z0mbi3 said:
I'll rephrase it for you then:
And saying people dont need the extra power is BS IMO
Everyone wants a faster pc.
Whether they need it or not.
Especially when it can cost the same or even less than a slower system.
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C2D v X2 = Not as good as you think?
- Thread starter FatRakoon
- Start date
I'll rephrase it for you then:
And saying people dont need the extra power is BS IMO
Everyone wants a faster pc.
Whether they need it or not.
Especially when it can cost the same or even less than a slower system.
lay-z-boy said:
For 110 quid you can have a 6300 overclocked to 3.4ghz and its a lot faster than anything by AMD in this price range clocked to there capacity.
Take a X2 3800 clocked at 2,8ghz (if you are lucky and have water cooling )
It just aint as fast as the 6300 running at 3.4ghz is it?
I know I upgraded from an opty 170 @2.8ghz and my conore flattens it in every single thing.
Not just by a little my a massive ammount.
It seems to me that poeple who are saying rubbish like K8 is not that much slower are saying this to justify there own K8 systems.
In reality conroe is faster much faster it wipes the floor with every single AMD processor at the moment even dual cores 170's etc...and AM2 running @ 3ghz plus.
Don't see why people just cant admit the fact.
Its true I'm not making it up.
I upgrade a lot and I was staggered how much faster conroe is in everything I do from Video editing to gaming to multitasking.
Stating that K8 is not really slower is nothing but absolute nonsense.
If you are fine with your K8 PC's performance then thats fine but dont come out with rubbish like its only a little bit slower or even equal to a conore rig.
Its just not.I have had many systems and different hardware setups and conroe is by far the fastest out of the lot.
Its in a different league.
Thats why so many poeple are upgrading to conroe from 3ghz s939 opty rigs.
They are not doing for the fun of it.They are doing in order not to bottleneck their new 8800 GTX's etc..
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Soldato
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These selectable CPU charts might be of some interest if you haven't seen them before.
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very interesting article fatrakoon .
and i think your right its horses for different courses , i own three pc's now p4 650 an x2 4600 and core2duo t5500 laptop .i don't multitask much and really only play one game so i am going back to my opty 146 and overclock it as much as possible best solution for my needs
and i think your right its horses for different courses , i own three pc's now p4 650 an x2 4600 and core2duo t5500 laptop .i don't multitask much and really only play one game so i am going back to my opty 146 and overclock it as much as possible best solution for my needs
easyrider said:
I see what you are saying on all those points you made except you also left out one vital point...
RAM.
Ok, the CPU does acheive these figures, however, in order to get those speeds, you cant just use any old RAM.
When the C2D came out, you also had to go and buy a new Motherboard too come to think of it, so this £110 is a little misleading isnt it?
Be honest now, when oyu upgraded to your Conroe, how much did you have to pay out to get it running?
I know I have had to fork out for the CPU, RAM, and a new Conroe capable Motherboard, and thats from a 3.6Ghz P4.
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Also, to get 2.8Ghz from an X2 3800 you dont need Water. My A64 PCs that have hit 3Ghz have done it on Air, and been cool enough to not even consider Water.
Please... You have pointed out about AMD Fans talking rubbish, so dont you start doing the same.
How do you explain FatRakoon's observations? He's saying that in a heavy multitasking environment the AMD system is doing better than the Intel system - so much so he's even chosen to use the AMD as his main system.easyrider said:
Then what Fatrakoon has found goes against probably every review and comparison of the two cores and most probably every conroe user who has made the switch from an AMD system (me inc). Believe me, if my old AMD setup was quicker at ANY task I would say so. It is not. The AMD system I had (Opty 170 @2.7) was no slouch and was more than adequate of doing anything I wanted but my conroe @ 3.7 seriously puts it in the shade and I don't just mean SuperPI either.
Multitasking - I have almost forgotten what an egg-timer looks like!
Gaming - Comparing both setups with a GX2 the AMD and conroe setup were more or less equal in fps until you upped the res and added all the goodies. This is when the AMD cpu started to bottleneck the GX2 whereas the C2D provided a little more juice.
Encoding I am not a big encoder but I did find that video encoding appeared quicker on the conroe setup and unzipping files were much quicker.
Its all out there on the net, it's not just hype its fact. In hindsight I didn't need to upgrade from an already fast system and the benifits of a ultra fast system from an already quick one were less noticable (but noticable nonetheless) than say if I upgraded from a XP chip but anyone considering a new pc from scratch would be a fool to bypass C2D imo - especially for the price.
I hope K8L is a triumph and provides some competition to intel but the un-nerving silence from both AMD and (as a GPU upgrade addict!) ATI aswell is worrying.
