C2D v X2 = Not as good as you think?

[Killajaz]

This would actually make for a good read and quality thread if it was not for some peoples pointless pathetic L33T speak and patronising tone.
A guy has a very interesting point to make, he even admits he could be wrong, yet he gets flamed with L33T talk which in all honesty has not added any value.

I probably risk a holiday and I dont care, but howcome some guys keep getting away with spouting un-constructive BS and creating aggro in perfectly fine and interesting threads? It's sad and boring.

To OP: I found your tests intriguing and the technical discussions they spawned very interesting. I am also very impressed with your patience towards certain critics. Hats off to you. Personally I would have lost my temper at page four.

 

[raitasar]

Im currently doing some HTML stuff for a friend for his site, Im not doing any hard coding of any kind, both FAH clients of course, and I am using Namo to do the HTML, and guess what? Its pausing the occasional time, perhaps for about 4 to 5 seconds I will click on something and it wont register for a while.

Thats serious.
etc

I had the exact same problem as you did for a while, tested everything I could find, read times were all okay for testing, yet still in actual use it'd start stuttering or FPS would bottom out in games. I knew in my gut that all the problems felt like disk access time, but the tests kept telling me I was wrong.

Well, I ended up fixing the problem by systematically swapping SATA cables from the disks in my RAID setup. Turned out that one of them was causing some intermittant trouble with reading. Since I did that, the whole system has been flying along.
Not saying that's what your problem is, but, if you're tried everything else...?

 

[FatRakoon]

This would actually make for a good read and quality thread if it was not for some peoples pointless pathetic L33T speak and patronising tone.
A guy has a very interesting point to make, he even admits he could be wrong, yet he gets flamed with L33T talk which in all honesty has not added any value.

I probably risk a holiday and I dont care, but howcome some guys keep getting away with spouting un-constructive BS and creating aggro in perfectly fine and interesting threads? It's sad and boring.

To OP: I found your tests intriguing and the technical discussions they spawned very interesting. I am also very impressed with your patience towards certain critics. Hats off to you. Personally I would have lost my temper at page four.

Thank you mate... Thank you very much.

I have learned a lot of things with a lot of OCUK posters, and that its simply not worth wasting my time on them.

Mass majority are good people and hey, Im wrong a lot of the time, Im right a lot of the time, just like everyone else here... No one knows everythign about PCs and I dont believe for one minute that anyone does. and sure, when Im wrong and people point this out, then cool. I was wrong. But to flame me for being wrong??? HA! it just shows another side to them and while they think it might be cool and "L33T" do do this to people, I thin kthat it just shows that in truth, they probably know less than I do, on the scale of things, and it just gives me a bit of a comfy glow knowing this.

I had the exact same problem as you did for a while, tested everything I could find, read times were all okay for testing, yet still in actual use it'd start stuttering or FPS would bottom out in games. I knew in my gut that all the problems felt like disk access time, but the tests kept telling me I was wrong.

Well, I ended up fixing the problem by systematically swapping SATA cables from the disks in my RAID setup. Turned out that one of them was causing some intermittant trouble with reading. Since I did that, the whole system has been flying along.
Not saying that's what your problem is, but, if you're tried everything else...?

Cheers dude... No.

I have not changed the cables over and ... Hang on...


Hmmm yes, 2 of the cables are blue things that I dont know where the hell I got them from, but I got a couple of packs of new ones and I will chuck them in later on. You never know eh?

Im not convinced that even if the cables are cruddy that it will give me answers to my original post, but at least it will probably clean up my signal surely.

Cheers guys.

 

[[HoL]Cobra]

I really truly honestly dont know why you want all those applications and utils running at the same time, on a single machine.
And 4 discs at once?
I usualy defrag whilst i'm in the land of nod.
Encoding a (Single)dvd and playing a game is usualy the most stress I put on my machine at any given time, and very rarely at that.

