CPU Thread

[Magister Lajciak]

The P4 was just a waste. It was slower (at the same clockspeed) than its predecessor pIII. It used more power. The Athlons easily let it bite the dust (?), having a significantly higher IPC. The Core2 architecture has an IPC (instructions per cycle) higher than the A64, making it absolutely superior to the P4. If it really is a 50% increase in performance is doubtable, but certainly not impossible in certain scenarios. Quake 4 actually does support multithreading, so it's not an ideal basis for comparing a single core P4 to a C2D. Take a Pentium D, for example, to compare it to a C2D.

 

 

Interesting - I had been under the impression that the P4 architecture was robust and merely had a problem with power usage/heat generation.

[angshuman]

The P4 was just a waste. It was slower (at the same clockspeed) than its predecessor pIII. It used more power. The Athlons easily let it bite the dust (?), having a significantly higher IPC. The Core2 architecture has an IPC (instructions per cycle) higher than the A64, making it absolutely superior to the P4. If it really is a 50% increase in performance is doubtable, but certainly not impossible in certain scenarios. Quake 4 actually does support multithreading, so it's not an ideal basis for comparing a single core P4 to a C2D. Take a Pentium D, for example, to compare it to a C2D.

 

 

Interesting - I had been under the impression that the P4 architecture was robust and merely had a problem with power usage/heat generation.

The P4 microarchitecture was designed to allow clock speeds to shoot through the roof at the expense of less work done per clock cycle (IPC). At the time it was introduced, it was probably a sound tradeoff (except at the *very* beginning... the clocks weren't high enough to trump the performance of the P3). But the engineers knew that as manufacturing tech improved, their new design would allow clock speeds to scale very well. And it did work. Don't forget that AMD's superiority only started emerging with the Athlon64. Before that, the P4 was doing just fine competing against (and often trumping) the Athlon XP.

 

By the time the Athlon64 came to life, the P4 design philosophy had begun to show diminishing returns. Manufacturing realized that pushing beyond 3GHz with the technology they had in those days led to massive heat, power and reliability issues. Another interesting problem was that pushing the processor's clock speed sky-high was leading to a huge disparity between processor and memory speeds, and Intel's lack of an integrated memory controller started to hurt more and more. They should have quit and changed tactics then instead of trying to milk it to 4GHz.

 

The P4 wasn't altogether a terrible idea. The designers just couldn't foresee the manufacturing constraints they would hit at the 3.8GHz region. On the other hand, the entire process probably gave them experience in handling high clock speeds, which would have come in handy with the C2D.

[Magister Lajciak]

The P4 was just a waste. It was slower (at the same clockspeed) than its predecessor pIII. It used more power. The Athlons easily let it bite the dust (?), having a significantly higher IPC. The Core2 architecture has an IPC (instructions per cycle) higher than the A64, making it absolutely superior to the P4. If it really is a 50% increase in performance is doubtable, but certainly not impossible in certain scenarios. Quake 4 actually does support multithreading, so it's not an ideal basis for comparing a single core P4 to a C2D. Take a Pentium D, for example, to compare it to a C2D.

 

 

Interesting - I had been under the impression that the P4 architecture was robust and merely had a problem with power usage/heat generation.

The P4 microarchitecture was designed to allow clock speeds to shoot through the roof at the expense of less work done per clock cycle (IPC). At the time it was introduced, it was probably a sound tradeoff (except at the *very* beginning... the clocks weren't high enough to trump the performance of the P3). But the engineers knew that as manufacturing tech improved, their new design would allow clock speeds to scale very well. And it did work. Don't forget that AMD's superiority only started emerging with the Athlon64. Before that, the P4 was doing just fine competing against (and often trumping) the Athlon XP.

 

By the time the Athlon64 came to life, the P4 design philosophy had begun to show diminishing returns. Manufacturing realized that pushing beyond 3GHz with the technology they had in those days led to massive heat, power and reliability issues. Another interesting problem was that pushing the processor's clock speed sky-high was leading to a huge disparity between processor and memory speeds, and Intel's lack of an integrated memory controller started to hurt more and more. They should have quit and changed tactics then instead of trying to milk it to 4GHz.

 

The P4 wasn't altogether a terrible idea. The designers just couldn't foresee the manufacturing constraints they would hit at the 3.8GHz region. On the other hand, the entire process probably gave them experience in handling high clock speeds, which would have come in handy with the C2D.

 

Thanks for the rundown on the P4. I have learned something new today.

[walkerguy]

I got a Intel Dual Core 1.60 GHz which sux but no $$$ to replace.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Duel Core or Core 2 Duo? A 1.6 Ghz Core 2 Duo is not that bad (I have a 1.4 Ghz C2D in my laptop* and can play things like Bloodlines and Half Life 2 Episode 2 at decent frame rates (on average I get between 40 and 60 FPS with everything except motion blur turned on when I do the Orange Box video stress test). A 2.0 Ghz would have been better, but that would have been another $130, and I didn't have a lot to spend at the time - although I guess I could always upgrade later, Dells seem relatively friendly to that.

