> > Why is everyone talking about AMD processors? I've seen them for sale,
> and
> > they are more expensive than Pentium processors, and they have less Ghz.
> I
>
> Congratulations to the guys who do the marketing for Intel :(
>
The reason AMD can keep the real clock speed down is that AMDs can execute more per cycle than their Intel counterparts. Take the Athlon XP 1900+ for example. This chip compares with a P4 2GHz performance wise, but the core clock speed is only a shade over 1600MHz!!
This is also a good point, because the lower the clock, the less heat produced, therefore the chip runs cooler. Also lower clock speeds reduce power consumption, so an AMD chip does the same amount of work in the same time whilst using less power than an Intel chip of similar performance. Better for your wallet and better for the environment!!
[EDIT]
Didn't see FalconFly's post... Says basically the same as I've just mentioned.
> I'm just saying it would make more sense to buy an expensive computer than to
> buy a cheaper computer and have to buy more RAM and everything every few
> years. When I said they had to upgrade the computer to run Windows XP, I
> meant they had to buy more hardware inside the computer. I didn't mean to
> simply upgrade the operating system. Buying more hardware for a computer can
> be expensive. To upgrade my Pentium II into a great Pentium 4, I would need
> $700.00. This would be for the processor, motherboard, and a new case. I
> would like to know why "more bang for the buck" is such a great idea when it
> comes to computers. In a few years, everyone is going to be calling your
> computer obsolete.
>
Sounds like it's not only the intel marketers that have got to you!!!
For the vast majority of people buying a very expensive computer that they dont need is not the best buy (its gtreat for the PC seller though !!).
No matter what you buy today in a few years it will be called obsolete anyway , but the actual performance difference between a very expensive pc and a mid range one is not that much , certaintly much less than the differrence in price would sugest.
If you know what you are doing you buy a pc that will do what you need now and not worry about what it will do it a few years time. When it can no longer do what you require of it you buy a new one, this should work out cheaper than buying the latest top of the range machine that sells for a premium.
When it comes to crunching , the term bang for buck means how many work units a machine can do for the price.
For those of us that build crunching farms , buying the best bang for buck makes a real difference , which in a lot of cases means buying mid range processors for a fraction of the price of the latest top of the range processors,that we can overclock to get virtualy the same level of performance.
sorry but, "more bang for the buck" doesn't by default equal low performance, low quality, short period of high performance by comparison. It doesn't even mean cheap. It just mean "more bang for the buck" ;)
If you have two cpu's, one intel one amd, the price is the same, the likelyhood of the amd producing higher performance is indeed big atm. And THAT is what's so good about amd's.
(btw any computer bought today is more or less obsolete a month from now, if not tomorrow)
A whole other angle to the matter is, Intel needs a serious competitor, if we, the consumers should get any faster and better cpu's, and amd is that serious competitor on the x86-type market.
> I'm just saying it would make more sense to buy an expensive computer than to
> buy a cheaper computer and have to buy more RAM and everything every few
> years.
It depends on exactly what you are doing. When I bought the Dual-Xeon I could have, for the same price, bought a P4 EE at 3.8 GHz with a L3 cache. I got the Xeon as Dual 3.4 GHz because on balance I felt that though slower than the other, I would have 4 "in-flight" at any given moment and therefor higher throughput oveer processing speed.
> ... To upgrade my Pentium II into a great Pentium 4, I would need
> $700.00. This would be for the processor, motherboard, and a new case. I
> would like to know why "more bang for the buck" is such a great idea when it
> comes to computers. In a few years, everyone is going to be calling your
> computer obsolete.
If, you are buying for your only PC I suggest buying at the top end of the market as the machine will "feel" satisfactory for a longer period of time. As an example, I got the PowerMac at 2.0 GHz and still feel that the performance is fine. This machine is now selling for $1,000 less than I paid in the Apple store right now. But the peerformance is still "good".
If I were to be buying a new PowerMac (I hope to later this year) as my workstation I will buy again at the top end of the market. If I am buying to add to my "farm" as a primary goal, then I would be looking to buy another like the one I have to conserve capital.
In general, my "farms" growth comes from the gradual replacement at the top end and retirement from the low end (oldest and slowest). So, there you have the reasoning for why you might buy one machine over another. AMD allows you to buy a machine with faster processing times per work unit over an Intel based system. WIth the PowerMac also having better speed also. However, the "slower" Intel processors do give higher throughput due to Hyper-Threading allowing more work to be inprocess at any one moment in time (also a feature of up-and-coming PowerPC chips).
