Intel P4 vs AMD

Wow, that's comprehensive. And the article about HDCP and all that is right as far as I'm aware, so I'll need to (like many others) get a component to circumvent the copy protection, however underhand that may be.
As for vista, I see 2GB as a 'recommended' level and 4GB as a high performance level. 1GB with Vista is like running XP with 384MB RAM now I would say. 512MB is like XP with 192MB, the bare minimum, anything less and you're in trouble. Don't forget - 64bit kernel means TWICE the RAM for the SAME applications.
Given Vista itself will use more RAM itself, let's see.
This laptop has 256MB RAM but integrated graphics (so 192 really). It's using 341MB of RAM, well over the storage limit, and thus paging back and forth, slow with a Celeron 1400. Let's say with Vista there's a 150MB overhead on XP. So with Vista, merely runing Two AV programs, Messenger, and 4 internet explorer windows, the same system running VIsta would be using 830MB of RAM. This kind of explains why you'd be better off with at least 1GB in Vista. And if, by some incredible moment of madness you have a 256MB Turbocache graphics card, then in gaming if you had 1GB, you'd be down to 800MB of RAM, again below what Vista would use just for these basic applications!!!!!
Back to the topic of CPUs, the P4/5 would have new names as I mentioned, Blackwood, dempsey (although I think that's a Xeon, there are too many to remember accurately) and so forth. And come 6 years time, Intel aim to be down to 22nm. Could this be the beginning of the end for huge heatsinks, or just the end of the beginning? After all, despite a mere 30-40% increase in clock speeds in 3 years for intel, we've gone from discreet aluminium blocks with 60mm fans on them to gigantic alien-shaped turbines with water coolers, vapour compressors and heatpipes attached making some hideous neon-illuminated monstrosity just to keep a core of a similar clock speed in check. Then again, this is mostly due to the prescott core isn't it? So when the Prescott is done away with, and it's high-efficiency 90 and 65nm replacements are brought in, we might see some less ridiculous heatsinks needed for performance, and they will return to their primary role - style.

 

Those are some good scores Brobear.
You may notice you get an extra 30% on the arithmetic and media benchmarks for having HT. Your actual mileage may vary.

Heres me:

 

Donald
I intentionally left dual core CPUs out of the comparison, because they are so obviously superior to the single core systems. OCed dual cores are in a class of their own. LOL With those I need to have you and Sophocles supplying benches. However I did include the top end single core FX processors from AMD in the comparison. Price wasn't the factor as the FX 55 sells for near $800 and the FX 57 about $1,000. What the comparisons show me is that Intel had a good processor going a few years back and for some reason started manufacturing a less effecient one. I see the Prescotts with the same features as the Northwood, hyperthreading and dual channel memory support, and the addition of more cache memory and the addition of SSE3 multimedia instructions, along with slightly higher clockspeeds at stock configurations. I don't remember seeing a Northwood at 3.8GHz. With P4s running at the same clockspeeds (with stock configurations), the Northwoods still outperform the Prescotts. Also, the single core AMDs don't have much, if anything, on the older Northwoods as fare as benchmark performance goes; especially those that are supposed to be comparable performance and pricewise.

 

No, but an overclocked Venice 3500+ would bust up any prescott you could throw at it, I expect.

Edit: but don't go and open a dual core application with an 840 extreme edition to prove me wrong.

 

Brobear,

Here's my 3.0 prescott running at 3.40. As you can see, it's not quite as good as your new CPU at the same settings.
theonejrs

 

Most of us have already come to the conclusion that the Prescott isn't the best of Intel. It runs hot and is definitely not a good choice for an OC enthusiast. I'm not going to spend the bucks to find out, but I wonder what an OCed 3.4GHz Northwood would do; especially one of the better Northwoods. Here is one that should be superior to the one I purchased at StarMicro. http://www.starmicro.net/detail.aspx?ID=556 That's the Northwood P4 Extreme. I got the "el cheapo" version, #1032, you see the benches on here.
http://www.starmicro.net/detail.aspx?ID=543

Just for the sake of doing it, I ran a bench comparing my stock 3.4GHz Northwood system against the newer top end AMD and Pentium dual cores and the high end single core FX 57. The old CPU held it's own. Wonder if an up to date chipset would have improved the performance. I knew the high end AMD and P4 dual cores would eclipse the Northwood, but then they "smoked" the 3800+ X2 and the FX 57. Still, the Northwood was in the ballpark with the latter 2 mentioned (very close to the $1,000 single core FX 57 which benefits from on-die memory and a larger cache).
__________________________

 

Lol my computer's the second one down on your last graph, theonejrs, so you're still doing well. I, like brobear disregard comparisons against Dual cores though, they're not really relevant, only in the sense that they're better.

