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Best Value CPU

FoxEye said:
Why are we calling the FX4 a quad core now? I thought it was a 4 "module", but in reality 2 core chip... I'm not an engineer, but I was pretty certain from what I'd read that AMD's modules weren't good enough to be called cores as they shared resources like FPUs and schedulers?
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A core is the workhorse in the center of the CPU's fuctions (hence the name core)
And yes the FX-4 / 6 / 8... have 4, 6 and 8 of them, the diffrance is the FX CPU's have 2 'Cores' sharing 1 floating point thread, where as Intel's hyper threading CPU's have 2 floating point threads, sharing 1 'Core'.

This is why Intel's Sandy Bridge ecte.... have faster memory instructions, they have 2 threads coming from 1 core delivering the data at a higher bandwidth.

By comparison 2 of AMD's cores are having to share 1 data stream with its neighboring core.

This is 'at least' off set once all 8 cores and there 4 threads are used.

It should be mentioned that 2 threads to 1 core is faster than 1 core having 1 thread, but is not as fast as 2 cores with 2 threads.

by the same token 2 cores using 1 thread is faster than 1 core using 1 thread but again not as fast as 2 cores using 2 threads.

AMD's idea is to pile up cores by having 2 cores use the same thread, Intel at this moment have the right idea by using less cores and more threads by using 2 threads per core.

But, as things start looking simply for (how many threads there are to use) AMD will start to come into its own, which is why you do see the FX-8150 beating a 1100t and a 2500K in those few things that are at the moment highly threaded, and they are going to keep piling on cores (Piledriver was originally intended to have 10 Cores and 5 threads) but seem to have dropped that idea for now, probably because they realized they are getting to far ahead of there time.

2500K using 4 cores and 8 threads faster than Phenom II x4 using 4 cores and 4 threads, however... Phenom II x6 with 6 cores and 6 threads = faster than 2500K with 4 cores and 8 threads, AMD FX-8150 using 8 cores and 4 threads faster than Phenom II x6. actual real cores always trump threads alone.

IBM are widely considered to have the most powerful CPU's on the planet, and those CPU's are the same 2 core 1 module design, no coincidence then that AMD and IBM are bosom buddies.

Where this is also good for Intel lovers is the Ridiculous £800 price of there 6 core, which will have to come right down when things become multi threaded and AMD start to pull ahead.
 
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Humbug has become the resident BD preacher, take a look at some of the other threads. He flat out refuses most of the stuff he gets shown and always resorts to minority benches. Classic signs of a deluded mind.

As Foxeye pointed out above, the "4 core" FX4 is basically spanked by real 4 core processors. Like a Phenom 2 965. That is with regards to single core performance, When all cores are brought into place, the gap definitely narrows. But you'd still give the edge to the Phenom II most the time.

Although I'm sure Humbug can go out and find 1 or 2 benchmarks that show this not to be the case and bang his drum about how its all an intel conspiracy. Even though I havent mentioned intel.

And Humbug, if you're wondering why I've singled you out now. Have you seen your post history on anything related to FX or intel lately. Its ridiculous.
How can you not see how you're sounding!

Do you actually have any hands on experience with a Bulldozer? Just FYI...I've built plenty and played with them. Please tell me you have atleast used one
 
Orcvader said:
Probably to try give multi-threading more performance compared to Intel's HT?
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That is the thinking behind it yes...

@ wannabedamned, your opinion of me is noted thanks.

Yes i have played with many 8 core Bulldozer rigs, i don't like them as they run to warm and use to much power, they certainly have there problems but multi threaded performance is not one of them.

I also have a 2500K rig in the house, its a very good CPU and i like it, i like it more than i do the 3570K, but i use a lot of open source multi threaded software and they just can't keep up with my Thuban unless running at very high clocks, its also not much fun.
 
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humbug said:
That is the thinking behind it yes...

@ wannabedamned, your opinion of me is noted thanks.

Yes i have played with many 8 core Bulldozer rigs, i don't like them as they run to warm and use to much power, they certainly have there problems but multi threaded performance is not one of them.

I also have a 2500K rig in the house, its a very good CPU and i like it, i like it more than i do the 3570K, but i use a lot of open source multi threaded software and they just can't keep up with my Thuban unless running at very high clocks, its also not much fun.
Click to expand...

LOL What? Not fun to do what use an Intel CPU? A computer is a computer, I couldn't give a monkeys what make it was if it was doing what I wanted adequately, CPUs aren't meant to be fun.
 
humbug said:
A core is the workhorse in the center of the CPU's fuctions (hence the name core)
And yes the FX-4 / 6 / 8... have 4, 6 and 8 of them, the diffrance is the FX CPU's have 2 'Cores' sharing 1 floating point thread, where as Intel's hyper threading CPU's have 2 floating point threads, sharing 1 'Core'.

