[diceman111]

INTEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well wasent that one of the more informative posts

[Bob-san]

Intel; they're pushing down AMD prices and pushing on the entire market with a new generation of chips. Clock-for-clock Core 2 Duo is definately the best; compared to anything as of yet C2D owns em all. It takes a Athlon X2 6000+ (90nm, 2x1mb cache, 3.0ghz) which now costs $240 to beat a Core 2 Duo E6600 (65nm, 4mb shared cache, 2.4ghz) which now costs $235 by a thin margin (1-5%). True the AMD is good, but it is basically the same as a late-generation P4; it had to be overclock in-factory to get any type of preformance out of it. You can't push that AMD AthX2 6000+ any further than about 3.3ghz stable (10%), compared to releasing more of Conroe's potential above 3.6ghz (50+%). You'll need better cooling, but it will be worth it. Even on stock, a E6600 can go to about 3.2ghz. The cooler is crappy though an inexpensive hsf ($30) will do the trick and put you well beyond that.

[Wobble73]

I used to like Intel because they had blue men in their adverts........................


now their ads look exactly like an Ipod commercial.

[Nuke]

you cant really fanboi a tech product, becaues its often a tug a war. you just have to go with the best thats available at the time. there are countless reviews and benchmarks out on the net to help you figure out whats better. the way i see it, if you spend $400 on a processor every 2 years, you get an upgrade thats faster than what you bought before. by lifting the bar a little, i expect to get a good 3 years out of what im starting to piece together. and if in 2 years my rigs alittle slow, il just drop in a second 8800gts

[Backslash]

Agreed... I like rooting for the underdog because it keeps the big guys 'honest', price-wise.  But I also know that if the empire topples, the underdog becomes the dictator and then things are no better than before. Man, back when Nvidia bought 3dfx I was flabbergasted... boy I'm glad ATI entered the picture to keep things competitive.  Now what we need is a true competitor to Creative for sound cards (with actually decent drivers for once ) unless there's a competitor already I've overlooked?

I'd like to hear some thoughts about cache size!
The nicer Athlon X2s have 2x1MB cache while the budget ones are 2x512KB.  The nicer Core 2 Duos have 4MB cache while the budget ones have 2MB.  How big a difference does it make?  I mean, in theory, if the rest of the specs were the same, how big of a performance boost is there with twice the cache?  Or maybe I gotta wait until the Core 6320/6420 for real proof?

I'm sort of in the market for an upgrade but I've been holding off since, heh, November, because the better and/or cheaper stuff keeps being 'just on the horizon'   Boy the recent price cuts on both sides are making things tempting...

[Cyker]

Nuke: Except that there will probably be a GF9600 which will be cheaper than an 8800GTS and faster than two SLI'd 8800GTS   (My friend planned something similar with a pair of GF6600GTs back in the day; Ended up buying a 7600 instead because it was actually a lot faster than two 6600s, and cheaper after he eBay'd the two 6600s! )


Cache sizes?

Hmm, well, back in the day, 512KB was considered the optimum - With cache, a little bit makes a big difference, but the speed increase you get gets less and less the more cache you add in (Say 8KB gives you a 50% increase - 16KB is 75%, 32KB is 87% etc.), but costs considerably more.

Because so many commercial programmers can't code worth a damn these days (Bloody RAD languages!), and SRAM has dropped in price a bit, that issue isn't so pronounced. Additionally, heavy multi-tasking does benefit a lot from large caches.

At the end of the day, Bigger Is Better (Unless you're into extreme overclocking; Large caches hamper that a lot), but won't necessarily bring massive performance boosts. I wouldn't use cache sizes as a major feature to base a purchase on, but it's certainly a noteworthy plus.

[Bob-san]

Agreed... I like rooting for the underdog because it keeps the big guys 'honest', price-wise.  But I also know that if the empire topples, the underdog becomes the dictator and then things are no better than before. Man, back when Nvidia bought 3dfx I was flabbergasted... boy I'm glad ATI entered the picture to keep things competitive.  Now what we need is a true competitor to Creative for sound cards (with actually decent drivers for once ) unless there's a competitor already I've overlooked?

I'd like to hear some thoughts about cache size!
The nicer Athlon X2s have 2x1MB cache while the budget ones are 2x512KB.  The nicer Core 2 Duos have 4MB cache while the budget ones have 2MB.  How big a difference does it make?  I mean, in theory, if the rest of the specs were the same, how big of a performance boost is there with twice the cache?  Or maybe I gotta wait until the Core 6320/6420 for real proof?

I'm sort of in the market for an upgrade but I've been holding off since, heh, November, because the better and/or cheaper stuff keeps being 'just on the horizon'   Boy the recent price cuts on both sides are making things tempting...

