CPU Question

[Converge]

Hey everyone,

Now i know this is gonna seem silly, but im a beginner at CPU strengths and weaknesses etc,

I dont understand how these new conroe chips are faster, because they are clocked lower, anyone able to tell me?

How is one faster than my 3.2Ghz P4 CPU?

I know, i know, probably really silly question, but we all gotta start somewhere

P.S (i dont overclock by the way, so are they faster normally?)

 

[Stelly]

Hey everyone,

Now i know this is gonna seem silly, but im a beginner at CPU strengths and weaknesses etc,

I dont understand how these new conroe chips are faster, because they are clocked lower, anyone able to tell me?

How is one faster than my 3.2Ghz P4 CPU?

I know, i know, probably really silly question, but we all gotta start somewhere

P.S (i dont overclock by the way, so are they faster normally?)

This is due to the fact that Intel have change their architecture and dropped netburst as well... Conroe are more efficient chips as well... its not all about clock speed mate... AMD showed us this

Stelly

 

[hp7909]

Hey everyone,

Now i know this is gonna seem silly, but im a beginner at CPU strengths and weaknesses etc,

I dont understand how these new conroe chips are faster, because they are clocked lower, anyone able to tell me?

How is one faster than my 3.2Ghz P4 CPU?

I know, i know, probably really silly question, but we all gotta start somewhere

P.S (i dont overclock by the way, so are they faster normally?)

First off its Dual-Core meaning two chips in 1 - don't know if they still do Hyper-Threading, because that will make them 4-in-1

Also, these new chips are 65nm fabricated - smaller & running way cooler than your 3.2GHz P4, which has many advantages!

 

[Jokester]

Yeah, it's all to do with how many instructions per clock, each instruction takes so many clock cycles to complete.

Intel PIV (Netburst)>A64>Conroe

The A64 was substantially more efficient than Netburst but obviously was running at a fair bit slower clock rate, but still sufficiently fast to be quicker then PIVs once you were getting into the 2.4GHz+ sort of range. Conroe is looking like not only being a more efficient design, but also capable of considerable faster clock speeds at the same time.

Jokester

 

[Stelly]

First off its Dual-Core meaning two chips in 1 - don't know if they still do Hyper-Threading, because that will make them 4-in-1

Also, these new chips are 65nm fabricated - smaller & running way cooler than your 3.2GHz P4, which has many advantages!

I dont think that they do Hyperthreading FYI


Stelly

 

[hp7909]

Core 2 is an eighth-generation x86 architecture microprocessor to be produced by Intel based on an all-new CPU design called the Intel Core Microarchitecture, which will replace the NetBurst architecture that has powered Intel processors since 2000.

Unlike Netburst-based processors, such as the Pentium 4 and Pentium D, Core 2 will not stress designs based on stratospheric clock speeds but rather improvements on other CPU features, including cache size and number of cores. Intel claims that the power consumption of these processors is to be extremely low compared to the Pentiums before.

Intel has claimed that Conroe will provide 40% more performance at 40% less power relative to the Pentium D.

 

[Corasik]

Some of the latest benchmarks coming out are indicating that a 2.13Ghz Core 2 Duo will out perform a 3.73Ghz P4 Extreme Edition (965), in the majority of test cases, and is extremely strong with gaming, and media encoding tasks.

The 2.13Ghz Core 2 also pretty much beats the AMD FX60, and even has a good go at the FX62.

Rest assured that even the more modest low price conroe will considerably out perform a 3.2Ghz P4.

1 thing though, the benchmark was still made using an engineering sample that had 4meg of cache, the retail 2.13 only has 2meg, so it may not be quite as fast as indicated.

That said the 2.4Ghz Conroe has the full 4meg of cache, and should be a very quick little processor, and at a very reasonable price, considering it will beat any processor available today, and is rumored to be a good clocker.

One of the reasons conroe is going to be fast, is because of the number of execution units it has. An AMD, or a P4 is able to issue 3 instructions across each CPU core in parallel. A Conroe processor can issue 4 instructions at ones, and in some instances it can even combine 2 instructions together creating the illusion of 5 instructions at once. This 'instruction fusion' is supposed to happen on average 1 in every 10 instructions.

So on every clock cycle, the Conroe processor will do more work.

Another reason conroe will be faster is because it has a shorter pipeline. This is a queue of instructions being fed into the processor's heart, instructions are dumped into this queue by 'predicting' what the cpu will need to do next. Unfortunatly, anytime the CPU follows a branch in a program, there is a good chance that the queued instructions could be for the 'wrong' choice in the branch. When this happens the cpu is stalled while a new queue is built up in the pipeline. With a shorter queue, the conroe will be stalled for less time when this happens.

There are many other reasons why Conroe will beat P4 very easily, but those are two of the more 'easy' concepts to explain. Clock speed is important, but efficient design is even more important when looking at high performance computing.

 

[Converge]

Brilliant, thanks for the good responses guys, thats made things clearer for me

Much appreciated, think i'll go for the 4 meg Cache version

Oh also, im upgrading everything i have to PCI-E, meaning i will be getting a conroe compatible motherboard, at the mo im using 2gb (4 x 512mb) of DDR 3200 Ram, will i need to get DDR2 sticks?

Thanks.

 

[mercyless]

yes,you need ddr2 mem for conroe

 

[daviebhoy]

yeah you will need to get ddr2 ram as ddr is incompatable.

 

[Converge]

Thanks a lot, very helpful all of you

 

[Converge]

ah whoops, i completely forgot to ask.

Does this mean due to the cpu having 64-bit technology (the conroe chip) do you need windows XP 64 to run it too?

lol, thanks again!

 

[Defcon5]

No it will run on normal windows, but should be faster on the 64bit version