Core i3 vs. Phenom II X3 "clock-4-clock"

[RaV[666]]

Here's an AMD 760G system running 23 W in idle. Even though it's a low end system, it shows what the dated 700-series is capable of. They're not all the same though. The 760G, 780G, 780GX are made in 55 nm, and the 770 and 790FX are made in 65 nm.

Your rig is probably using that much power because you're running a PII together with DDR2, a 4850 that uses quite much power in idle even though it's GDDR3, and the hottest running AMD chipset today AFAIK.

Thats good to know that amd has chipsets with low power consumption.
However, comparison still stands, 790FX is the top AMD chipset for phenom II ,and P55/H55 are the top chipsets for Intels clarks.
They used 285GTX here on both systems:

-
Here 280GTX


Update.- I read some other reviews, and from what i see when they dont use 790FX idle power consumption goes down, and whats weird from site to site results can be pretty much TOTALLY different, in one review idle of amd and intel are the same, on the other theres 40W of difference.Weird.Shutting up now.

[Mats]

However, comparison still stands, 790FX is the top AMD chipset for phenom II ,and P55/H55 are the top chipsets for Intels clarks.

The 55 series is not high end just because it's the most expensive one available for that CPU.

They should be compared to 785G or 790GX, which are newer, have integrated graphics and the same amount of PCIe x16 slots, 1.
Sure, the P55 lacks video ports, but that doesn't make much difference in real world.

[STaRGaZeR]

Remember me the next time i make a render to set it up in single thread, it will sure save me a lot of time, I must buy this awesome CPU, it will destroy even a i7 860!!!!

And of course, single thread is the way of the future, dont look at multithread benchs, they are evil!!!!

You can look at whatever you want, put then don't be surprised if your shinny new CPU is slow as molasses in everything except x264, 3D renders, etc. Not everything can be multithreaded, as programmers have been saying for ages. Better perfomance per core will also boost total perfomance in a multicore processor. In every situation, not only in those specifically coded for that

That's not a good example. If you want to nitpick then this is the one.

There are even better ones, I was just using the exact same bench to compare apples to apples

[KiSUAN]

The exact same bench means nothing as no one will render in singlethread when they have X number of real or theorical cores, period, guess you never made a render

How much time will opening or saving an excel with a i3 save you? How much time rendering or encoding in an X4 save you? Can I keep working normally while I save a single thread excel file with one core? Can I keep working normally while I have a 2 hours render in all the cores?

Numbers are pretty, but if you don’t understand them and give them the relevance they deserve that leads you to wrong conclusions as yours. Guess excel benchees are not that relevant after all...

Reality is that programs are going multithread, not single, reality is that money-performance in general this line doesn’t stand for the money, you are the one trying to nitpick the benches, clamming singlethread and saying no

[STaRGaZeR]

That's right. Now a dose of reality: you want to do X job with Y program. That program is not multithreaded and you can't multithread it. Go eat that.

As I said earlier, you can read the entire review, or reviews, or better yet, test it yourself. You'll see in single thread Intel owns, and in multi thread Intel owns too with the same number of cores. That's why AMD has its top quads priced so low, they need 4 cores running what, 400MHz faster, to be competitive with Intel's 2 core offerings, and that's why you want a quad Intel if you want multithread perfomance and you can afford it. You still fail to see that many, slow cores only work when the application is fully multithreaded, something that can't be done most of the time for a number of reasons. Less but faster cores will do the same work at a fraction of power consumption and will still give you great perfomance in those cases where you can't multithread your code, or want to run old code faster than previous generation. Not only that, now combine lots of cores with each one being fast as hell. I don't think I need to continue. If you work with 3D renders that's fine, but don't thing everything works as a 3D render because that's simply not true.

[ajaidev]

That's right. Now a dose of reality: you want to do X job with Y program. That program is not multithreaded and you can't multithread it. Go eat that.