> Why is everyone talking about AMD processors? I've seen them for sale, and
> they are more expensive than Pentium processors, and they have less Ghz. I
> read in a computer magazine about this computer that had a 2.5 Ghz AMD, and
> they were describing it like it was something good. I know some people that
> use AMDs, and none of them are impressed by them. Some Pentium 4 processors
> have 4 Ghz. I don't see any AMDs that move that fast. In my opinion, the
> best processor I've used is the Intel Centrino in my notebook computer. It
> seems to move faster than my Pentium 4, and a lot faster than my Pentium II.
> Anyway, what is so good about AMDs?
AMD Athlon 64 processors of the comparable model is quite a bit cheaper then Intel P4 here. And even being cheaper they perform most of the tasks faster. Especialy scientific ones, which I need the most. As others already said pure GHz speed doesn't mean anything when you look for performance. There are CPUs that do even more job per GHz then AMD Athlon 64. But runing at less GHz is important for at least two thing: lower power consumption (less heating, fans run slower, more silence) and it also means the operations on CPU are more stable.
When I bought my first Athlon 64 about a year ago I also liked the other additional features over P4, like being 64-bit (if you optimize your code for AMD64 you can get even more performance out of it, especialy in scientific and computing intensive apps), having support for No Execute but (can prevent runing some viruses) and Cool'n'Quiet (when you don't use your CPU it lowers the frequency a lot (to 800 MHz) and also lowers voltage and stops fans).
So all I can say is that I like my AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron CPUs a lot. And now that dual core CPUs are here there is another big advantega for AMD. To change from single-core to dual-core CPU you don't even need to change your motherboard. You just need to flash it with the new BIOS that suppoert dual-core and you are ready to go. And the maximum power consumption remains the same for AMD CPUs, while Intel again increased it.
The only thing I miss now with AMD Athlon 64 is the 64-bit Einstein@Home binary (Linux and Windows) optimized for AMD64, which could bring quite a lot more speed if I judge from other scientific apps I use and are optimized.
Ya, if you upgrade to AMD's dual core you don't have to get a new motherboard, but since IMO AMD can not give the comsumers the dual cores that they want so they price them high (very high). While Intel you do need a new motherboard, but the expense of upgrading the cpu and motherboard equals the cost of AMD's new dual core processors. And to be honest 64 bit computing is only showing 5% at most increase in performance as compared to 32 bit. I forget where I read that a scientific program coded from the ground up in 64 bit showed only marginal improvement over 32 bit.
As for AMD's advantages over Intel in features, that has only been mainly marketing hype. Sure AMD was the first for most of those technologies on the desktop, but look at the time for software to exploit those features.
> Ya, if you upgrade to AMD's dual core you don't have to get a new motherboard,
> but since IMO AMD can not give the comsumers the dual cores that they want so
> they price them high (very high). While Intel you do need a new motherboard,
> but the expense of upgrading the cpu and motherboard equals the cost of AMD's
> new dual core processors.
Depends ... not all manufactores support it. The current Sun Java Station does not, the upcoming will support dual core Opterons.
But seriously, do you upgrade and throw away the old one? I do not, I buy a new one and still use the old one for whatever other tasks.
> ... And to be honest 64 bit computing is only showing
> 5% at most increase in performance as compared to 32 bit. I forget where I
> read that a scientific program coded from the ground up in 64 bit showed only
> marginal improvement over 32 bit.
It depends on the program you use.
If your program does only floating point calculation, your numbers may be correct.
If your program does also a lot of integer calculation it might gain more speedup, because you have some more registers in the CPU and therefore you may need less memory access.
> As for AMD's advantages over Intel in features, that has only been mainly
> marketing hype. Sure AMD was the first for most of those technologies on the
> desktop, but look at the time for software to exploit those features.
The proble is not the usual toying an ordinary user does, it is a needed feature of big servers with huge (>>4GB) databases. These machines love much memory and the 4GB limit is reached very fast (Yes, I know the hardware can adress more, but the software needs access mechanisms which are similar to the good old 286 with those really nice segments).
>But seriously, do you upgrade and throw away the old one? I do not, I buy a new one and still use
>the old one for whatever other tasks.
I'm not saying that I don't use my old parts anymore, I just sell them to friends and family to compensate the cost of building a new system.
I was talking in terms for the average desktop users, although on the server side, Opterons take the Xeon's to school and back, unless you include Intel's Itanium (which is in a different class altogether)
I have a brandnew Sempron 2200+ boxed on an asrock K7S41GX board with MDT (?) 265Mb 2700 mem..
so, 60 + 50 + 50 = 160 euro (I already had case, hd and so on)
.....
