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#1
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Advice on CPU (amd or intel, dual or quad core?)
Hi all,
I am about to choose a new desktop computer (budget: £ 550 - £ 600 max, excluding monitor) and would like some advice on the processor: 1) AMD or Intel? I struggle to understand to what extent there are different schools of thought, and to what extent there are constant and actual changes going on, so that one month AMD is better and the month after it no longer is 2) Dual core or quad core? I could get a dual core 3.4 Ghz AMD or a 2.4 quad core AMD for roughly the same price. I wonder if with 4 processors you hit the point of diminishing returns. The most CPU- intensive tasks I'll ran are dvd ripping, video encoding and photo editing (at an amateur level, nothing professional). With a quad core system, can I encode 3 movies at a time, assigning each encoding job to one processor only, and leave the other processor free for other stuff (i.e. watch a movie, surf the web, etc)? 3) I will be using both Windows (probably XP 32bit) and Linux, probably Kubuntu 64bit. Is there any specific difference in the way the operating systems manage dual or quad cores? Thanks for your help! |
#2
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Advice on CPU (amd or intel, dual or quad core?)
On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:57:59 -0800 (PST),
" wrote: Hi all, I am about to choose a new desktop computer (budget: £ 550 - £ 600 max, excluding monitor) and would like some advice on the processor: 1) AMD or Intel? I struggle to understand to what extent there are different schools of thought, and to what extent there are constant and actual changes going on, so that one month AMD is better and the month after it no longer is 2) Dual core or quad core? I could get a dual core 3.4 Ghz AMD or a 2.4 quad core AMD for roughly the same price. I wonder if with 4 processors you hit the point of diminishing returns. The most CPU- intensive tasks I'll ran are dvd ripping, video encoding and photo editing (at an amateur level, nothing professional). With a quad core system, can I encode 3 movies at a time, assigning each encoding job to one processor only, and leave the other processor free for other stuff (i.e. watch a movie, surf the web, etc)? 3) I will be using both Windows (probably XP 32bit) and Linux, probably Kubuntu 64bit. Is there any specific difference in the way the operating systems manage dual or quad cores? Thanks for your help! First, your primary choices should consider your total budget including allocation of funds per each part, and what your most demanding jobs are - not focusing yet on who made the CPU but rather which seems the better choice given the prior criteria. Will you be overclocking? The typical Intel CPU overclocks further, and if overclocking more than a moderate amount, nothing AMD makes will have as high a performance level (with both overclocked to an equivalent capability each series has) as same price tier Intel alternative. At stock speeds AMD is competitive below about $110 USD, you'll have to see how that equates to your market prices. No matter which brand you buy, in 12 months the difference in performance will seem slight compared to the increase in performance from new processors. Many people like to declare one significantly better than the other for, perhaps 20% performance difference but if 20% really matters everyone would replace their system every year and we do see most consumers don't do it. Even so it starts with a budget and determining which parts of the PC are best improved, in some cases like gaming, spending less on the CPU and more on the video card will yield the best results. Yes you hit the point of diminishing returns with quad cores for most uses, but instead of playing odds you need to consider your actual uses. You list types of activities but that is not what I meant, you need to consider specific software titles and versions, seeking benchmarks of performance changes with multiple cores. Very few titles are optimized for more than two cores. You are incorrect that you could//should encode 3 movies at a time with quad core. Movie encoding is typically using more than one thread, and even if it weren't you don't have more system memory bandwidth or hard drive performance increases just adding another processor core. With a quad core system you might consider encoding two videos but one would be better. If you really need to encode multiple videos at once, get a second system and devote it to some of that work. |
#3
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Advice on CPU (amd or intel, dual or quad core?)
wrote in message
... Hi all, 2) Dual core or quad core? Why stop there - Google for Dunnington (6 cores) |
#5
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Advice on CPU (amd or intel, dual or quad core?)
" wrote: Hi all, I am about to choose a new desktop computer (budget: £ 550 - £ 600 max, excluding monitor) and would like some advice on the processor: 1) AMD or Intel? I struggle to understand to what extent there are different schools of thought, and to what extent there are constant and actual changes going on, so that one month AMD is better and the month after it no longer is Intel has had the performance edge since the introduction of the Core2 processor. They were at first much more expensive than AMD but are now much more affordable. 2) Dual core or quad core? I could get a dual core 3.4 Ghz AMD or a 2.4 quad core AMD for roughly the same price. I wonder if with 4 processors you hit the point of diminishing returns. The most CPU- intensive tasks I'll ran are dvd ripping, video encoding and photo editing (at an amateur level, nothing professional). With a quad core system, can I encode 3 movies at a time, assigning each encoding job to one processor only, and leave the other processor free for other stuff (i.e. watch a movie, surf the web, etc)? Most consumer applications are not multithreaded and will use only one core, so the speed will depend on the clock speed and not the number of cores. The big exception to this are the applications that you will be running, i.e. some video encoding and photo editing (Photoshop) applications are multithreaded. 3) I will be using both Windows (probably XP 32bit) and Linux, probably Kubuntu 64bit. Is there any specific difference in the way the operating systems manage dual or quad cores? With some OSs you can assign programs to a specific processor. This may or may not increase overall performance. You might want to let the OS assign programs on its own and run processor intensive applications, e.g. video encoding, at a lower priority (they will probably do this by default) so they don't slow down other programs e.g. web surfing or playing movies. Thanks for your help! -- Mike Walsh |
#6
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Advice on CPU (amd or intel, dual or quad core?)
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