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Xanbatou
United States805 Posts
I am looking to build a new computer. However, I recently heard about the new sandy bridge processors, and I am curious if it is worth getting the i5-2500x over the phenom x6 1055t. The phenom has 6 cores and a lower clock rate, while the i5 has 4 cores and a higher clockrate and it is also 32nm as opposed to 45nm. I've heard people say that the sandy bridge processors will blow predecessors out of the water, but how do they really compare? | ||
infinitestory
United States4053 Posts
Although my guess would be that Sandy Bridge does in fact blow everything else out of the water | ||
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R04R
United States1631 Posts
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row/8 Also check the rest of the pages. The i5-2400 has performance as close to Intel's current-flagship $1000 980x. Wait for them to come out. It should be worth it. | ||
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Rouel
Sweden138 Posts
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Kyuki
Sweden1867 Posts
I mean if you are actually rendering, ripping, decoding and generally work alot and multitask with your computer AMDs hexacore is the cheapest and most efficient worktool there is on the market. However if you are a normal user, it's pretty obvious that there is no need for 6 cores, and the faster chipsets and clockspeeds will out do the hexacore on benchmark tests and ofc in games and other things on a lower multitask rate. The advices given here are good though. Just wait for sandybridge and see, but you should look at what kind of user you are before you go ahead and rule anything out due to benchmark tests, since they can be quite missleading at times. | ||
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Xanbatou
United States805 Posts
As far as what kind of user I am, I am a computer science major that plays starcraft 2 and wants to play skryim when it comes out. | ||
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infinitestory
United States4053 Posts
On December 20 2010 17:55 Kyuki wrote: AwrRr I just get so annoyed when looking at the benchmarks. They point to the strengths of the quad cores but does nothing to point out the strengths of the cheaper hexacore from AMD. I mean if you are actually rendering, ripping, decoding and generally work alot and multitask with your computer AMDs hexacore is the cheapest and most efficient worktool there is on the market. However if you are a normal user, it's pretty obvious that there is no need for 6 cores, and the faster chipsets and clockspeeds will out do the hexacore on benchmark tests and ofc in games and other things on a lower multitask rate. The advices given here are good though. Just wait for sandybridge and see, but you should look at what kind of user you are before you go ahead and rule anything out due to benchmark tests, since they can be quite missleading at times. According to the anandtech article, the i5 2400 they tested is going to be in the same price bracket as the current i5-650, which is under $200, while the AMD processor tested in the article is upside of $200. Even price-wise, Sandy Bridge looks to be a smashing success. :o although that still doesn't mean jump the gun on it. | ||
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Xanbatou
United States805 Posts
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Teim
Australia373 Posts
Also, no games will properly utilise a six core machine anyway. Of course, future games will, but you should never try to future proof a computer. If money is an issue, your best bet would be to go the Phenom X4 965 BE . | ||
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Kyuki
Sweden1867 Posts
On December 20 2010 18:03 infinitestory wrote: According to the anandtech article, the i5 2400 they tested is going to be in the same price bracket as the current i5-650, which is under $200, while the AMD processor tested in the article is upside of $200. Even price-wise, Sandy Bridge looks to be a smashing success. :o although that still doesn't mean jump the gun on it. Well that's not the point. I'm not arguing about how strong the sandy bridge CPUs will be, and neither about their price. Unless it's a comparission between hexacores it's generally unwise to even try things that are just heavy for the clockrate, for obvious reasons right? I'd only argue For the hexacore for what I wrote about above, but even including it in a test when you look at its clockrates makes it a obvious looser in benchmarks - besides the old structure. The Sandy Bridge looks really promising though indeed.  | ||
Womwomwom
5930 Posts
Basically if you buy a 1055T, the cheapest Thuban, you're probably going to overclock it to 4ghz since they're all very overclockable, kind of weak out of the box, and not particularly hard to tame. Because of this, its very cheap to get a computer that does heavily threaded tasks very well especially if you have a old AMD motherboard. The pricing of their chips is literally the only thing AMD does well in the CPU sector. Even if mid range Sandy Bridge chips only have 4 cores and no hyperthreading, it will blow the Thubans out of the water at stock speeds. If you want to bring overclocking into the picture, apparently people are getting these chips to 5ghz on just air. The real competition for Sandy Bridge is Bulldozer but we've barely seen anything about it that is really worthwhile for consumers and since Bulldozer requires a new motherboard anyway, there isn't much point waiting for it if you need a computer right now. | ||