Now that`s a pretty good bang for a buck! Running @ 1888Mhz, 210Fsb 42 DegC
Here's even better bang for the buck. In Australia we can get both the Asrock K7S41GX and the Sempron 2200+ for about $USD45-50 each and the 2400+ for about $USD65. 512mb DDR400 generic RAM was $USD50 a stick when I recently bought a few. Below are the stats for three upgraded boxes using this Mobo. From your benchmarks, I presume you are running V4.19. Benchmarks are quite a bit lower under V4.2x. My results below are for V4.19. The best benchmark is your actual WU time.
1. CPU ID 90609
===============
CPU - Sempron 2200+
mHz - 231 x 9 = 2079
whet - 1944
dhry - 4705
time - 22,200 seconds
1. CPU ID 73516
===============
CPU - Sempron 2400+
mHz - 220 x 10 = 2200
whet - 2064
dhry - 5010
time - 21,000 seconds
1. CPU ID 71863
===============
CPU - Barton 2500+
mHz - 205 x 11 = 2255
whet - 2106
dhry - 5096
time - 20,600 seconds
So the Asrock K7S41GX is a great little board. It's only rated for DDR333 but I've been able to run it up to 235-240 FSB without any apparent problems. I'm also extremely pleased with the performance of the Semprons. I'm only using the stock heat sink with a bigger fan and the full load temps are around 47 - 50 C.
All in all, you'd be mad not to be upgrading with AMD if you want bang for buck.
> > Why is everyone talking
)
> > Why is everyone talking about AMD processors? I've seen them for sale,
> and
> > they are more expensive than Pentium processors, and they have less Ghz.
> I
>
> Congratulations to the guys who do the marketing for Intel :(
>
The reason AMD can keep the real clock speed down is that AMDs can execute more per cycle than their Intel counterparts. Take the Athlon XP 1900+ for example. This chip compares with a P4 2GHz performance wise, but the core clock speed is only a shade over 1600MHz!!
This is also a good point, because the lower the clock, the less heat produced, therefore the chip runs cooler. Also lower clock speeds reduce power consumption, so an AMD chip does the same amount of work in the same time whilst using less power than an Intel chip of similar performance. Better for your wallet and better for the environment!!
[EDIT]
Didn't see FalconFly's post... Says basically the same as I've just mentioned.
Don't knock the clock!!!
> I'm just saying it would
)
> I'm just saying it would make more sense to buy an expensive computer than to
> buy a cheaper computer and have to buy more RAM and everything every few
> years. When I said they had to upgrade the computer to run Windows XP, I
> meant they had to buy more hardware inside the computer. I didn't mean to
> simply upgrade the operating system. Buying more hardware for a computer can
> be expensive. To upgrade my Pentium II into a great Pentium 4, I would need
> $700.00. This would be for the processor, motherboard, and a new case. I
> would like to know why "more bang for the buck" is such a great idea when it
> comes to computers. In a few years, everyone is going to be calling your
> computer obsolete.
>
Sounds like it's not only the intel marketers that have got to you!!!
For the vast majority of people buying a very expensive computer that they dont need is not the best buy (its gtreat for the PC seller though !!).
No matter what you buy today in a few years it will be called obsolete anyway , but the actual performance difference between a very expensive pc and a mid range one is not that much , certaintly much less than the differrence in price would sugest.
If you know what you are doing you buy a pc that will do what you need now and not worry about what it will do it a few years time. When it can no longer do what you require of it you buy a new one, this should work out cheaper than buying the latest top of the range machine that sells for a premium.
When it comes to crunching , the term bang for buck means how many work units a machine can do for the price.
For those of us that build crunching farms , buying the best bang for buck makes a real difference , which in a lot of cases means buying mid range processors for a fraction of the price of the latest top of the range processors,that we can overclock to get virtualy the same level of performance.
Shady
sorry but, "more bang for the
)
sorry but, "more bang for the buck" doesn't by default equal low performance, low quality, short period of high performance by comparison. It doesn't even mean cheap. It just mean "more bang for the buck" ;)
If you have two cpu's, one intel one amd, the price is the same, the likelyhood of the amd producing higher performance is indeed big atm. And THAT is what's so good about amd's.
(btw any computer bought today is more or less obsolete a month from now, if not tomorrow)
A whole other angle to the matter is, Intel needs a serious competitor, if we, the consumers should get any faster and better cpu's, and amd is that serious competitor on the x86-type market.
