I have been running both my C2D and my x2 4200 into the ground to see which ones is going to be my main PC and which will be the mess about one.
I have had suspicions that the conroe ( Well, for those who want to argue, its the 6300 which is supposed to be an allendale, but its still a C2D )
Now, as you should all know, the conroe is twice as fast as the AMD. SuperPI will pretty much very this. On these 2 PCs as they stand right now for me, are giving me 17 seconds on the C2D and 33Seconds on the 4200, so with rought rounding off, the C2D is roughly about double the speed right?
Now, I would like anyone else who has both an AMD and a C2D to check this out... Cos I have also done these tests on other PCs too ( Single core Opteron / X2-3800 ) and its fairly surprising what you may find.
Ok, I run Folding At Home on both cores of the C2D and the X2, I also run utorrent too for my Lunix distro downloads.
Now, I have a load of Ghostfiles on DigiCam, that I am converting to DVD from AVI, and this is done using DVD Santa and this program uses both cores, I also use DVDtoONE, and TMPG DVD Author for the VOB files.
Naturally, this can all take a short while, and so while I am burning the last batch onto my 4 DVDRW Drives, I am converting the next batch, and of course I occasionally play a game or two while I am waiting.
Now, I have been doing this for a fair while now. I was able to do it just fine on my Barton Setup, on the NF7S Motherboard with 1GB of RAM, that would obviously slow the background apps down a little but at least they would be done in the hour. I moved to A64 and while the speed initially wasnt that much, encoding etc was massively improved.
Moving to C2D I expected that as SuperPI was giving me such a hike, I was rather hoping that encoding would alos have a hike too, but this has proved to be not as true as I was hoping.
It turns out, that while I can have a number of thigns going on at once, it seems that the AMD loves it, there is no ( Apparent ) slow down at all, and I can jumpo to andfromany running app I want to with no slowdowns, hangs or pauses, it is just as quick when using the Opteron too actually, but when using the C2D, its ploning along like a phart.
It seems to me, that the more apps you put into the C2D, the slower it gets. Now, I dont mean to sound thick here, I know that this is obvious, but hang on... Check it out, the C2D struggles when 2 apps are battling to do a job and when 3 or more are, it gets worse, while the AMD is still firing on all 4
A quick look at the CPU time in the task manager shows me something interesting...
FaH should only take up CPU time thats not being used right?
Well, on both the AMD and the Intel, I am seeing 50% twice. This is normal, as we know 50% of one core + 50% of the other core makes the 100% of both cores, and thats great, but then, when I run say, DVD Santa, then with FAH one core still gets about half the CPU time, just under actually, and so the FAH Clients still get roughly about 20-25% CPU time each. This does not happen on the AMDs... FAH gets 0%
So, DVDSanta, then on the Intel only actualyl gets to run at about half its potential speed, and on the AMD it gets to go at full pelt.
Result is that the AMD and the C2D are roughly finished at about the same time!
( I tested this and on one file in particular, the C2D was done in 18 minutes and the AMD in 17 Minutes )
Now, as I said, I like to run lots of apps at the same time, but lets just go to basics a little here...
When I am doing my usual jobs of encoding job B and burning job A, what would happen if I do some letters? I use StarOffice8, so I double click on the icon and wait. On the AMD, it comes up in 2 seconds... Not the quickest program to start I will admit, but hold on, how long does it take on the Intel?
9 seconds.
This MUST be because of the HDs being slow surely?
Nope!
The AMD is running 2 x Seagate 250GB SATA II Drives ( 2 partitions each )
The C2D is running a pair of 80GB Hitachi drives as Striped Raid, and a pair of WD200GB Drives and also my torrents are going to the 36GB Raptor.
HDTach is showing the Disk access of the C2D is pretty muchdouble of the AMD, so it cannot possibly be the speed of the disks.
I run good old simple notepad and its the same thing... absolutely instant on the AMD, and 3 seconds on the Intel??
So, it seems to me, that for when you are running one app or only need to use a PC for doing one thing very quickly, that the C2D are by far, the best option there is right now, however, if you plan on running a number of thigns that are all pushing for CPU time, then a C2D maybe isnt the best option?
As I said, I have also played about doing the very same jobs using a Single core Opteron 144 @ 2.6 and the opteron is also showing that its more than holding its own at particular tasks against the C2D, and that opteron does not lsow down as much as the C2D does either, but does lose out due to its single core.
So, can anyone else actually verify this for me, make sure its not just me who is finding this out.
As I said, when running or concentrating on one thing, the C2D is the beast to go for, but when loaded up with a few apps , the AMD is the better option.