I've tried replicating your problems on my machine which is as follows :
E6600 (not clocked btw for the test, as I dont wanna fry my little silicon friend.)
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
2 gig OCZ 6400 Platinum
1 Sata 400 gig (Partitioned, with XP Pro on this drive)
1 Sata 320 gig (Partitioned)
1 Sata 250 gig (Partitioned_
1 Sata 160 gig (Partitioned)
1 Pioneer DVD R/RW +/- 8X
1 Samsung CD Re-writer
SB XiFi Fatality FPS Edition
Gainward Gf7950GX2
Thermaltake 550W psu

Like you, I do not install any programs, games etc on the C drive, it's purely for Windows.
Ran Nero express to encode and burn a dvd (granted only 1, but I only have 1 dvd burner), unzipped same dvd again, whilst encoding, ran doom 3, ran sophos AV, had FAH running, playing a film in VLC player. Running 2 torrents.
Running Doom 3 at 1680*1050 with everything whacked up (did jerk somewhat now and then, but then, I expected it to, with everything running)
Gave up after that lot though, as to be honest, the machine might be a good multitasker, but i'm not.

Cant say it bogs me down, beyong the obvious for running so many things, even when running an AV check. Of course, with everything running, it's slower, but not to the point I have to wait 10 seconds or so for programs to close, or alt tab to others. Notepad appears as soon as I click it.


Anyway,
What are your system temps whilst your running everything?
Maybe it's throttling due to excessive heat thats your problem?
What cooler are you using, has it been put on right?
What PSU do you use?
Just a thought.
Either that, or as others have stated, your installation is missing something, or it genuinly cannot cope when doing 4 copies of a dvd at once (not something I know of others doing, besides yourself) and I cant really see AMD being better at, possibly equal to maybe.

I think a quad core would struggle, with what your trying to achieve.

Perhaps use 1 machine purely for doing your encoding, whilst using the faster of the 2 for everyday use. I know that is how I would do things. As you say, your a hoarder of computers, owning 14 of them, why not use them then? Seems the whole thread is an AMD Intel fanboy lark, even though you admit your not, the thread will generate them, so in a sense you are, by saying the AMD will be used out the 2.

 

[clv101]

Seems the whole thread is an AMD Intel fanboy lark, even though you admit your not, the thread will generate them, so in a sense you are, by saying the AMD will be used out the 2.

I hardly think making a choice about which machine to use after significant personal, empirical testing can make someone a fanboy! All FR has done is test his two machines extensity and chosen the one that works the best - that's just smart not the irrational loyalty of a fanboy.

 

[[HoL]Cobra]

I hardly think making a choice about which machine to use after significant personal, empirical testing can make someone a fanboy! All FR has done is test his two machines extensity and chosen the one that works the best - that's just smart not the irrational loyalty of a fanboy.

If that was the case, why did he post to begin with?
I've read from page 1 and already seen some fanboy quotes, and its this type of post that generates them.
If he is happy using his AMD, and is adament to use it, why post?

I mean, even the topic is fanboy'ism in a sense.

C2D v X2 = Not as good as you think?

I'm not taking anything away from him, far be it, he has 2 computers he's pitting against each other side by side.
People have tried to help diagnose a problem with his C2D, if indeed he has a problem, but the astronomical test's he's trying to achieve with both, is something that the vast majority of users will never even attempt (not for wanting to see the results, but for general everyday use).
What that boils down to A is better than B, and i'll stick with A for what I do.

And good luck to the man, he obviously pushes his computers to the max, and glad he thinks his AMD is better than C2D for (excessive!) multitasking.

For any other user, it's going to be C2D.

 

[jaykay]

its not fanboyism he just stating that his 2 systems arent a huge difference as most of you have been saying and he has proof the justify it so its not fanboyism
we would all go for the faster computer which he has done

 

[jaykay]

edit double post randomly

 

[[HoL]Cobra]

Then why the post?
Plus I've not been one of those saying there is/should be a huge difference, have asked what his temps are, and what his psu is.
I'm happy he's happy that he has chosen A rather than B, but if theres something wrong with B, then
1 He will want to find out, after buying it.
2 If nothing wrong, use A
3 Pointless post.

 

[Ronaldo]

I was reading this thread at 3am and it was a VERY GOOD READ till i got a phone call LOL

Great thread tbh dont worry abt some ppl flaming you the rest appreciate what you have to say as it helps us knowing.

 

[Participant]

Then why the post?

Why not? A lot of people have found the observations interesting. Are you personally offended?

 

[[HoL]Cobra]

Why not? A lot of people have found the observations interesting. Are you personally offended?

Not in the slightest.

