frequency vs fsb vs cache vs cores vs onboard memory controller?

[p3ndldqny2]

Can someone either provide me with a link to a good tutorial, or just say it on here but how does one judge all these varying factors with regards to a CPU's performance?

It appears now we cant look at frequency, so i look at fsb and cache size, but then ive heard people say ignore the fsb etc



To me, as a programmer, more cores doesnt really interest me because i know from a programming viewpoint its very hard to try utillise all cores.

 

[p3ndldqny2]

Cache is, to the best of my knowledge, great for number crunching. Photoshop, video rendering, etc, I think do much better with a large cache. Arguably compile times might be better, but unless you're working on something utterly gigantic, any modern CPU will chew through it just a few seconds anyway.

I dont play games, but i design real-time systems which do a lot of calculations per second/millisecond.

So at the moment im writing a real-time OS detection system, i would say calculations are done every second, but if i could make the period half a second it would be even better.

Therefore, multicore can be useful, but the ability to sequentially calculate many instructions per second is very useful.

I guess that would mean i number-crunch more?

 

[p3ndldqny2]

Looks like xeon l5609 would be useful for me, its the cheapest CPU i could find that has 12MB of L3 cache.... approximately 350 pounds.

Only problem is... 1.8 GHz?

What do you think guys?

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=47928

EDIT: Or opteron 6128:

233 pounds, 2 x 6 MB L3 cache, 2GHz

 

[p3ndldqny2]

2 of this is what you need. Intel Xeon X5680 3.33GHz (Westmere) (Socket 1366) and use this motherboard if you can find one. EVGA SR2

lol yeh back to reality.....

I found another Intel Xeon 12MB processor:
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=47925

would one of these work in a normal i7 motherboard?

 

[p3ndldqny2]

What have you been using in the past?

Laptop ive got an i7 620M and on desktop i am using an E6600 overclocked to 3.55Ghz.

 

[p3ndldqny2]

i think cache can make a difference in the right scenario (then again, so does almost everything else). Taking the phenom II and athlon II. Both pretty much the same die except the phenom has a nice huge slab of shared L3 cache and the athlon does not. superpi 1m times between the two are almost the same (assuming same clockspeed and core count). super pi 32m and the phenom takes a significant leap ahead. Evidently the athlons cache is not large enough to hold 32 million digits in one go XD.

however, an extra core or two is probably going to be much better in the long run than a few more megs of cache.

Do you know where i can get superpi results of various processors, like a graphical comparison?

I found this website:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

but it seems to be a little too general, SuperPi results would be great

 

[p3ndldqny2]

cant find my exact example (i have seen it somewhere...), but i found similar:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2489&page=7

compare the athlon ii 635 (3.1ghz quad) with the phenom ii 955 (3.2ghz quad). It does 1M, 8M and 16M. Notice how the phenom pulls away more and more in each test. Annoyingly that site hasnt reviewed the athlon 640, but like i said, its close enough for me to make my point.

You couldnt possibly imagine how much i'd love to get my hands on one of those Xeons with 24MB of L3 !!!!!!!

(Thanks for the link)

 

[p3ndldqny2]

You can go to HWBOT and have a look at a couple of thousand CPU comparison and Super Pi.

But based on what CPU you have been using I can say with certainty that the i7 range of CPU's will offer a huge boost in work output.

However the next generation Sandybridge is due out very soon and will be the next main Intel product line for a while. So I would wait a few more months and go that route. The on-board cache makes all the difference.

I will go over to HWBOT and have a look for a link that shows you the data you want to see.


HWBOT


And go have a look at AnandTech too.

Thanks for this, i shall have a good look!