Either way, for my needs, I am finding that after knocking out my Conroe setup, while Im absolutely in love with benchmark results, for the more serious stuff, I have actually gone back to my AMD and think that perhaps I wasted my time in some ways on going to conroe... Im just grateful that Im a hoarder and rarely sell any of my old kit off ( Hence currently owning 14 PCs )
I have had suspicions that the conroe ( Well, for those who want to argue, its the 6300 which is supposed to be an allendale, but its still a C2D )
Now, as you should all know, the conroe is twice as fast as the AMD. SuperPI will pretty much very this. On these 2 PCs as they stand right now for me, are giving me 17 seconds on the C2D and 33Seconds on the 4200, so with rought rounding off, the C2D is roughly about double the speed right?
Now, I would like anyone else who has both an AMD and a C2D to check this out... Cos I have also done these tests on other PCs too ( Single core Opteron / X2-3800 ) and its fairly surprising what you may find.
Ok, I run Folding At Home on both cores of the C2D and the X2, I also run utorrent too for my Lunix distro downloads.
Now, I have a load of Ghostfiles on DigiCam, that I am converting to DVD from AVI, and this is done using DVD Santa and this program uses both cores, I also use DVDtoONE, and TMPG DVD Author for the VOB files.
Naturally, this can all take a short while, and so while I am burning the last batch onto my 4 DVDRW Drives, I am converting the next batch, and of course I occasionally play a game or two while I am waiting.
Now, I have been doing this for a fair while now. I was able to do it just fine on my Barton Setup, on the NF7S Motherboard with 1GB of RAM, that would obviously slow the background apps down a little but at least they would be done in the hour. I moved to A64 and while the speed initially wasnt that much, encoding etc was massively improved.
Moving to C2D I expected that as SuperPI was giving me such a hike, I was rather hoping that encoding would alos have a hike too, but this has proved to be not as true as I was hoping.
It turns out, that while I can have a number of thigns going on at once, it seems that the AMD loves it, there is no ( Apparent ) slow down at all, and I can jumpo to andfromany running app I want to with no slowdowns, hangs or pauses, it is just as quick when using the Opteron too actually, but when using the C2D, its ploning along like a phart.
It seems to me, that the more apps you put into the C2D, the slower it gets. Now, I dont mean to sound thick here, I know that this is obvious, but hang on... Check it out, the C2D struggles when 2 apps are battling to do a job and when 3 or more are, it gets worse, while the AMD is still firing on all 4
A quick look at the CPU time in the task manager shows me something interesting...
FaH should only take up CPU time thats not being used right?
Well, on both the AMD and the Intel, I am seeing 50% twice. This is normal, as we know 50% of one core + 50% of the other core makes the 100% of both cores, and thats great, but then, when I run say, DVD Santa, then with FAH one core still gets about half the CPU time, just under actually, and so the FAH Clients still get roughly about 20-25% CPU time each. This does not happen on the AMDs... FAH gets 0%
So, DVDSanta, then on the Intel only actualyl gets to run at about half its potential speed, and on the AMD it gets to go at full pelt.
Result is that the AMD and the C2D are roughly finished at about the same time!
( I tested this and on one file in particular, the C2D was done in 18 minutes and the AMD in 17 Minutes )
Now, as I said, I like to run lots of apps at the same time, but lets just go to basics a little here...
When I am doing my usual jobs of encoding job B and burning job A, what would happen if I do some letters? I use StarOffice8, so I double click on the icon and wait. On the AMD, it comes up in 2 seconds... Not the quickest program to start I will admit, but hold on, how long does it take on the Intel?
9 seconds.
This MUST be because of the HDs being slow surely?
Nope!
The AMD is running 2 x Seagate 250GB SATA II Drives ( 2 partitions each )
The C2D is running a pair of 80GB Hitachi drives as Striped Raid, and a pair of WD200GB Drives and also my torrents are going to the 36GB Raptor.
HDTach is showing the Disk access of the C2D is pretty muchdouble of the AMD, so it cannot possibly be the speed of the disks.
I run good old simple notepad and its the same thing... absolutely instant on the AMD, and 3 seconds on the Intel??
So, it seems to me, that for when you are running one app or only need to use a PC for doing one thing very quickly, that the C2D are by far, the best option there is right now, however, if you plan on running a number of thigns that are all pushing for CPU time, then a C2D maybe isnt the best option?
As I said, I have also played about doing the very same jobs using a Single core Opteron 144 @ 2.6 and the opteron is also showing that its more than holding its own at particular tasks against the C2D, and that opteron does not lsow down as much as the C2D does either, but does lose out due to its single core.
So, can anyone else actually verify this for me, make sure its not just me who is finding this out.
As I said, when running or concentrating on one thing, the C2D is the beast to go for, but when loaded up with a few apps , the AMD is the better option.
Either way, for my needs, I am finding that after knocking out my Conroe setup, while Im absolutely in love with benchmark results, for the more serious stuff, I have actually gone back to my AMD and think that perhaps I wasted my time in some ways on going to conroe... Im just grateful that Im a hoarder and rarely sell any of my old kit off ( Hence currently owning 14 PCs )