Would you be offended if I posted that C2D owns X2 at games, 3Dmark06 etc (Something I would never do) and would that not be a fanboy post?
It's the same sort of post, if I posted that.
IE multitasking against/instead of games, benchmarks etc.
Would I not be flamed? And deservedly so.
Am I flaming him? No.

The guy has made his mind up which is best for him, and as said good luck to him.

Someone mentioned many posts ago about mailing anandtech etc for some rigourous testing, I would love to read that if and when they do, but for everyday and general use, a computer will not do the amount of things the OP is trying to achieve, as his idea of multitasking is way above the vast amount of people who use computers, as I said before.
The test I did earlier will not be done again, as I dont want to pop the proverbial balloon trying to prove or disprove a point, with something i'll certainly never do or attempt to do with my computer, same as the large majority I presume.

Edit
Some programs will run quicker on CPU A, than they do on CPU B, perhaps he should try using a different program if the odd 2 or 3 seconds to open notepad, means that much to his post.
Plus it probably boils down to the quality of the computer, it is after all only as good as the sum of it's peripherals, as I have tried and failed to get the same sort of slugishness his original post testifies to, does that make a C2D better than an X2, certainly not, as the rest of whats inside my computer is vastly different to his own.

 

[Rizz]

So the x2 can hold its own against CD2 in multitasking, thats a relief at least it can do one thing better than CD2.

 

[galadial]

Sorry to hijack the thread - but I was wondering how do you tell that both C2D cores are enabled? In my windows task manager I have one graph for CPU useage and two graphs for CPU useage history (and I'm running a Conroe 6300). Is this how it should appear or should I have two separate CPU useage graphs with C2D and windows XP?

 

[clv101]

Then why the post?

Because it's really interesting! He's trying something that all the hundreds of review sites haven't tried. Well... I found the whole concept really interesting.

 

[FatRakoon]

Ok. I have swapped the cables over... too early to say if its done anything, and will no doubt need time to see.

FanBoyism?

Its funny really. I have to say that I am an AMD fan before Intel.
Few reasons for this... Over the years I feel that I have been let down with Intels for a few reasons... Most are obvious now, but were not at the time.

I mean, I had an AMD600 ( SLOT-A ) a fair while back, and Iasked a local shop if they would be willing to swap it for a faster CPU, they gave me a Celeron 900, now naturally I saw 600 to 900 and of course a 50% boost... NOPE! - what a pile of crud the Celeron was against the AMD. I asked to have it back and they laughed at me.

This taught me a lesson.

I never touched Intels for quite some time.

A Mate had a 2.6Ghz P4 and I sold him a Ti4200 a while back to replace his ageing MX440... I was getting about 18K in 3DMark ( 2K or 2K1 I cant remember now ) and this was on my slightly overclocked XP17 and yet we never did get his above 11K.
Again, I knew I hated Intels then too, and this isnt all that long ago... Maybe 3 years perhaps?

Now, a year or so ago, I managed to get hold of a P4 3.6Ghz Prescott system for £400 and it was a steal... It was a real pile of plonk however, and I do mean that. It was so poor that I took the HDs out of it and stuffed them into my AMD and used a single 80GB in it instead and just played about.
Anyway, Thigns like SuperPI were showing me very nice results and some tests on that against my Newcastle 3000 showed that the Newcastle had to be clocked to 2.4 to give near-exacting results as what the P4 was giving me, however, general useage of the system was dire beyond belief, and it was my first introduction to this so-called HT Technology and how badly it can make some things perform when you are expecting it to be more than it is.

I asked about this though and thats what led me on to the DS3, then eventually to the conroe, because the Mobo I originally had in that system is a complete tool... Plus, it was DDR1 which cannot have helped things.

But, the P4 and the DS3 coupled with cheap n nasty DDR2 RAM, allowed me to clock the hell out of the P4 and finally I started to see that intels really can be good systems, its just that the P4HT cannot handle multitaskign as good as they say it can... Even the newcastle was multitasking better I think ( The reason why I chose the Newcastle against the P4 was simply that I had them next to each other and no other reason )

I have since got a Conroe, another DS3 Board, and some better RAM and I am finding that Even the conroe has been a little overhyped, or maybe that I havebeen sucked into the hype and seeing people get under 10 seconds when I have only under extreme clocking gone under 30 with my AMDs, sort of Made it all up for me, only to find that I am only a little bit better off!