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haduken
Australia8267 Posts
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KentHenry
United States260 Posts
On a side note, if you're looking to have a rig that can be upgraded in the future I suggest going AMD, because they usually stick with one CPU socket for quite some time and are good at being backwards compatible. Intel, on the other hand, comes out with new CPU sockets every 8-10 months. So if a new processor comes out from Intel and you want to get it as an upgrade you might not be able to; you won't have that problem with AMD. | ||
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Riskymilk
30 Posts
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skyR
Canada13817 Posts
Older processors don't drop in price unless Intel specifically cuts the prices for them. Why do people always assume price drops happen when it is known that the 10 years in the history of processors, EOL processors have never dropped in price EVER (unless its a microcenter which not a lot of people have near them..) You realized AMD has introduced more consumer sockets than Intel in the past five years right? 754, 939, AM2, AM2+, AM3, and soon to be AM3+ compared to Intel's 775, 1156, 1366, soon to be 1155, and 2011. If you are buying with upgrading in mind than Sandybridge is the better choice since Intel has said Ivybridge will be keeping the 1155 socket while AMD has said nothing about the next-gen Bulldozer keeping AM3+. It's a bad idea to plan for processor upgrades anyways imo, just buy a Sandybridge and be happy with it for 3-5 years and than upgrade to Haswell/Rockwell. @Xanbatou Motherboards will be in the same price range as the current P55 motherboards ($100 - $300) but you probably won't be seeing motherboards under $130 at the initial launch though... Entry boards such as the UD3 will most likely be $150 due to price gauging. edit: UD3 @ $141.93 (http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=111128253) ASUS P67 @ $165 (http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=111128342) | ||
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Soleron
United Kingdom1324 Posts
That's misleading. There were three incompatible variants of 775 which required a new motherboard to upgrade. While AM2 -> AM2+ -> AM3 each did not need a new motherboard for new procs. AMD has been better at providing a new upgrade path recently. You are right in that the next big platforms (Bulldozer AM3+ and Sandy Bridge 1155) are both incompatible upgrades. OP, why are you comparing Sandy Bridge to Phenom X6? You're excluding AMD's new procs coming early Q2, Bulldozer, which should increase performance dramatically. If you compare current to current, the Phenom X6s are price competitive with current Core i5/i7s. If you compare next-gen to next-gen, SB should be comparable to Bulldozer. The Phenom X6 1100T is the AMD flagship (3.3GHz with 3.7GHz Turbo) is competitive with the similarly-priced Intel i7 870 ($265). Obviously the >$1000 Intel hex-core is faster. | ||
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clusen
Germany8702 Posts
On December 20 2010 18:08 Xanbatou wrote: My only concern is how much the new motherboards are going to cost =/. They are quite cheap actually, starting at ~70€ in Germany, which is the same as S1156. Not as expensive as x58-mainboards ^^ | ||
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XenOmega
Canada2822 Posts
I see slightly faster install time with AMD1055. But in gaming, such as Starcraft2, I5-760 is so much better. Granted, my two builds use different video card : (with 1055, i use ATI5770, and with I5 I use nvidia 460), though I believe the two cards are similar in performance. I've always told myself it was because of slower card that the amd build was slower in games like starcraft, but i dont know for sure. I didn't bother overclocking my amd yet, but with time, i'll probably give it a try. | ||
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RandomAccount#49059
United States2140 Posts
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Boblion
France8043 Posts
On December 21 2010 01:24 XenOmega wrote: Granted, my two builds use different video card : (with 1055, i use ATI5770, and with I5 I use nvidia 460), though I believe the two cards are similar in performance. The 460 is way better than the 5770. | ||
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Kazius
Israel1456 Posts