As I said earlier, you can read the entire review, or reviews, or better yet, test it yourself. You'll see in single thread Intel owns, and in multi thread Intel owns too with the same number of cores. That's why AMD has its top quads priced so low, they need 4 cores running what, 400MHz faster, to be competitive with Intel's 2 core offerings, and that's why you want a quad Intel if you want multithread perfomance and you can afford it. You still fail to see that many, slow cores only work when the application is fully multithreaded, something that can't be done most of the time for a number of reasons. Less but faster cores will do the same work at a fraction of power consumption and will still give you great perfomance in those cases where you can't multithread your code, or want to run old code faster than previous generation. Not only that, now combine lots of cores with each one being fast as hell. I don't think I need to continue. If you work with 3D renders that's fine, but don't thing everything works as a 3D render because that's simply not true.

huh which dual core intels are you talking about?? Anyways if you say that dual core with higher speeds are the best, my Intel i7 980x will commit suicide.

As it stands the new i5 dual cores are not something Intel should be very proud of. They were targeted for process testing and improvement for you guessed it gulftowns and the other 32nm chips bite that.

As for the multi thread vs single thread i am quite sure that my i7 980X can not beat a i5 670 in a single threaded app does that mean Intel should charge much lower for the i7 980X then the i5 670, i think not.

AMD 955,925,630 and 620 are not half bad processors and make a lot of sense price to performance wise. Intel's i7 980X and 32nm QUAD "If if gets out" makes a lot of sense performance wise.

[KiSUAN]

Name a number of single thread programs that (using core i3 i5 or whatever CPU you want) will have an significant impact in my work time or PC use, then come an say "eat that", you argument holds no relevant point and you can cry all you want kid.

As I already say, you can read all the reviews you want but if you fail to see the relevance of each data you will never come to comprehend a thing, so no point in having a rational discussion with you Mr EAT THAT.

[Ghostbuster]

How much time will opening or saving an excel with a i3 save you? How much time rendering or encoding in an X4 save you? Can I keep working normally while I save a single thread excel file with one core? Can I keep working normally while I have a 2 hours render in all the cores?

Numbers are pretty, but if you don’t understand them and give them the relevance they deserve that leads you to wrong conclusions as yours. Guess excel benchees are not that relevant after all...

Reality is that programs are going multithread, not single, reality is that money-performance in general this line doesn’t stand for the money, you are the one trying to nitpick the benches, clamming singlethread and saying no

Reality is still a lot of programs are single threaded, especially business and productivity ones.

Excel not relevant? Guess who uses them the most? And many programs can't be multi-threaded because they need to wait on for the result of another calculation for the next calculation, and that's common on spreadsheets. Anyway who's talking about opening and saving a spreadsheet file? Let's say you have a stock analysis running on Excel, and you need real time statistics, graphs and possible future price predictions, all of which a broker or stock trader will depend to make buy/sell decisions on the fly (one step slower and may end up with some losses). Do you see why I nitpick on that chart?

[flippin_waffles]

So overall some people are willing to sacrifice multi threaded performance for some minor gains in a couple of the only remaining single threaded programs. And while the future is going multi threaded, it makes sense to settle for less performance while spending more money? Doesn't make alot of sense.

[initialised]

I'm still not sure about these CPUs for anything other than top-end netbook/net-top/low-end laptop and small form factor business/media. For gamers a true quad core C2Q, PhII or i5 750 is a better option now that DX11 is here.

I wish Intel hadn't messed up the naming. It should be that these are i3, 1156 quads are i5 and 1366 quads are i7. It confuses my customers and it confuses my boss! I really don't see the point of any of these except the 661 and 540 but I guess Intel had to have a 3.46GHz CPU to 'trump' AMD's 965 but they have the 975 @ 3.6GHz waiting for that.

I'm not convinced about HT, sure it works well on the i7s but on Gulftown the scaling is less than linear (i7 gets ~4.1x or better than linear) despite having 12 threads. HT never really worked well on single cores and seems to fall down for more than 4 cores.