This is why Intel's Sandy Bridge ecte.... have faster memory instructions, they have 2 threads coming from 1 core delivering the data at a higher bandwidth.

By comparison 2 of AMD's cores are having to share 1 data stream with its neighboring core.

This is 'at least' off set once all 8 cores and there 4 threads are used.

It should be mentioned that 2 threads to 1 core is faster than 1 core having 1 thread, but is not as fast as 2 cores with 2 threads.

by the same token 2 cores using 1 thread is faster than 1 core using 1 thread but again not as fast as 2 cores using 2 threads.

AMD's idea is to pile up cores by having 2 cores use the same thread, Intel at this moment have the right idea by using less cores and more threads by using 2 threads per core.

But, as things start looking simply for (how many threads there are to use) AMD will start to come into its own, which is why you do see the FX-8150 beating a 1100t and a 2500K in those few things that are at the moment highly threaded, and they are going to keep piling on cores (Piledriver was originally intended to have 10 Cores and 5 threads) but seem to have dropped that idea for now, probably because they realized they are getting to far ahead of there time.

2500K using 4 cores and 8 threads faster than Phenom II x4 using 4 cores and 4 threads, however... Phenom II x6 with 6 cores and 6 threads = faster than 2500K with 4 cores and 8 threads, AMD FX-8150 using 8 cores and 4 threads faster than Phenom II x6. actual real cores always trump threads alone.

IBM are widely considered to have the most powerful CPU's on the planet, and those CPU's are the same 2 core 1 module design, no coincidence then that AMD and IBM are bosom buddies.

Where this is also good for Intel lovers is the Ridiculous £800 price of there 6 core, which will have to come right down when things become multi threaded and AMD start to pull ahead.
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are you talking about threads, or schedulers, or what here thats really quite confusing.

I have one of those intel six cores a 3930k, cost me £430 not £800, i've been using fully multithreaded software since the mid 90's, multithreading isnt new or just around the corner its been around longer than i have, and intels 6 core in these apps is about twice as fast as the best fx chip, so nothing is going to change, not until amd just make faster processors.
 
SouthEastBlue said:
LOL What? Not fun to do what use an Intel CPU? A computer is a computer, I couldn't give a monkeys what make it was if it was doing what I wanted adequately, CPUs aren't meant to be fun.
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Where do you get your joy out of being an enthusiast? (admittedly i am sort of assuming you are an enthusiast)

Your right there is absolutely nothing wrong with Intel CPU's, they do a job and they do it well enough, but when was the last time set about finding and fine tuning your external clock, multiplier, north bridge, south bridge and RAM frequencies together and then with south bridge, north bridge, Core and DIMM volts all to find the perfect combination?

AMD's are more adjustable, more fine tunable to get your ideal balance.... more fun

@ Zuban detail where you get confused and i will try to clear it up, also what software is it that your using where you think its using everything the CPU has?
 
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humbug said:
That is the thinking behind it yes...

@ wannabedamned, your opinion of me is noted thanks.

Yes i have played with many 8 core Bulldozer rigs, i don't like them as they run to warm and use to much power, they certainly have there problems but multi threaded performance is not one of them.

I also have a 2500K rig in the house, its a very good CPU and i like it, i like it more than i do the 3570K, but i use a lot of open source multi threaded software and they just can't keep up with my Thuban unless running at very high clocks, its also not much fun.
Click to expand...

Technically it is/was.

Before Bulldozer launched, I raised a few valid points regarding the modules.

1.) Using the second core on a module lowers the overall performance per core ; Loosely translated the scaling isn't as good as it would be with two dedicated cores.

2.) Originally Bulldozer would use threads in this order 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 which resulted in lower performance in lighter threaded applications, whereas Intel goes 1,3,5,7,2,4,6,8.
Bulldozer now goes 1,3,5,7,2,4,6,8 (Or should do)

Obviously, it's overall performance in heavily threaded applications is decent, but it's far from what it could be, and its architecture is hit in those situations, so you could argue that one of its problems is its multi threaded performance as it could be better, the problem is the hits it takes.
 
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You know I just realised how far we strayed off from OP's question...

To OP, since you haven't bought the motherboard yet either, what's your overall budget for CPU, motherboard and RAM? That way we can get you the best combination to fit in that budget, instead of simply deciding what part is best for that price.
 
Martini1991 said:
Technically it is/was.

Before Bulldozer launched, I raised a few valid points regarding the modules.

1.) Using the second core on a module lowers the overall performance per core ; Loosely translated the scaling isn't as good as it would be with two dedicated cores.