Multitasking - I have almost forgotten what an egg-timer looks like!
Gaming - Comparing both setups with a GX2 the AMD and conroe setup were more or less equal in fps until you upped the res and added all the goodies. This is when the AMD cpu started to bottleneck the GX2 whereas the C2D provided a little more juice.
Encoding I am not a big encoder but I did find that video encoding appeared quicker on the conroe setup and unzipping files were much quicker.
Its all out there on the net, it's not just hype its fact. In hindsight I didn't need to upgrade from an already fast system and the benifits of a ultra fast system from an already quick one were less noticable (but noticable nonetheless) than say if I upgraded from a XP chip but anyone considering a new pc from scratch would be a fool to bypass C2D imo - especially for the price.
I hope K8L is a triumph and provides some competition to intel but the un-nerving silence from both AMD and (as a GPU upgrade addict!) ATI aswell is worrying.
FatRakoon said:
My mate has just upgraded to conroe from his opty 146.
He had 2 gig of geil value 3200 ram with that setup.
Guess what he sold that kit for £135 and bought some DDR 2 Geil 6400 for an extra £35
Well I have just advised another forum member scoobie dave to upgrade to conroe from his 3ghz 165 setup.
Guess what?
After selling his DFI mobo,165 and ram on MM the upgrade to conroe cost him all of £40
6300
DS3
Geil 6400
I was an early conroe adopter.I did the research and sold my opty 170 that could do 2.8ghz @ 1.375 at auction for £240.
Two weeks before AMD slashed the pricing on the X2 range by 50%, as they new they had to do this in order for people to buy the X2 range, as conroe was going to destroy it in every area.
I sold my G Skill HZ DDR2 500 for £145
I sold my DFI expert for £100
So do the math.
The fact is though many X2 3800's will not do 2.8ghz you need to be lucky to get this speed with an X2.
I speak from experience having owned 3.
Optys run cooler than X2's and you have more chance getting 2.8ghz on air than x2 3800's fact.
Don't see how any of what I am saying is rubbish.
Upgrading to conroe can ,and will ,cost less than you think if you sell your previous stuff.
I have talked through many people on MSN from this very forum about upgrading to conroe from their 3 ghz opty setups and after selling their stuff and getting conroe.And I have had nothing but thanks for suggesting they switch and amazement at how much faster their rigs are.
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Ok, try the most simple test to get an example of what I am talking about...
Whatever is in your system right now, it should not make too much of a difference and you will probably get the idea on how I mean...
1 - Run Folding At Home on both cores. I think Folding at Home is about the best example, because the idea of how that works, is that it uses up CPU time thats NOT being used.
No apps and FAH uses up 100% btu as soon as the CPU gets used, it drops off to 0%
2 - Now run a program that converts something to another thing... MP3 to WAV or AVI to DVD or such like... Anything will do but oviously if its MP3 then the job will be done before you can grasp the idea. One that uses up both cores is preferable, if it uses only one, run another instance of it
3 - Have a look at TASKMAN, and what FAH cores are up to and the program you are using to encode the stuff...
You will notice that even FAH is eating up a lot of CPU time, giving less to the encoding.
4 - Cycle through the Start menu... Tell me honestly if everything comes up instantly ( Sub-Menus ) or if there is a small gap for it to bring them up ( I know you can change the time of the menus to apprear, so it depends on that as well )
5 - DeFrag all your partitions ( I have currently 6 partitions on 4 Drives ) - C: and T: are sharing I use T: for ISO Images, and D: and F: are sharing, my Apps & Games are on D: and F: is junk, E: is my media, and M: is my downlaods - utorrent is on permanently, currently downloading 12 files
6 - burn as many disks as you can, I have 4 DVDRW Drives, and so I burn 4 DVDs at a time, this should take nothign out of the CPU, but will take the time from the HDs
7 - Now, open up Notepad and tell me its still instant?
On the AMDs it is.
On the P4 I gave up waiting long ago and the conroe takes 3 or 4 seconds.
Now play a game. and tell me its still perfectly playable?
On the AMD it is... Slight pause when its loading up but thats to be expected.
Games like Doom3 and Quake 4 have a slightly larger pause between levels but thats because Im also defragging all my partitions, and burning disks
The conroe is bubbly ( Jerky ) all the way through, takes 5 times longer to start up ( Not that I have timed it, youcan see its slower ) and I can go out and fill the kettle in between times of it loading levels.
I accept the Conroe is quicker. Id be a total liar to say any other way, and this, I will never argue about.
The fact is, that with any system, you push it, each task gets less and less time to do its job right... This is obvious.