The GPU is pretty pathetic. I got about 1.7k in 3DMark06. Mainstream gaming? Avatar Demo: 7-17fps, minimum settings on 1024x768 they don't come more mainstream than a blockbuster-must-see-movie-tie-in, I'd rather play it on a Wii or PS3. Very disappointed by that game, jungle just doesn't look right if it's not rendered by Crytek, hell Source can look better than this, the guns are crap, the monsters only attack you and only get hit by your bullets, your squadies have blue blood like the beasts (but wont die) and I'm playing on a PC, it's not a beat-em up give me a sodding first person view. If Cameroon had a hand in this and said "which videogame captures the essence of running from massively powerful alien beasts in a jungle setting" why wasn't he told Crysis? Anyway... this GPU does make ION irrelevant once they start strapping it to Atoms and beats AMD to fusion in the same way as the Core 2 Quad beat them to quad core CPUs with a multi chip module.

[haylui]

The problem is that x3 wont do 4.5ghz stable on air, not even close

i3 could do 4.5GHz on air stable with stock HSF?
anyway this is not the point.
99.9% who buy an i3 would not go to such an extreme because this is a budget chip
you don't want your cooler to cost more than your processor

[STaRGaZeR]

huh which dual core intels are you talking about?? Anyways if you say that dual core with higher speeds are the best, my Intel i7 980x will commit suicide.

That's not what I said, at all, I recommend you to read my post again. As for the dual core Intels, of course I'm talking about the i3 processors discussed in this thread. But you can extend this comment to the entire range as it's pretty much the same.

no point in having a rational discussion with you Mr EAT THAT.

I agree, but dunno who's the kid here. Welcome to the ignore list

So overall some people are willing to sacrifice multi threaded performance for some minor gains in a couple of the only remaining single threaded programs. And while the future is going multi threaded, it makes sense to settle for less performance while spending more money? Doesn't make alot of sense.

1.- Minor gains, no. More like big gains.
2.- Couple of the only remaining single threaded programs, another no. More like the crapload of programs, games, etc. still not multithreaded. The word still is funny here, because most of those apps will never be multithreaded.
3.- That future is still far, far away. PR guys have been saying this crap since the first dual core CPU, and look how we are today. I doubt we will get there in the desktop and mobile segments, but this is just my opinion.
4.- I'm not going to sacrifice anything, I'm going to have more cores, each one being the fastest at that. It seems you are one of those that fail to see that faster cores will give you faster multicore processors in your beloved multithreaded world.
5.- Yes, all of the above makes a lot of sense because that's what happens in the real world, unfortunately for AMD. I repeat that this is why they have their processors priced like that. You can start looking for excuses, price ranges, nitpicked benches, etc. like you usually do but the truth is that AMD needs another uarch to reach Intel, let alone surpass it.

And I'm talking from a pure desktop end user point of view, if you want corporate data I can go ask some friends about those custom old ass programs they still use because there's nothing newer that makes their job like they want to do it, of course single threaded, to see what they thing about waiting a fraction of what they wait today while their work makes its way through the queue, waits for being processed, is processed slowly... but I already know the answer: GIVE ME FASTER CORES!!1!!1

[Manicdan]

i do agree with star, that we need more single threaded performance. it helps for programs that cannot be threaded, it helps overall for multicore scaling too.

if Ghz didnt matter, then why do we even OC cpus?

[haylui]

I love how you guys nitpick the benches



This time the single threaded bench. Doesn't look too good for AMD it seems, with the lowest i3 destroying the fastest X4. But go read the entire review, maybe (and just maybe) if you skip everything not heavily multithreaded things may start to get interesting for the green camp. This is simple: you get what you pay for. If AMD were there with high perfomance cores you can bet prices won't be like they are today

lolz
this is for sure
since everything we see here is about BUSINESS
pricing is just another tactics to compete, nothings wrong here
AND Intel always has an edge in compiler and software developers would make use of Intel's compiler.
Go to read some linux benchmarks and see how the gap is

here you go : http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...ield_add&num=1

[haylui]

i do agree with star, that we need more single threaded performance. it helps for programs that cannot be threaded, it helps overall for multicore scaling too.

if Ghz didnt matter, then why do we even OC cpus?

currently, the programming languages aren't so good in multi-threading; there is a lot of manual tweaking in order to create a software that is suitable/very capable of utilizing multi-cores processor
but in the long run, megahurtz just don't work
i.e: you don't need high RPM to travel in high speed

[YukonTrooper]

The problem is that x3 wont do 4.5ghz stable on air, not even close

I was thinking the same thing. Who here is going to not run a chip at it's full potential? At any rate, AMD can still compete, which is fantastic.