I notice that the intel chips achieve far better Whetstone results, are these mostly down to core speed? Because that's the trend I see with them, whereas Dhrystone seems to represent the specs as a whole.

 

One on one the Prescott always loses to a Northwood if all things are equal.


Since everyone is including the multimedia benchmark, there is mine.

 

Pure pwnage, of the highest order. That system is insane.

 

Sophocles is ahead this week. LOL I can almost hear the gears moving in The Donald's head... Gotta have more PC... LOL I'm not going to try to buy into this battle. Looks like you have one fine PC there Sophocles. Now for a shot of liquid nitrogen to see what it can really do, or just a little down to earth liquid cooling so it can run faster on an everyday basis.

 

Actually the the point I made with my benchmark was that for 300 dollars you can have nearly double your score. The Northwood was 269.

Also the encode times on a Venice core comes in substantially quicker. Sophocles is usually in the 80 minute range.

The only benchmarks where P4s did well is SSE2. Athlon 64s are optimized for SSE. Their SSE scores are normally as good as or better than their own SSE2 scores.

 

I dread to think. It would seem sophocles has himself sorted on the processor front for a fair while. If it's outperforming the top CPU now, think of how well it will do when all the benefits of having all those cores and 64-bit will really take off.

 

Right now I would get very little improvement from a more expensive AMD. Intel doesn't have any dual cores even near my capability except the overpriced Extreme editions.

 

overpriced is putting it lightly!

 

Brobear,
I noticed that the FPU scores were missing from your Arithmetic bench marks. Did you turn them off?

 

Me too.

 

6402 has a strong point.

What wasn't said is that over clocking dual cores requires a lot of shuffling between memory settings, HTT settings, and if you spend a bit more between clock multiplier settings. I was fortunate to have started with a very fast Venice core which really shook things up for me. I'm encoding most movies within the 1 hour mark. My slowest so far is 64 minutes and my fastest is 52 minutes.

If anyone is looking to purchase a dual core Opteron then my advice is go for the 165. There's a reasonable ceiling over clocking dual cores because the need for better cooling comes into play. The temperature fluctuation on dual cores are really interesting. On idle they can run into the low thirties but when called for dual threads at once they climb quickly to 49 to 54 degrees Celsius. I recommend the 165 because it costs about the same as the X2 3800, and it has 1 meg of cache per core and it will solidly over clock to around 2.65 on air cooling.

AMD just released its fastest commercial dual core for performance freaks, the FX60. The FX60 is a dual core toledo with a clock speed of 2.6 GHz and it comes at a whopping $1399. The Toledo core and the Denmark core are in my view, the same animal. So if you clock one of them up to the FX60 speeds, then it's an FX60. LOL

Make sure you have good quality memory.

 

64026402

"Me too"

The difference is that I'm running mine stable at that speed and with memory settings of 2.3.2.7 1T.

Your earlier post showed that your system was clocked to 2.61 Mhz which I believe is where you use it all of the time. Sisoft multimedia benchmarks can be benched at unstable speeds, just enough to get a screen shot

 

Donald

An additional $53 dollars for the processor and a bundle for the necessary components to build the PC. The point of the upgrade was to do it on the cheap, without being out the cost of a build. If I had neither, the AMD 3800 X2 would be a no brainer as the preferred system. As for the FPU setting, I didn't pay attention to it. Too many Bloody Caesars I guess. I was celebrating. LOL

As for the PCs exhibited by you and sophocles here, there is no comparing them to stock settings and definitely not single core processors, not even the best AMD has to offer.

 

I play with the settings regularly. I usually encode at 2.7 but drop to 2.6 for boot up and normal use. I suppose it doesn't make much difference. No doubt I'm running mine further out of spec than yours but it seems to take it like a man.
The 11x multiplier would be nice. I have to go asynchronous on the memory to keep the settings reasonable. But it doesn't slow the encode times.

When I get another x2 I will retire the 3800+ to sever duties at a more normal speed.

If I had a 175 I would probably go 2.9 for encodes. Other than movies I really don't need the extra speed. It's just fun.