The thing is, that the AMD canstill flick between each job with complete ease and speed while the conroe gets worse and worse at it.
I mean, use CTRL-TAB and cycle through each app, to bring it up to the front and on the AMD... BANG! - there it is in about half a second, but on the conroe, Im waiting for it to shuffle the top app to the bottom, and then bring up the new app and let it finish displaying the page... Much like as if I have not installed the video drivers yet.
At this time, the AMD has an X800GTO2 and the conroe has the X1600, but previously the GFX Cards were the other way round and even though the x1600 is slower than the 800 it makes no difference here.
If I open up Notepad here, on the conroe I can wait 5 seconds easily... The AMD... Instant again.
Its this kind of pressure I put my systems under all the time. Hell, even my barton 3200 in the NF7S was capable of doing all this, albeit a fair bit slower, but at least it also didnt give me the waiting times in between loading apps and messing about within windows and cycling through my jobs was quick and painless.
Yes, the conroe is way quicker than the AMD, howevr, once loaded up, the speed of the AMD starts to shine through and in the end, it makes it a much better workhorse than the conroe ( For me ) and so after a few weeks, I have decided that I am much better off in sticking to the AMD as my main PC.
Like I said, the conroe when its only doing the basics or one or two things at a time, as 99.9% of people will only ever do, is vastly superior to the AMD, its just that I need it to do more.
Ok, right now, I am burning 3 DVDs, I am using DVDSanta to convert 2 AVI files into one DVD, Im also using DVD-2-ONE to convert another file, when DVDSanta has finished on its 2 files, I will add it to the DVD2ONE file, and build up a DVD using TMPGEnc, but at this time, I am also converting the last lot to a finished DVD with TMPGDVDEnc. In all, I am currently working on 2 AVI files, and 7 DVDs if you consider both the INPUT and OUTPUT of the programs... Taking into account that I am also downloading 12 torrents and defragging all 6 partitions and while I am havign a browse through the forums, I have just paused NeedForSpeed.
Im doing this one the AMD because it takes too long on the conroe.
Hey, I have not checked this one out, but perhaps if I left the PCs alone, which would finish all the jobs first?
I will do some stuff later on for that... I just need to finish off some thigns first.
Whatever is in your system right now, it should not make too much of a difference and you will probably get the idea on how I mean...
1 - Run Folding At Home on both cores. I think Folding at Home is about the best example, because the idea of how that works, is that it uses up CPU time thats NOT being used.
No apps and FAH uses up 100% btu as soon as the CPU gets used, it drops off to 0%
2 - Now run a program that converts something to another thing... MP3 to WAV or AVI to DVD or such like... Anything will do but oviously if its MP3 then the job will be done before you can grasp the idea. One that uses up both cores is preferable, if it uses only one, run another instance of it
3 - Have a look at TASKMAN, and what FAH cores are up to and the program you are using to encode the stuff...
You will notice that even FAH is eating up a lot of CPU time, giving less to the encoding.
4 - Cycle through the Start menu... Tell me honestly if everything comes up instantly ( Sub-Menus ) or if there is a small gap for it to bring them up ( I know you can change the time of the menus to apprear, so it depends on that as well )
5 - DeFrag all your partitions ( I have currently 6 partitions on 4 Drives ) - C: and T: are sharing I use T: for ISO Images, and D: and F: are sharing, my Apps & Games are on D: and F: is junk, E: is my media, and M: is my downlaods - utorrent is on permanently, currently downloading 12 files
6 - burn as many disks as you can, I have 4 DVDRW Drives, and so I burn 4 DVDs at a time, this should take nothign out of the CPU, but will take the time from the HDs
7 - Now, open up Notepad and tell me its still instant?
On the AMDs it is.
On the P4 I gave up waiting long ago and the conroe takes 3 or 4 seconds.
Now play a game. and tell me its still perfectly playable?
On the AMD it is... Slight pause when its loading up but thats to be expected.
Games like Doom3 and Quake 4 have a slightly larger pause between levels but thats because Im also defragging all my partitions, and burning disks
The conroe is bubbly ( Jerky ) all the way through, takes 5 times longer to start up ( Not that I have timed it, youcan see its slower ) and I can go out and fill the kettle in between times of it loading levels.
I accept the Conroe is quicker. Id be a total liar to say any other way, and this, I will never argue about.
The fact is, that with any system, you push it, each task gets less and less time to do its job right... This is obvious.
The thing is, that the AMD canstill flick between each job with complete ease and speed while the conroe gets worse and worse at it.
I mean, use CTRL-TAB and cycle through each app, to bring it up to the front and on the AMD... BANG! - there it is in about half a second, but on the conroe, Im waiting for it to shuffle the top app to the bottom, and then bring up the new app and let it finish displaying the page... Much like as if I have not installed the video drivers yet.