[Manicdan]

currently, the programming languages aren't so good in multi-threading; there is a lot of manual tweaking in order to create a software that is suitable/very capable of utilizing multi-cores processor
but in the long run, megahurtz just don't work
i.e: you don't need high RPM to travel in high speed

you do need high rpms to go at higher speeds, most cars have their top speed in a gear thats not overdrive for that reason.

more cores is good, more ghz is good, eventually we hit limits on one and have to give more of the other, thats what happened to ghz a few years ago and soon enough on desktops we will probably see many core cpus have too many cores since it will just make more sense to use a gpu. then we will see ghz being important again i think.

[Mats]

I'm still not sure about these CPUs for anything other than top-end netbook/net-top/low-end laptop and small form factor business/media. For gamers a true quad core C2Q, PhII or i5 750 is a better option now that DX11 is here.

True, and it's not even a matter of cost, since the Clarkdales are overpriced compared to the i5 750.

I wish Intel hadn't messed up the naming. It should be that these are i3, 1156 quads are i5 and 1366 quads are i7.

I hear ya, and to make things worse:
The mobile i7 620M is a dual core!!! (= Arrandale, mobile Clarkdale counterpart) That's news to me. .

Yeah it's probably a great CPU, but can Intel get any more confusing?

I'm gonna wait for the 32 nm Atom successor called Core i9 105. .

[To(V)bo Co(V)bo]

I think a big problem with all these benchmarks and reviews going around about these i5 and i3 processors is that damn TURBOBOOST. It totally skews every result. Why dont they compare apples to apples with overclocked AMD cpu's. Even Lynnfields are all skewed. Turboboost is nothing more than benchmark cheating. I think AMD needs to make a feature that lets you set your own custom turbo clocks to whatever you want. You could call it BLACKBOOST, a totally customizable overclock and voltage profile. I would buy it just because of this, thats is what we enthusiasts really need. I love cloking my 920, but I would love to be able to control my voltages and clocks even more. It saves on electricity and wasted stress.

edit: Im talking hardware profiles in the bios, not crummy software profiles.

Who needs to run a i7 at 4.2ghz 24/7?

AMD are you listening? here is a chance to trump intel!

[dartaz]

Yes and we also have one here http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3704&p=9 looking at i3 530 vs X3 435..

sample
and

But how many people use cinebench or 3dxmax ?

Did you notice that Core i3 530 outperformed Athlon X4 630 in Winrar, 7-zip ? Winrar and 7-zip are more important and used by much more people than any of the two sample you posted

Also, Core i3 530 did performed better than Athlon X4 630 in all gaming benchmark. Did you notice that ? Do you know that there way much more people that play games than those who do 3d rendering ?


(note: In 7-zip, I'm talking about the real world benchmark)

[Tekdemon]

I think a big problem with all these benchmarks and reviews going around about these i5 and i3 processors is that damn TURBOBOOST. It totally skews every result. Why dont they compare apples to apples with overclocked AMD cpu's. Even Lynnfields are all skewed. Turboboost is nothing more than benchmark cheating.

Err...i3's don't have Turbo Boost and we're comparing against an i3 here.
Secondly, making apps run as fast as possible within a specific thermal envelope is not cheating, it's the very definition of real world performance. Because apps will really run faster. Actually making apps run faster is not benchmark cheating, by that logic everything is benchmark cheating

Either way your argument is silly since a lot of overclockers will disable Turbo Boost (since it might be unstable at the boosted speed, and lower performance when using more cores) on i7's and i5's. And overclockers do care about the overclocking headroom so why is this thread about clock for clock when one CPU overclocks far better than the other one?

[Nedjo]

edit: Im talking hardware profiles in the bios, not crummy software profiles.

Who needs to run a i7 at 4.2ghz 24/7?

AMD are you listening? here is a chance to trump intel!

how many average Joes do you think exist on PC market that actually know how to access BIOS let alone fiddle with profile settings??