> I'm just saying it would
)
> I'm just saying it would make more sense to buy an expensive computer than to
> buy a cheaper computer and have to buy more RAM and everything every few
> years.
It depends on exactly what you are doing. When I bought the Dual-Xeon I could have, for the same price, bought a P4 EE at 3.8 GHz with a L3 cache. I got the Xeon as Dual 3.4 GHz because on balance I felt that though slower than the other, I would have 4 "in-flight" at any given moment and therefor higher throughput oveer processing speed.
> ... To upgrade my Pentium II into a great Pentium 4, I would need
> $700.00. This would be for the processor, motherboard, and a new case. I
> would like to know why "more bang for the buck" is such a great idea when it
> comes to computers. In a few years, everyone is going to be calling your
> computer obsolete.
If, you are buying for your only PC I suggest buying at the top end of the market as the machine will "feel" satisfactory for a longer period of time. As an example, I got the PowerMac at 2.0 GHz and still feel that the performance is fine. This machine is now selling for $1,000 less than I paid in the Apple store right now. But the peerformance is still "good".
If I were to be buying a new PowerMac (I hope to later this year) as my workstation I will buy again at the top end of the market. If I am buying to add to my "farm" as a primary goal, then I would be looking to buy another like the one I have to conserve capital.
In general, my "farms" growth comes from the gradual replacement at the top end and retirement from the low end (oldest and slowest). So, there you have the reasoning for why you might buy one machine over another. AMD allows you to buy a machine with faster processing times per work unit over an Intel based system. WIth the PowerMac also having better speed also. However, the "slower" Intel processors do give higher throughput due to Hyper-Threading allowing more work to be inprocess at any one moment in time (also a feature of up-and-coming PowerPC chips).
> Why is everyone talking
)
> Why is everyone talking about AMD processors? I've seen them for sale, and
> they are more expensive than Pentium processors, and they have less Ghz. I
> read in a computer magazine about this computer that had a 2.5 Ghz AMD, and
> they were describing it like it was something good. I know some people that
> use AMDs, and none of them are impressed by them. Some Pentium 4 processors
> have 4 Ghz. I don't see any AMDs that move that fast. In my opinion, the
> best processor I've used is the Intel Centrino in my notebook computer. It
> seems to move faster than my Pentium 4, and a lot faster than my Pentium II.
> Anyway, what is so good about AMDs?
AMD Athlon 64 processors of the comparable model is quite a bit cheaper then Intel P4 here. And even being cheaper they perform most of the tasks faster. Especialy scientific ones, which I need the most. As others already said pure GHz speed doesn't mean anything when you look for performance. There are CPUs that do even more job per GHz then AMD Athlon 64. But runing at less GHz is important for at least two thing: lower power consumption (less heating, fans run slower, more silence) and it also means the operations on CPU are more stable.
When I bought my first Athlon 64 about a year ago I also liked the other additional features over P4, like being 64-bit (if you optimize your code for AMD64 you can get even more performance out of it, especialy in scientific and computing intensive apps), having support for No Execute but (can prevent runing some viruses) and Cool'n'Quiet (when you don't use your CPU it lowers the frequency a lot (to 800 MHz) and also lowers voltage and stops fans).
So all I can say is that I like my AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron CPUs a lot. And now that dual core CPUs are here there is another big advantega for AMD. To change from single-core to dual-core CPU you don't even need to change your motherboard. You just need to flash it with the new BIOS that suppoert dual-core and you are ready to go. And the maximum power consumption remains the same for AMD CPUs, while Intel again increased it.
The only thing I miss now with AMD Athlon 64 is the 64-bit Einstein@Home binary (Linux and Windows) optimized for AMD64, which could bring quite a lot more speed if I judge from other scientific apps I use and are optimized.
JLP's Blog | Get Firefox
Ya, if you upgrade to AMD's
)
Ya, if you upgrade to AMD's dual core you don't have to get a new motherboard, but since IMO AMD can not give the comsumers the dual cores that they want so they price them high (very high). While Intel you do need a new motherboard, but the expense of upgrading the cpu and motherboard equals the cost of AMD's new dual core processors. And to be honest 64 bit computing is only showing 5% at most increase in performance as compared to 32 bit. I forget where I read that a scientific program coded from the ground up in 64 bit showed only marginal improvement over 32 bit.
As for AMD's advantages over Intel in features, that has only been mainly marketing hype. Sure AMD was the first for most of those technologies on the desktop, but look at the time for software to exploit those features.
