If there's one thing that bugs us about desktop
component reviews, it's that they tend to compare the latest hardware against the stuff immediately preceding it. Everyone wants to know what the improvements between generations are, but for many it's also equally useful to know how 2010's freshness compares to their own computers, which might have been bought or built a few years back. For those precious prospective upgraders,
Tech Report have put together an extremely thorough benchmarking session which compares the venerable Pentium 4 670 and its silly 3.8GHz clock speed to a pair of new budget parts: the Core i3-530 from Intel and quad-core Athlon II X4 635 from AMD. Naturally, they've also included other contemporary parts like the high-end
Core i7s and
Phenoms, as well as a Core 2 Quad Q6600 from a couple of years ago to bridge the gap between the ancient 90nm Prescott and the 32nm young pretenders. It's all quite fascinating in the geekiest (and therefore best) of ways, so why not hit that source link and get reading.
posted February 17th 2010 10:41AM
"Core 2 Quad Q6600 from a couple of years ago"
My Q6600 is still going strong, doesn't seem like that long ago i bought it but that's the thing with tech these days, by the time i can afford it something newer comes out the next day.
@Scouse Pricey
I still rock my Q6600 on a badaxe2 mobo with 8gigs of memory. love it. use it for a hackintosh
@Scouse Pricey
not to mention E8400-E8600 are still damn good since they easily overclock to over 4ghz.
my e8400 is at 4.2ghz stable on air for over a year now.
@BrianH Which makes me wonder which is better an overclocked q6600 or overclocked e8400?
@Scouse Pricey
Q6600 FTW, I see no real reason to upgrade
@Scouse Pricey
Same here, mine has to last at least 18 month more as my main PC. Here in Argentina it's not so easy to switch hardware every time something new appears
@zorac1229
The newest and greatest is only about twice as fast as q6600. No point to upgrade yet.
@Scouse Pricey My primary desktop is still a mere 3.0 GHz P4 Canterwood with 2 GB of RAM. My machine, although unfortunately an obvious power hog, is just now starting to feel outdated performance wise in comparison to some of the current desktops I use at work or elsewhere after 7+ years.
There's a balance to be struck somewhere between getting the most use out of electronics and reducing waste vs. advances in power consumption. It could at least be plotted for cost analysis but I'm not sure how you could figure it out for environmental impact...
@Scouse Pricey
Q6600@3.2GHz
48501GB
4GB ram
built it on BlackFriday '08 for ~$750, this black friday added $140 1080p 23"
Gonna upgrade my GPU this Black Friday, CPU in 2011
@Scouse Pricey
Same here. I will wait another year before I upgrade. Its annoying that you always have to get new RAM, new mobo etc. Would be so much better if I could just replace the CPU on its own. An i7 would require a new board, and the i7 boards seem ridiculously expensive and require DDR3 (I currently have 4GB DDR2). When I can do that for under £300 I will do the upgrade.
My last step up was from a P4 3GHz and the improvement that the Q6600 brought was huge.
@Scouse Pricey
Yup! i still have my q6600 and love the little bad boy... its my powerhorse. I have kinda been kicking around the idea of upgrading to the i7 but i think i might just skip this generation of chips and wait for next years... lol...
@Scouse Pricey Well, fact of the matter is, its a approaching its 4th year and its been EoL for a long time. However, my Q6600 running at 3.2GHz is still serving me well and will continue to do so until at least next year and thus will have outlastet most of the CPU/mobo combos I've owned over the last 15 years. Only my earliest computers (8088 and 486 class) will have served longer than it. A testament to its longevity.
Pfft! Pwned.
I am still lost on how the i7-870 Is double the price of the i7-920, somebody explain?
@bazookafx3 http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3634
Its faster, and if you want to overclock, the i870 is the winrar.
Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz 4 / 8 2.93GHz 130W $284
Intel Core i7 870 2.93GHz 4 / 8 3.60GHz 95W $562
@Ducman69 Ah gotcha then, my i7-920 is still a WINRAR in my book!
@bazookafx3 Don't forget the big difference between the 920 and the 870 is that the former is suited for mobile computers, while the latter is for desktops: Clarksfield vs Lynnfield.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3634
loloops. forgot I pulled the same link =P.
@Ducman69
i7-920 is the better choice it can easily be o/c to 4 ghz on air. It also runs 3 channels for memory compare to the 2 in i7-870.
Also if one were to run SLI or Crossfire, then it is a no brainer to choose the i7-920 over i7-870.
@fnineone Thank you good sir for justifying my purchase! You gotta love Crossfire!
i5-750 seems to beat the i7-920 in price and performance.
@One Love Not really if you factor in Memory Channels
@fnineone Time to dispell some myths methinks:
1. LGA 1156 parts overclock really well too, i5 750 can easily be pushed to 4Ghz with decent cooling, the i7 800s even more so.