 

 

*It does have a faster bus speed than the original C2Ds however, so that might be another thing to look at.

Edited March 7, 2008 by Deadly_Nightshade

[walkerguy]

Duel Core or Core 2 Duo? A 1.6 Ghz Core 2 Duo is not that bad (I have a 1.4 Ghz C2D in my laptop* and can play things like Bloodlines and Half Life 2 Episode 2 at decent frame rates (on average I get between 40 and 60 FPS with everything except motion blur turned on when I do the Orange Box video stress test). A 2.0 Ghz would have been better, but that would have been another $130, and I didn't have a lot to spend at the time - although I guess I could always upgrade later, Dells seem relatively friendly to that.

 

 

*It does have a faster bus speed than the original C2Ds however, so that might be another thing to look at.

 

Well sticker says Dual Core (no Duo). My control panel tells me the model is: T2060 ...if you're curious.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Ok, here is what I could find out about it:

Name: Pentium Dual Core T2060

Specs: 1.6Ghz/533Mhz fsb/1MB L2 Cache.

Execute Disable Bit

SpeedStep

Socket: M

 

It seems to be slightly less powerful than a Core 2 Duo, but more powerful than a Celeron chip - although it runs hotter than either of these. At first glance it seems like a T2050, but that has a 2MB cache - although some people speculate that the 2060 was a run of chips with one faulty L2 cache*. The problem with this theory is that Intel clearly lists the T2060 as a different family of processor, although it is based on the other's architecture, and the fact that the chips preform differently when running. It is also noteworthy that Intel does make a 2MB L2 cache version of the chip, although this is fairly rare.

 

 

*This screenshot shows a T2060 that has been identified as a T2050 with only 1MB of L2 Cache.

[samm]

Before that, the P4 was doing just fine competing against (and often trumping) the Athlon XP.

Your memory might be lacking here. My old 1.6GHz Athlon XP (called "1900+") easily beat 2GHz P4 in most if not all scenarios, might want to google it The A64 just made things worse for intel and opened AMDs appeal to a broader public. The same was the case with the original Athlon vs. PII. It was only the higher consumer awareness, illegal marketing tricks, on the tech side higher production output, clockspeed and now the Core architecture that saved intel's market share

[angshuman]

Before that, the P4 was doing just fine competing against (and often trumping) the Athlon XP.

Your memory might be lacking here. My old 1.6GHz Athlon XP (called "1900+") easily beat 2GHz P4 in most if not all scenarios, might want to google it The A64 just made things worse for intel and opened AMDs appeal to a broader public. The same was the case with the original Athlon vs. PII. It was only the higher consumer awareness, illegal marketing tricks, on the tech side higher production output, clockspeed and now the Core architecture that saved intel's market share

Lets leave business ethics out of the equation here

 

I won't dispute your claim here, the AthlonXP's were priced and numbered at launch to just about outperform the P4's at similar price points. As far as I can recall both vendors were more or less trading blows each time a new set of steppings/clock speeds were introduced (similar to the balanced NV vs. ATI war in the G70 timeframe), but given Intel's higher common-man reputation at that point, one could possibly end up paying a slight "Intel tax" at a given performance point. That's not the point I was trying to make. These were just pricing/marketing games. From a technical standpoint, the two vendors seemed to be equally capable of shipping a range of CPUs with comparable performance numbers in that era. Things changed with the Athlon64: Intel just weren't able to match the performance at the high end, and no amount of pricing tricks could make up for the large performance delta (especially in games) without incurring severe losses. Add to that the stellar chipset support for the A64's and the increasing public awareness. The P4 was much, much better off against the XP.

[samm]

Ah, now I see what you were getting at. I thought you meant the IPC, which was already higher for an Athlon XP What I meant to say is that now, it's the first time in many years that intel has the more efficient architecture both on the average amount of instructions executed per cycle and (if viewing the processor alone, and not an undervolted / ulv model) power used to do so.

But these technical details are probably not what most users are interested in, but rather in how fast their processor is for the money they invest, and intel currently leads there too, in most segments for the average consumer at least, even without the mentioned "intel tax" that was due in the times of Athlon XP vs. P4.

Edited March 8, 2008 by samm

[Bokishi]

Just ordered my e8400, I had to order it from a top secret website where they're selling them for $220 to certain people

[WITHTEETH]

Just ordered my e8400, I had to order it from a top secret website where they're selling them for $220 to certain people

Why aren't you getting the Yorkfield Boki? Its 4 cores! Do you believe its not practical, not enough programs utilize it?