At this time, the AMD has an X800GTO2 and the conroe has the X1600, but previously the GFX Cards were the other way round and even though the x1600 is slower than the 800 it makes no difference here.
If I open up Notepad here, on the conroe I can wait 5 seconds easily... The AMD... Instant again.
Its this kind of pressure I put my systems under all the time. Hell, even my barton 3200 in the NF7S was capable of doing all this, albeit a fair bit slower, but at least it also didnt give me the waiting times in between loading apps and messing about within windows and cycling through my jobs was quick and painless.
Yes, the conroe is way quicker than the AMD, howevr, once loaded up, the speed of the AMD starts to shine through and in the end, it makes it a much better workhorse than the conroe ( For me ) and so after a few weeks, I have decided that I am much better off in sticking to the AMD as my main PC.
Like I said, the conroe when its only doing the basics or one or two things at a time, as 99.9% of people will only ever do, is vastly superior to the AMD, its just that I need it to do more.
Ok, right now, I am burning 3 DVDs, I am using DVDSanta to convert 2 AVI files into one DVD, Im also using DVD-2-ONE to convert another file, when DVDSanta has finished on its 2 files, I will add it to the DVD2ONE file, and build up a DVD using TMPGEnc, but at this time, I am also converting the last lot to a finished DVD with TMPGDVDEnc. In all, I am currently working on 2 AVI files, and 7 DVDs if you consider both the INPUT and OUTPUT of the programs... Taking into account that I am also downloading 12 torrents and defragging all 6 partitions and while I am havign a browse through the forums, I have just paused NeedForSpeed.
Im doing this one the AMD because it takes too long on the conroe.
Hey, I have not checked this one out, but perhaps if I left the PCs alone, which would finish all the jobs first?
I will do some stuff later on for that... I just need to finish off some thigns first.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 13 May 2003
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- 34,515
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- Warwickshire
I know many people that have gone from DC A64s to Conroe's, as I will be doing in January, and they all say that multitasking is better as I've been asking them on MSN having read this thread. FatRakoon - is there any chance that your C2d system is cluttered or is it a fresh install?
PMSL 
Hmmm
I smell BS
Anyone who defrags their hardrives wen burning DVD's is a noob.
I'm sorry its should be a scheduled task thats done when the pc is not in use.
Half the stuff you talk of has nothing to do with CPU power but with disk access.
Are you burning the 4 DVD's at the same time at 16x?
ROTFL
P.S its ALT-TAB to cycle through apps not CTRL-TAB
Hmmm
I smell BS
Anyone who defrags their hardrives wen burning DVD's is a noob.
I'm sorry its should be a scheduled task thats done when the pc is not in use.
Half the stuff you talk of has nothing to do with CPU power but with disk access.
Are you burning the 4 DVD's at the same time at 16x?
ROTFL
P.S its ALT-TAB to cycle through apps not CTRL-TAB
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Caporegime
- Joined
- 13 May 2003
- Posts
- 34,515
- Location
- Warwickshire
^
Lol, ctrl-tab works too. It's instant cycling rather than browsed cycling. N00b
Lol, ctrl-tab works too. It's instant cycling rather than browsed cycling. N00b
FatRakoon,
Have you actually checked cpu usage when doing notepad, when i start notepad cpu usage doesnt go above 2 %, although i do hear my hdd seeking, as easyrider said, most of your probs sound like hdd lag, nothing to do with the cpu itself, or with wrong settings, like windows useing most res for program x instead of for program y or user input, all fix-able with ctrl-alt-del and set priority's... ( for cpu anyhow).
4 DVD's at once? How can you stand that, i usually get ****** for just having to burn one, i hate starting up software, putting empty dvd's in, etc etc...
Also you know its bad to defrag a hdd being used?
( not that i dont do that myself sometimes )
But i seriously think you have problems with your config, and with a proper tweak everything would crush the amd...
Have you actually checked cpu usage when doing notepad, when i start notepad cpu usage doesnt go above 2 %, although i do hear my hdd seeking, as easyrider said, most of your probs sound like hdd lag, nothing to do with the cpu itself, or with wrong settings, like windows useing most res for program x instead of for program y or user input, all fix-able with ctrl-alt-del and set priority's... ( for cpu anyhow).
4 DVD's at once? How can you stand that, i usually get ****** for just having to burn one, i hate starting up software, putting empty dvd's in, etc etc...
Also you know its bad to defrag a hdd being used?
( not that i dont do that myself sometimes )But i seriously think you have problems with your config, and with a proper tweak everything would crush the amd...