numbers then show the GHz in the cluttered specs. section.

Thanks for reading, you have a long post so I understand if you do not put any of my suggestions into action. Heck, you cannot detail everything about every processor on this one thread--that'd be a book!

Great points, thanks for the tips. To answer your questions:

1. The best Bang-For-Buck s754 CPU is: 3000+ Venice - It's $120, uses the newest Venice Core, 90nm, and will overclock very nicely

2. Best sA board: Deez Wun! - That's about the best sA you can buy today for reasonable price

3. I will make an update in a little while, I have some things to take care of first but rest assure some more great info shall be added!

BTW: I did write a book, it hasn't gotten published (never tried) and only a select few friends have read it. It's titled "My 2 Cents" and covers mostly my Life and gives Advice.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

Quote :

Excerpt:
2. Best sA board: Deez Wun! - That's about the best sA you can buy today for reasonable price

OK I learned something. I thought Socket A only had up to 333MHz FSB systems--where have I been? Anyways, don't put info this old in the thread, but...my Athlon 2600+ is 266MHz FSB...that board wouldn't work. Again 266FSB is too old to mention on your "stickey-to-be", but just telling you FYI. I'll find a board on newegg that works with that old cpu. There's simply too much of a PC already built to not finish by buying the mobo and putting the ancient parts together.

Funny and interesting side note (a little off topic)--the mobo I had I bought in 2001 supported FSB 200 and 266 processors, as well as SDRAM AND DDR slots. It came with a 700MHz Duron CPU @200FSB. I upgraded to an Athlon 1.2GHz T-bird cpu in 2003. Moved from crappy 256MB PC100 RAM to 512MB PC133 SDRAM.

Finally upgraded from Windows 98SE to Windows 2000. In early 2005, upgraded my GeForce4 MX420 PCI gfx card to GeForce 4 Ti4200 AGP card, and then upgraded to the Antec PSU listed in my sig., replaced SDRAM with 512MB PC2100 RAM, and bought the Athlon 2600+ CPU at the same time. BIG PERFORMANCE JUMP.

I later bought that GeForce 6600 in my sig. and it had some issue with artifacts. I found out it was related to the old chipset on my mobo rather than the card, so I bought the ASROCK board, the ram, and the cpu listed in my sig. so I could move later to a PCI-express video card in the future. My new rig is here.

So I have a new case with a 430Watt Antec Neo PSU running my old system board, memory, and video card--and it goes out. Story of my life.

I look back now and realize--OMFG, that old sucky ECS K7S5A mobo lasted me 5 and a half years!!! Look at what I was able to go to from practically nothing--I had a PCI video card a Duron 700MHz CPU with PC100 SDRAM, and on the same platform was able to go to an Athlon XP 2600+ with a GeForce 4200Ti and 512MB PC2100 RAM. Socket A, in retrospect, was arguably the longest-lasting cpu platform ever. What a legacy!

LONG LIVE SOCKET A!

Reply to bourgeoisdude

Major update, check it out, see if anything is wrong or you wish to add your 2 cents to the fray, thanks.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

Reply to MadModMike

The Ultimate Hardware Guide [Last Update: 4-14-06] - Page 4

Forum CPU & Components : CPUs - The Ultimate Hardware Guide [Last Update: 4-14-06]

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