The X6 architecture is great for things that are heavily multithreaded such as video transcoding and some forms of 3D processing, but these do not include games, office applications and browsing. If you run a anti-virus scan, while using every single internet security software, archive data, browse, and run Office, you will still not need more than a quad-core, and the Phenom II architecture will perform worse. Phenom II X6 are generally power-guzzlers, which make for a lot of heat in the case (and the need for more cooling and noise), and the need for a bigger PSU. I would recommend high core count CPUs specifically for people who know how to use them and need to do so. But to most people, a high core count is practically useless. | ||
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renkin
France249 Posts
Just like you, I wasn't sure what to buy, I just knew I needed a lot of cores for special applications ( 3d, compositing and rendering tasks ) In that particular case, the Phenom is a little better than 4 cores i5, i7 in performance and money. I'm quite happy with it. If you"re not doing anything that uses a lot of cores ( like gaming ) then just go for the cheapest route. | ||
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jimminy_kriket
Canada5532 Posts
But remember you are comparing an already released cpu to one that isnt even out yet, so the newer one will almost always be faster. Keep in mind that AMD also have unreleased CPU's which should be coming out soon I believe? Or at least hope. It's not really fare to compare old cpus vs new cpus. | ||
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Soleron
United Kingdom1324 Posts
Many games use three cores today (especially X360 ports because that has a tri-core CPU). The Athlon II X3 fares well against Intel duals for the price, even in game performance. I agree that hex-cores won't, but there are plenty of uses for a CPU outside of gaming that it is competitive in. The trend in CPUs is more cores. Games will catch up over the next few years, they are just starting to use 4 cores. Bulldozer will solve that, it is coming soon. AMD will again be competitive on single-core performance AND have more cores than Intel (eight). | ||
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skyR
Canada13817 Posts
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
If you run applications that are well-threaded, Bulldozer priced right looks like it should be great. The way Bulldozer modules are organized--essentially, two integer execution cores sharing a front end and a floating point unit--they should be very efficient at handling parallel integer workloads. edit: The articles are old, but Kanter's articles on Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge may be worth reading: Bulldozer Sandy Bridge <- the conclusion here has a (speculative) comparison between the two | ||
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Soleron
United Kingdom1324 Posts
On December 21 2010 06:20 skyR wrote: Sandybridge-E will have 8 cores and 8 threads (16 total) so no AMD won't have more cores than Intel. I haven't seen anything official saying SB 8-cores will come to the desktop. Server, certainly. But I believe they will be confined to high-end, 4-socket platforms. AMD will have a 16-core chip on the server, again 4S only. @Myrmidon Agreed that it's just speculation now. However it must be more competitive than the current situation. And AMD will always price it like for like whatever the matchup. BD's insane clockspeeds may help it a lot on single-core. Dresdenboy (someone similar to Kanter in technical knowledge) was predicting 4GHz. | ||
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Womwomwom
5930 Posts
Not worth that much since its pretty far away but something to take into account I guess. | ||
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Mr. Nefarious
United States515 Posts
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InvalidID
United States1050 Posts
On December 21 2010 10:01 Womwomwom wrote: Intel plans to phase out the dual core with the quad core and make octo cores (???) the quad core of today with Ivy Bridge. Of course that's a die shrink (22nm) and who knows what could go wrong in the process but Intel is definitely planning to do that. Not worth that much since its pretty far away but something to take into account I guess. Yes, a 22 nm CPU would be an impressive process achievement. 0.5 nm is the physical oxide thickness limit, and 22 nm scaling would require it. They have to replace the CVD silicon oxide above metal1 with exotic materials to lower the capacitance, a difficult task to fabricate. If they can succeed it will lower a lot of barriers to even smaller feature sizes. I am fairly shocked that the major companies haven't tried anything with GaAs logic yet, some university projects have successfully integrated RISC instruction sets on GaAs, and the potential clock speeds from GaAs are huge. It does have its problems-namely its huge electron mobility comes at a price of really slow hole mobility, making CMOS next to impossible to implement(though nmos is really damn fast on it), which really increases power usage. Researchers have achieved 110GHz amplifier operation with GaAs MMICs (in the microwave world we have mostly moved to GaAs), and experimental GaAs logic circuits have been published as having 3-5x the speed of equivalent silicon ICs. | ||
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