> Ya, if you upgrade to AMD's
)
> Ya, if you upgrade to AMD's dual core you don't have to get a new motherboard,
> but since IMO AMD can not give the comsumers the dual cores that they want so
> they price them high (very high). While Intel you do need a new motherboard,
> but the expense of upgrading the cpu and motherboard equals the cost of AMD's
> new dual core processors.
Depends ... not all manufactores support it. The current Sun Java Station does not, the upcoming will support dual core Opterons.
But seriously, do you upgrade and throw away the old one? I do not, I buy a new one and still use the old one for whatever other tasks.
> ... And to be honest 64 bit computing is only showing
> 5% at most increase in performance as compared to 32 bit. I forget where I
> read that a scientific program coded from the ground up in 64 bit showed only
> marginal improvement over 32 bit.
It depends on the program you use.
If your program does only floating point calculation, your numbers may be correct.
If your program does also a lot of integer calculation it might gain more speedup, because you have some more registers in the CPU and therefore you may need less memory access.
> As for AMD's advantages over Intel in features, that has only been mainly
> marketing hype. Sure AMD was the first for most of those technologies on the
> desktop, but look at the time for software to exploit those features.
The proble is not the usual toying an ordinary user does, it is a needed feature of big servers with huge (>>4GB) databases. These machines love much memory and the 4GB limit is reached very fast (Yes, I know the hardware can adress more, but the software needs access mechanisms which are similar to the good old 286 with those really nice segments).
>But seriously, do you
)
>But seriously, do you upgrade and throw away the old one? I do not, I buy a new one and still use
>the old one for whatever other tasks.
I'm not saying that I don't use my old parts anymore, I just sell them to friends and family to compensate the cost of building a new system.
And I found the article that talked about 64 bit performance at http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/64-bits/index.x?pg=1
My current 875P system will suit my needs for the time being, or until Cedar Mill. :)
I was talking in terms for the average desktop users, although on the server side, Opterons take the Xeon's to school and back, unless you include Intel's Itanium (which is in a different class altogether)
I have a brandnew Sempron
)
I have a brandnew Sempron 2200+ boxed on an asrock K7S41GX board with MDT (?) 265Mb 2700 mem..
so, 60 + 50 + 50 = 160 euro (I already had case, hd and so on)
Bionc benchmark :
--- - 2005-05-07 13:13:48 - Running CPU benchmarks
--- - 2005-05-07 13:13:49 - Suspending computation and network activity - running CPU benchmarks
--- - 2005-05-07 13:14:50 - Benchmark results:
--- - 2005-05-07 13:14:50 - Number of CPUs: 1
--- - 2005-05-07 13:14:50 - 1766 double precision MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
--- - 2005-05-07 13:14:50 - 4265 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
--- - 2005-05-07 13:14:50 - Finished CPU benchmarks
--- - 2005-05-07 13:14:51 - Resuming computation and network activity
Now that`s a pretty good bang for a buck! Running @ 1888Mhz, 210Fsb 42 DegC
I have a brandnew Sempron
)
I have a brandnew Sempron 2200+ boxed on an asrock K7S41GX board with MDT (?) 265Mb 2700 mem..
so, 60 + 50 + 50 = 160 euro (I already had case, hd and so on)
.....
Now that`s a pretty good bang for a buck! Running @ 1888Mhz, 210Fsb 42 DegC
Here's even better bang for the buck. In Australia we can get both the Asrock K7S41GX and the Sempron 2200+ for about $USD45-50 each and the 2400+ for about $USD65. 512mb DDR400 generic RAM was $USD50 a stick when I recently bought a few. Below are the stats for three upgraded boxes using this Mobo. From your benchmarks, I presume you are running V4.19. Benchmarks are quite a bit lower under V4.2x. My results below are for V4.19. The best benchmark is your actual WU time.
1. CPU ID 90609
===============
CPU - Sempron 2200+
mHz - 231 x 9 = 2079
whet - 1944
dhry - 4705
time - 22,200 seconds
1. CPU ID 73516
===============
CPU - Sempron 2400+
mHz - 220 x 10 = 2200
whet - 2064
dhry - 5010
time - 21,000 seconds
1. CPU ID 71863
===============
CPU - Barton 2500+
mHz - 205 x 11 = 2255
whet - 2106
dhry - 5096
time - 20,600 seconds
So the Asrock K7S41GX is a great little board. It's only rated for DDR333 but I've been able to run it up to 235-240 FSB without any apparent problems. I'm also extremely pleased with the performance of the Semprons. I'm only using the stock heat sink with a bigger fan and the full load temps are around 47 - 50 C.
All in all, you'd be mad not to be upgrading with AMD if you want bang for buck.
Cheers,
Gary.