And yes, I have said it a number of times now, but for 99.9% of users, the conroe will be far better than an AMD, and I am one of those 0.01% that is just in the league of extraordinary bellends who likes to push their PC way over what can realistically be asked of it, and I feel that my AMDs can handle it better... Not faster, but better. In this I mean that I can carry on opening programs and run them at a good pace, whereas the intels simply get slower and slower and slower at a much faster rate than the AMD does.

Again, dont get me wrong here... My next purchase is actually going to be another conroe... This time Im looking at the Kentsfield, but again, only because I do indeed like to run tons of stuff, but agian, as I have said... I do it because I can.

Its no longer a matter of fanboyism for me... Its more a matter of what I feel more comfortable with and right now, its my good old ( OLD? ) AMD.

 

[FatRakoon]

Sorry to hijack the thread - but I was wondering how do you tell that both C2D cores are enabled? In my windows task manager I have one graph for CPU useage and two graphs for CPU useage history (and I'm running a Conroe 6300). Is this how it should appear or should I have two separate CPU useage graphs with C2D and windows XP?

Yes,thats how it should be.

The one on the left is total CPU useage ( REALTIME ) and the ones on the right are Per-core useage ( HISTORY )

 

[Nutbusta]

i moved to a E6600 C2D from an overclocked 3800+ X2. the C2D is faster clock per clock but not that much. the real strength is in the overclocking headroom IMO



it isn't twice as fast in general. superpi only shows that the conroe is faster at doing superpi. means nothing for programs that work in a different way. from reading XS it's mostly down to the cache i think. either way, it's not twice as fast.

if it were then when i encode videos, my encoding speed would have near doubled going from a 2.8 X2 to a 2.4 C2D. it didnt. its about 20-25% at most (without overclocking)

Not completely true. I have run Super Pi on a Sempron 256k at 2.6Gb and a SD at 2.6Gb and the result? Both do 1m in 37 seconds?

My thought on this is that SuperPI1m is small enought to fit in (or at least mostly) the 256k cache.

@FatRakoon. I don't think you need to verify this as I have read similare threads saying that people have found X2's to be better multi taskers and in particulare, task switching and loaded loading times.

 

[Rizz]

I dont think the CD2 was overhyped Amd was the chip to have P4,s couldnt compete against the a64 or x2,s now they can and they clock well for a good price. I still like my x2 its my brothers now and multitasking was good for sure, but I didnt like the fact that AMD dropped 939 and went to DD2, that was enough for many to go CD2 and see what they could clock too. And before the price cuts the fx and x2 were stupid money.

 

[FatRakoon]

And of course Intel have not had to drop ANY of their prices have they?

Oh, while Im here... Full spec of the conroe

Case = Thermalte Armour
Mobo = DS3 ( F7 Bios )
RAM = Geil 6400 ULL
CPU = E6300 @ 3.01Ghz - Artic Freezer
PSU = Qtec 300w ( Only joking its a Hyper 530 )
GFX = X800GTO2 @ 850

PCI Cards
AUD = XFI
IDE = ITE8212
TV = Mercury

HDs
SATA0 = Hitachi 80GB ( C:=8GB Windaz & T:=68GB ISOs )
SATA1 = Raptor36 ( M: - Downloads )

SATA2 = Seagate 250GB ( D:164GB Apps + F:68GB Junk stuff )
SATA3 = Seagate 250GB ( E: Media )

IDE 0 + 1 ( Mobo ) = 2 x DVDRW
IDE 0 + 1 ( Card ) = 2 x DVDRW

PSU Overpowered? Possible... I have taken drives away and one minimal tests but found no benefits

I really should move the Raptor to the Purple connections and I think I will do that in a few minutes and see if that gives me any improvement, plus I want to see more into booting into this ACHI mode thingy that seems to also provide some improvements, and one other issue that I am needing to sort out is that one of my RAID drives was a bit grindy, so I took it out and have now installed to just the one... I have just realised last night that I am still using the grindy one, so its yet another F&R coming up... Most likely tonight.

Couple of other issues that may or may not provide me with some gains and these will all be addressed as soon as I knuckle down with another install.