[Bokishi]

I'm not in favor of the current quad core design, it being two dual cores slapped together. That and Crysis don't to junk with quads as of yet.

 

e8400's are still dual, but they can OC beyond 4ghz on AIR

 

that kind of speed should go nicely with my 3-way SLI setup that I'm getting by the end of the month

[Magister Lajciak]

I'm not in favor of the current quad core design, it being two dual cores slapped together.

 

It is not as good as a full-blown quad-core, but surely it is better than a single dual-core, no?

 

e8400's are still dual, but they can OC beyond 4ghz on AIR

 

Mmm, 4GHz dual core.

[angshuman]

It is not as good as a full-blown quad-core, but surely it is better than a single dual-core, no?

Yes. It's nearly as good as a "full-blown" quad core. The only time you'd see a huge performance deficiency is if you have a multithreaded application with massive sharing across the threads, and that too only if the sharing is happening across the two dual-core dies. I doubt you will find any real desktop application today or for the next couple of years that will be bottlenecked by this style of quad-core implementation, however aesthetically unappealing it may be.

 

That said, for gaming, I'd pick the E8400 too simply for its ridiculous clock speed.

[Magister Lajciak]

It is not as good as a full-blown quad-core, but surely it is better than a single dual-core, no?

Yes. It's nearly as good as a "full-blown" quad core. The only time you'd see a huge performance deficiency is if you have a multithreaded application with massive sharing across the threads, and that too only if the sharing is happening across the two dual-core dies. I doubt you will find any real desktop application today or for the next couple of years that will be bottlenecked by this style of quad-core implementation, however aesthetically unappealing it may be.

 

Thanks for the explanation of why this is the case.

 

That said, for gaming, I'd pick the E8400 too simply for its ridiculous clock speed.

 

I see. I did not know that the Quad-Core setup cannot attain the same clockspeed yet.

[walkerguy]

Ok, here is what I could find out about it:

Name: Pentium Dual Core T2060

Specs: 1.6Ghz/533Mhz fsb/1MB L2 Cache.

Execute Disable Bit

SpeedStep

Socket: M

 

It seems to be slightly less powerful than a Core 2 Duo, but more powerful than a Celeron chip - although it runs hotter than either of these. At first glance it seems like a T2050, but that has a 2MB cache - although some people speculate that the 2060 was a run of chips with one faulty L2 cache*. The problem with this theory is that Intel clearly lists the T2060 as a different family of processor, although it is based on the other's architecture, and the fact that the chips preform differently when running. It is also noteworthy that Intel does make a 2MB L2 cache version of the chip, although this is fairly rare.

 

 

*This screenshot shows a T2060 that has been identified as a T2050 with only 1MB of L2 Cache.

 

HaHaHa the screenshot looks like Windows 98! Interesting though... we can say I'm pretty average perhaps? Heres more data about my computer (click attatchment) Hope they are readable...

Edited March 10, 2008 by walkerguy

[Wistrik]

I'm watching not just processors but also motherboard chipsets and memory, for a hopefully nice computer when I'm done.

 

The Intel QX9450 at Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel...doc.aspx?i=3184

 

The Intel E8500 at Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel...doc.aspx?i=3251

 

Intel's X38 chipset findings: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3239

 

Memory and how tRD can provide better performance than a fast FSB: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3208&p=4

 

 

That's just a few things I've been keeping up with lately.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Interesting though... we can say I'm pretty average perhaps? Heres more data about my computer (click attatchment) Hope they are readable...

 

Yeah, they were easy to read - and your PC is, like you said, neither the worst nor the best out there. I googled the model number on the screenshot, and if you haven't already upgraded the system RAM you might want to consider doing that.

[walkerguy]

Cool, thanks for your research.

[WITHTEETH]

Interesting though... we can say I'm pretty average perhaps? Heres more data about my computer (click attatchment) Hope they are readable...

 

Yeah, they were easy to read - and your PC is, like you said, neither the worst nor the best out there. I googled the model number on the screenshot, and if you haven't already upgraded the system RAM you might want to consider doing that.

RAM would definitely help! 1 Gig in windows vista is like 512MB in XP. 2gigs and you will see a HUGE performance boost. Youll still see some performance boosts with 4 gigs also, if you are interested in multitasking, high resolutions and graphic intensive games.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Cool, thanks for your research.

 

No problem.

[Bokishi]

Just got my Wolfdale e8400 up to 4ghz. Very fast, Crysis runs better in some parts, faster than a 3ghz quad core ever will.

 

But I'm bummed that 4.2ghz errors up during stress test, and 4.4ghz won't boot up windows no matter what "safe" voltage I jack it on..

Edited March 15, 2008 by Bokishi

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Oh, we are all so disappointed that you can only have a 4Ghz and not a 4.4Ghz duel core...

[samm]

Don't tell me you don't own liquid nitrogen cooling?