About the 2mb vs 4mb cache thing...

You did realize following product profile for Intel for budget stuff

E4300 (2mb allendale)
E4400 (2mb allendale)
E6300 (2mb allendale)
E6320 (4mb conroe)
E6400 (2mb allendale)
E6420 (4mb conroe)

The E6x20 are $1 more than then E6x00's; a good investment. 0.5% more money for a 2%-5% preformance increase.

[MP-Ryan]

I'm not terribly particular - however, my primary computer is still running an overclocked AMD Athlon Thunderbird processor (1.33 Ghz).  Not only was it much cheaper than the best Intel could offer at the time I bought it,  I'm still using it 6 years after its original purchase.  It doesn't play all the newest games, but it certainly kept up with newer applications much better than the Intel P3/P4 equivalents available at the time.

The main reason I haven't upgraded this rig is because I cannot get a better processor/motherboard/RAM configuration that's cheap.  I'd love to upgrade to an early P4 variant, but this system kicks the crap out of them.

[Nuke]

Nuke: Except that there will probably be a GF9600 which will be cheaper than an 8800GTS and faster than two SLI'd 8800GTS   (My friend planned something similar with a pair of GF6600GTs back in the day; Ended up buying a 7600 instead because it was actually a lot faster than two 6600s, and cheaper after he eBay'd the two 6600s! )

thats a good thought, but then again the ability to run 4 monitors is another feature i want for some serious flight simming. not nessicarily be using it for sli primarily, but its a feature i can enable in games without multi monitor support for  a small amount of added performance boost

[Backslash]

About the 2mb vs 4mb cache thing...

You did realize following product profile for Intel for budget stuff

E4300 (2mb allendale)
E4400 (2mb allendale)
E6300 (2mb allendale)
E6320 (4mb conroe)
E6400 (2mb allendale)
E6420 (4mb conroe)

The E6x20 are $1 more than then E6x00's; a good investment. 0.5% more money for a 2%-5% preformance increase.

I did, but hadn't realized the 6x20s were already out!  Or that cheap of a difference.  Excellent.

I had been thinking about a E4300 with some crazy overclocking (according to Anandtech, it is surprisingly capable), but if cache made a huge difference I'd go for the 6320.  Just don't want to end up with something like the Celeron was.

[m]

Intel; they're pushing down AMD prices and pushing on the entire market with a new generation of chips. Clock-for-clock Core 2 Duo is definately the best; compared to anything as of yet C2D owns em all. It takes a Athlon X2 6000+ (90nm, 2x1mb cache, 3.0ghz) which now costs $240 to beat a Core 2 Duo E6600 (65nm, 4mb shared cache, 2.4ghz) which now costs $235 by a thin margin (1-5%). True the AMD is good, but it is basically the same as a late-generation P4; it had to be overclock in-factory to get any type of preformance out of it. You can't push that AMD AthX2 6000+ any further than about 3.3ghz stable (10%), compared to releasing more of Conroe's potential above 3.6ghz (50+%). You'll need better cooling, but it will be worth it. Even on stock, a E6600 can go to about 3.2ghz. The cooler is crappy though an inexpensive hsf ($30) will do the trick and put you well beyond that.

Agreed.

Also check these out:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1996946,00.asp
http://techreport.com/reviews/2007q1/cpus/index.x?pg=14
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2vaNeaWQoHI

-m

[Hades]

GET INTEL!!!!! I have a laptop (Compaq Presario C302NR) With intel and i works perfect.

[Rand al Thor]

Intel are certainly dominating now, and deservedly so this time. But as Fury mentioned already it took AMD giving them a bloody nose to shock them into some action instead of just cranking out a 'new' processor generation every 2 years or so to capitalise on their monopoly. What else could you call the P3? There's a reason it disappeared so quickly; because it was a glorified P2 and had no hope to compete with Athlons of any generation. The Core Duos are only around today thanks to AMD making Intel sweat a little.

It must still be very much a make or break situation for AMD though. I mean, they've got how much of the market share? 5%? They've done an amazing job so far and earned my recent upgrade buy of a Athlon 64 FX-60 (I'm stuck with S939). It's still pretty sweet.

[IceFire]

AMD has about 40% marketshare in the server market last time I heard a number branded about.  Not sure if thats accurate or marketing figures but I'll take it as being that AMD has a bit more than 1/3rd of the total server market. Thats a good chunk of chips there.  Not sure what it is in the consumer realm....its higher than before but still not anywhere close to the Intel juggernaught.  What I do want to see is AMD continue on.  Their presence and well engineered chips have put Intel into the squeeze, brought prices down and performance up.  I wish we had an OS market that was like the CPU market.