2. Triple channel memory makes almost zero real-world difference compared to dual-channel, except maybe in the odd 3D rendering benchmark.
3. SLI/CrossfireX can be run on P55 motherboards at 8x/8x (which doesn't hit performance compared to 16x/16x, unless you're doing quad graphics). Some high-end P55 motherboards have an nForce 200 chip if you need 16x/16x/8x for triple/quad graphics.
Couple that with the lower power and thermal requirements of LGA 1156, plus superior clock-for-clock performance and a better turbo boost implementation, it is actually the i7 860/870 that is the no-brainer compared to the i7 920.
@r3loaded
All your points are valid, but would you want to pay more for an i7-870 over an i7-920?
@fnineone You pay more for more performance and efficiency, but also factor in that LGA 1156 mobos are less expensive when comparing apples to apples features.
Hell, most of my rigs are still running Q6600s, and my main one only a Q6850. Good enough for me. =)
@Ducman69
Yes, it all depends on what you want to achieve, once you start overclocking, the efficiency of the stock power consumption goes out the window. I don't think the cost of x58 mobos over P55 mobos with similar features along with 3 channel rams over 2 channel rams does not make up for a $300 difference for the chip itself.
@bazookafx3
I noticed that as well, it might have something to do with them factoring-in launch/list prices, I don't know, and I can't be bothered to find that one out. Anywoo, all that really matters is current street price, and over here at least they go for pretty much the same:
860: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172754
920: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151477
...notice that both are from the same e-tailer.
@TacticalTimbo Ya the 860 is relativly the same price as the 920 but I was originaly asking about the 870 which is the expensive one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115213&cm_re=i7_870-_-19-115-213-_-Product
i7-920
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202&cm_re=i7_920-_-19-115-202-_-Product
@bazookafx3
lol didn't notice that...I thought there was only the one 8xx i7, my bad. I thought as the 1156 was meant to be the mainstream socket the 860 was gonna be as far as they went there. What is so much better about 870 then?
Bookmark this: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
Pretty much any CPU made benchmarked. =)
@Ducman69 Thanks for that...Crazy, the P4 at 3.06GHz with HT got uder 400 points, an i7 gets over 6000!
@Ducman69 Thanks a million. I was trying to figure out which processors are better in the ultraportable laptops, and this helps out a lot.
@Ducman69
Awesome website! Thanks. Mine ranked okay I guess, 1100 or so.
@Nitesh check out the power level of those dual xenons!
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAND!
@Nitesh
And that's why MHz don't really matter.
I now all of a sudden want an i7-975 Extreme. I wonder why . . . ?
@cds5193 Because you have a superfluous amount of money?
@cds5193 Because you never want to try overclocking one of the best CPUs ever made for overclocking?
@cds5193
You like the word extreme?
@cds5193
In Soviet Russia, i7-975 Extreme now all of a sudden wants you. Soviet Russia wonders why.
And I wonder why I felt compelled to write this comment, it's not even funny.
i want to see P4 vs atom benchmark
@mmoylan According to Ducman's link, the P4 comes out on top by a fair margin.
yeah I think atom is the equivalent of P4 era mobile CPUs.
@mmoylan From benches I've seen they are about the same as a P3-900 in raw speed. That said as they work alongside newer parts (i.e faster RAM and faster Northbridge) I'd have thought they'll always be better than using an actual P3 in Windows 7. My N270 powered netbook is perfectly usable with Win 7.
They should have included an Atom in there, so the P4 would have something to beat.
My poor Phenom. It's time to step it up, AMD. You're a great choice for overall performance-per-dollar, but watching that i7 920 trounce the 965 BE in every benchmark despite a 800Mhz faster clock speed is getting old.
@Bandit5317
i know right? i love amd for their great prices and awesome price/performace, but i almost wish they'd pull an intel and release a couple ridiculous procs (both price and performace).
@Bandit5317. Uhm... I'm still on X2 4200+ and have problems justifying CPU upgrade: most games play fine and H.264 playback is smooth too.
I do not encode video. CD ripping (with AAC encoding) is fast enough. Nor do I run synthetic benchmarks.
Why waste money on something I cannot utilize fully?
P.S. Actually only thing which might me make the upgrade - to e.g. i5 - is the lower power consumption. Though in context of PC upgrade, the savings would be immediately /wasted/ on faster GPU.
@Dummy00001
The thing about video encoding is that you probably aren't in a terrible hurry. If you rip an entire season of something, it's going to take a while to transcode. It doesn't matter how fast your rig is. It's going to be a long batch process. So speeding it up a little bit is not necessarily that exciting.
@jedi
I do encode video. My old P4 rig took 20 minutes to compress a 5 minute segment to MPEG for a DVD.
My new Q8300 rig does a 5 minute segment in 2.5 minutes.
So... compressing an hour-long DVD in Adobe Encore used to take 4 hours... now it only takes 30 minutes.
Every little bit helps.