2.) Originally Bulldozer would use threads in this order 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 which resulted in lower performance in lighter threaded applications, whereas Intel goes 1,3,5,7,2,4,6,8.
Bulldozer now goes 1,3,5,7,2,4,6,8 (Or should do)

Obviously, it's overall performance in heavily threaded applications is decent, but it's far from what it could be, and its architecture is hit in those situations, so you could argue that one of its problems is its multi threaded performance as it could be better, the problem is the hits it takes.
Click to expand...

yeah, the Windows patch was supposed to sort out that (core scheduling) and probably has but the performance increase is... what was it? 3%?

And yes again that thread is bottlenecking the 2 cores its bridging choking off some performance (whatever it might be) with a bit of luck they will broaden it to the point where the cores can push there data through it without that bottle neck in the way.
 
humbug said:
Where do you get your joy out of being an enthusiast? (admittedly i am sort of assuming you are an enthusiast)

Your right there is absolutely nothing wrong with Intel CPU's, they do a job and they do it well enough, but when was the last time set about finding and fine tuning your external clock, multiplier, north bridge, south bridge and RAM frequencies together and then with south bridge, north bridge, Core and DIMM volts all to find the perfect combination?

AMD's are more adjustable, more fine tunable to get your ideal balance.... more fun

@ Zuban detail where you get confused and i will try to clear it up, also what software is it that your using where you think its using everything the CPU has?
Click to expand...

My old CPU was an Athlon II X4 2.8Ghz that unlocked the 6MB L3 cache to become a Phenom II, I had to tweak the clock speed, voltage, northbridge and my ram to get it stable at 3.5Ghz (without an unlocked multiplier) and would not go higher. It did it's job for two years of which I was satisfied, but it certainly wasn't fun. I have more fun in playing the games which my system is mainly used for!

I'm all for tweaking and at the moment it's annoying I can't overclock my i3, but I'll be upgrading soon to an i5 in the next few months then the simple multiplier and voltage boost will do the job nice and easily, without having to mess with a load of other settings. That's how I would prefer it! This is all besides the point though...
 
Yeah i can understand that ^^^ (cant see the wood for the trees) keep it simple and all that.
 
well, talking of price/£, I think (hope!) I've just won a new, sealed 2500k for £120 :)

couldn't really say no at that price.
 
humbug said:
And yes the FX-4 / 6 / 8... have 4, 6 and 8 of them, the diffrance is the FX CPU's have 2 'Cores' sharing 1 floating point thread, where as Intel's hyper threading CPU's have 2 floating point threads, sharing 1 'Core'.
Click to expand...

starting here, as i understand it fx cpu's share floating point execution units between both cores in a module, they dont share 1 floating point thread between both cores :confused:

the software i use is 3d rendering engines, lightwave 3d mainly and blender, various video encoding software like sony vegas and adobe premier although the encoding tends to be more done by gpu the 3d rendering is still all cpu.
 
Zuban said:
starting here, as i understand it fx cpu's share floating point execution units between both cores in a module, they dont share 1 floating point thread between both cores :confused:

the software i use is 3d rendering engines, lightwave 3d mainly and blender, various video encoding software like sony vegas and adobe premier although the encoding tends to be more done by gpu the 3d rendering is still all cpu.
Click to expand...

A core has a variety of resources to store the cores data outputs and bridge or transport data between the core and whatever is asking for that data.

All of those resources together are built around the core, collectively its known as a module. traditionally 1 core has one or more of each component which make up that module

2 of the the FX CPU's cores share parts of what make up the module. they are (prefetching module, decoding units, 1 floating point unit and the L2 cache)

Lighwave,- http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...k=view&id=831&Itemid=63&limit=1&limitstart=11

The 2500K beats the FX-8150 in Interactive workloads, however in Multitasking and rendering its a win for the FX-8150.

The whole thing is quite interesting, Intel always get AMD in single threaded, in multi threaded its even or the other way around.

In Blender 2500K vs Bulldozer the FX-8150 wins...http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043-15.html

x264 encoding.... FX-8150 @ 4Ghz = 21.3 and 2500K @ 4.5Ghz = 20.1, AMD win.

user124964_pic1994_1326308818.png
 
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humbug said:
2 of the the FX CPU's cores share parts of what make up the module. they are (prefetching module, decoding units, 1 floating point unit and the L2 cache)
Click to expand...

right so your terminology was wrong earlier because you were talking about threads not execution units?

in those benchmarks, the very ones that put me off buying an fx last year,the 2500k beats the fx8150 once overclocked to the same clockspeeds and it doesnt even have hyperthreading, plus this is where amd's performance ends a 2600k upwards in these tests are faster still but amd dont have a better cpu than the fx8150

as for x264 my 3930k at stock clocks does 27.2, amd fail, when it comes to fully multithreaded intel are so far ahead its not funny. a 3930k against a fx8150 isnt a fair comparison on cost of course but as cost is partly relative to competitors products it doesnt matter the current prices of amd chips are so low because they need to be and intels so high because they can be.
 
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