With all of the ass kicking that Core 2 has been doing right now...I'm very interested to actually see the K10 in action in some real benchmarks.  Its apparently really solid performance and allot better than the current gen of Core 2 (probably a head to head with the next gen of Core processors) if the rumors are anything to go by.  I'll be considering either a Core 2 of some sort or the AMD K10 Agena core probably when it comes time.

[Fury]

Agena/Barcelona generation chips aren't K10, officially. AMD dropped the naming convention as far as I know, the last officially branded K-series was K8. Both K8L and K10 are unofficial codenames, probably originally brought up by the Inquirer.

My next computer I build will more than likely have AMD CPU and GPU. I want to help the underdog to stay in the race. Call it a calculated investment to keep the competition kicking.

[IceFire]

AMD employees started saying K10 so thats good enough for me...but maybe the Inquirer started it ...thats a distinct possibility

[Fury]

Care to point to a source? Saying is different from being written in official documents though.

[Bob-san]

About the 2mb vs 4mb cache thing...

You did realize following product profile for Intel for budget stuff

E4300 (2mb allendale)
E4400 (2mb allendale)
E6300 (2mb allendale)
E6320 (4mb conroe)
E6400 (2mb allendale)
E6420 (4mb conroe)

The E6x20 are $1 more than then E6x00's; a good investment. 0.5% more money for a 2%-5% preformance increase.

I did, but hadn't realized the 6x20s were already out!  Or that cheap of a difference.  Excellent.

I had been thinking about a E4300 with some crazy overclocking (according to Anandtech, it is surprisingly capable), but if cache made a huge difference I'd go for the 6320.  Just don't want to end up with something like the Celeron was.

Check the new pricing scale; I'll post all of Intel's current portfolio for everything LGA775, by price, for the desktop/s775 server segment. These are retail unless otherwise noted:

Celeron D (Single Core, Netburst Arch):
331 - Prescott, 2.66ghz, $36
336 - Prescott, 2.80ghz, $39
347 - Cedar Mill, 3.06ghz, $53
352 - Cedar Mill, 3.20ghz, $57
360 - Cedar Mill, 3.46ghz, $66

Pentium 4 (Single Core, HT, Netburst Arch):
631 - Cedar Mill, 3.00ghz, $71
630 - Prescott, 3.00ghz, $72
641 - Cedar Mill, 3.20ghz, $75
640 - Prescott, 3.20ghz, $76
650 - Prescott, 3.40ghz, $90

Pentium D 8xx (Dual Core, Netburst Arch):
805 - Smithfield, 2.66ghz, $65 OEM
820 - Smithfield, 2.80ghz, $88

Pentium D 9xx (Dual Core, Netburst Arch):
915 - Presler, 2.80ghz, $85
925 - Presler, 3.00ghz, $86
935 - Presler, 3.20ghz, $96
940 - Presler, 3.40ghz, $159
945 - Presler, 3.40ghz, $164
950 - Presler, 3.40ghz, $250

Core 2 Duo (Dual Core, Core Arch):
E4300 - Allendale, 1.80ghz, $125
E4400 - Allendale, 2.00ghz, $145
E6320 - Conroe, 1.86ghz, $173
E6300 - Allendale, 1.86ghz, $174
E6400 - Allendale, 2.13ghz, $193
E6420 - Conroe, 2.13ghz, $197
E6600 - Conroe, 2.40ghz, $235
E6700 - Conroe, 2.66ghz, $339

Core 2 Quad (Quad Core, Core Arch):
Q6600 - Kentsfield, 2.40ghz, $549

Core 2 Extreme (Dual or Quad Core, Core Arch, Unlocked Multipliers):
QX6700 - Kentsfield XE, 2.66ghz, $970
X6800 - Conroe XE, 2.93ghz, $985

Xeon (Dual Core, Core Arch):
3040 - Conroe (2mb), 1.86ghz, $190
3050 - Conroe (2mb), 2.13ghz, $235
3060 - Conroe, 2.40ghz, $249
3070 - Conroe, 2.66ghz, $349

Its a large portfolio. Spans from $36 to $985.

[m]

I will agree that AMD is necessary for competition's sake... After all, Intel needs to kick someone's butt and if they didn't have AMD it would be consumers.

-m

[IceFire]

Care to point to a source? Saying is different from being written in official documents though.

Can't find the interview anymore...

In reading all the stuff that came out today most of them are still talking about "Barcelona" which is semi-inaccurate in my view as thats just the Opteron server part that they are talking about.  Agena is what the home user would really be interested in having.