What is the best cpu's at present? Explain why.

Pentium 4:
+ fast clock speed... that about all it got going for it
+ Hypertranport, 2 processor emulations, parrellel processing.
- 20 step pipline very bad
~ 800Mhz 128bit non-direct memery bus

Athlon 64 FX
+ 12-14 step pipeline can do more per cycle then p4 this is why a Athlon 64 at almost 1Gz less speed can still compete and even out compete the p4 in many calculations.
+ 64 bit complient, x86-64
+ 800Mhz 128bit direct built on memory bus, lowest memory latency and highest memory efficiency
+ 6.4GB Hypertransport channel: Highly efficient and fast data bus to peripherals.

G5
+ Most efficnet pipeline
+ 64 bit complient
+1GB 128bit non-direct memory bus, now when we have 500Mhz DDR this will be a major advatage.
+ 3.2GB Hypertransport channel: Highly efficient and fast data bus to peripherals.

This is just the skim of the top people.

I wanted AMD but i had to settle with p4. i'm concerned b/c my p4 heats up like a christian girl on prom night. i had to disable the overheating alarm b/c it was ALWAYS too hot. a very dumb ass thing to do, i know, but i can't stand that thing beeping the entire time i'm using it...

btw, anyone have any solutions for this problem?

Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
What is the best cpu's at present? Explain why.

Pentium 4:
+ fast clock speed... that about all it got going for it
+ Hypertranport, 2 processor emulations, parrellel processing.
- 20 step pipline very bad
~ 800Mhz 128bit non-direct memery bus
Hyper-transport is the memory bus protocol from AMD. Hyperthread is the name for Intel mulit-processor emulation tech.

Sorry bad wording, my hands got confused in the typing. :)
Acctually Hypertranport is simply a data bus like PCI, ATA, SCSE, ect.

Nebula,
- get a beter heatsink and coolering fan
- open your case up
- get a house fan to blow over it
- water cooling kits are becoming atractive options these days.

Maybe I should just wait for CoolChips (http://www.coolchips.gi/)

Nebula,


So basically its a Peltier with a vacuum barrier separating the hot and cold layers, interesting but I'll believe it when they show me a working product and 3rd party testing results. Welcome to Sci&Tech were nothings for sure tell you can prove it and fund it.

Nebula, Thermalwright (http://www.svc.com/penivcool.html) has the solution to your problem.

As far as what is the best, I don't really have an opinion. They are all too expensive for me to even think about.

I have to stick with my XP1700. I do have it overclocked to 2.3 GHz though. So it isn't too bad. $50.00 CPU, $60.00 motherboard, $130.00 video card. It works pretty well, especially for the money.

A few Alpha EV7's for me (http://www.top500.org/ORSC/2002/ev7.html). If not a few of these beasties will do. (http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/sc/sys_sc45_features.html)

As far as quality goes, right now Intel puts together the best CPU. It's an obnoxiously inefficient design but it is well made, with thermal protection built into the core, an integrated heat spreader, and the Socket 478 is a superior electrical interface, compatible with higher clock frequencies due to placement of RF shield pins within it. The P4 is a hair faster than the Athlon XP in most everyday tasks but not by much, and when price is factored in, it pales significantly.

A64 is too new and preliminary to be judged yet, but it does look promising, contingent entirely upon the software industry's embraceing of 64-bit code.

The G5 would be superior to both of these if it were not for poor implementation via motherboard support, as well as the whole "it's a macintosh" issue.

Stokes Pennwalt,

The Athlon 64 also has integrated heat spreader and built in thermal protection. The Socket 478 is diffidently inferior to the socket 754 and 940 that the Athlon 64, FX and Opteron processors run on. Please note the Athlon XP is NOT the flagship of AMD anymore, Its now the K8 series processors Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX and Opteron.

I have to say that I have had 3 AMD chips now and my first 2 ran terribly. I actually blame the boards, but that is hard to say too because they were Abit and Asus who are big manufacturers. My new PC is an XP2500 in an Nforce2 board with everything built it. I play Vice City and Star Wars Galaxies on it and they both run like a dream.

With DVD-ROM, case, board, chip, and 512 Dual DDR I have a complete system that cost me around $400. It's hard to beat.

If you are just blowing money right this moment the hyperthreading is pretty cool on the P4s, but if you can wait and see how 64bit XP runs on an Opteron you may want to switch to the dark side.

Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
Stokes Pennwalt,

The Athlon 64 also has integrated heat spreader and built in thermal protection. The Socket 478 is diffidently inferior to the socket 754 and 940 that the Athlon 64, FX and Opteron processors run on. Please note the Athlon XP is NOT the flagship of AMD anymore, Its now the K8 series processors Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX and Opteron.
I know that. But think as a consumer does: nobody is going to pay $400 for a processor that is all but outperformed by a slightly cheaper in 32-bit apps, and as-yet unable to flex its muscle due to a lack of 64-bit apps and OSes. And both the FX-51 and P4 EE are so far out of everybody's price range that they are irrelevant.

There simply is not a demand for the A64 or FX-51 at this time, and there wil not be until software advances to the point that their 64-bit registers can be utilized. Also, socket 754 is going to be like Intel's socket 423 was - it will last all of an eyeblink. A64s will be on socket 939 by summer of 2004.

When a consumer goes to purchase a computer, they aren't going to care about the whiz-bang features of the A64, and the FX-51 is too expensive for just about everybody. The market only cares about Intel's P4 Northwood and AMD's Athlon XP Thoroughbred/Barton cores right now.

In the server market, the Opteron completely annihilates both the Itanium and Itanium^2.

The 64 bit feature though is just that, its a normal 32 bit processor for any present purpose. It is a plus for future upgrades. The G5 though takes advantage of it as apps and OS in 64bit (eer compliant) are already available to the small apple community. Yes your right the Athlon Xp and Pentium 4 older cores do hold the majority of the market, but there is one big advantage to the Athlon Xp over the Pentium 4: its cheaper per performance, by more then 50% in many cases. And don’t get me started on overclocking.

As for Socket 756 ya that was a screw up! Even I was wondering for months before release why AMD was sticking with a 64 bit memory bus instead of a 128bit. The Athlon 64 is already still born!, the Opteron and single hyper-transport channel variant Athlon 64 FX are going to be the future, if they can make the Athlon 64 on 939 bus though then that would save it.

Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
Yes your right the Athlon Xp and Pentium 4 older cores do hold the majority of the market, but there is one big advantage to the Athlon Xp over the Pentium 4: its cheaper per performance, by more then 50% in many cases. And don’t get me started on overclocking. Perhaps the greatest strength of the latest AMD Thoroughbred cores is their clock speed overhead. For example, in an older build I was using, I had a 1700+ Thoroughbred with a JIUHB stepping running at 2560mhz, 2.1vcore, with phase change cooling to about -20C. The motherboard chipset was running at 220 FSB, and at that rate, memory bandwidth surpassed PC1066 RDRAM and the newest of the Canterwood platforms. That's nearly a 1ghz overclock. And this was with a CPU that cost me about $40, and a $95 nForce2-G motherboard (Epox 8RGA). The same can be said about the Barton cores, but to a lesser degree simply due to the extra 256k of L2 cache raising chip impedance and leading to instability at higher clock speeds.

Whereas with the system I am running right now uses a P4 Northwood 3.0C running at 3500mhz, 1.65vcore, and 233FSB (with 5:4 FSB/DRAM ratio). All in all the performance is a hair better than the AMD system I had ran, but the CPU was $275, and the motherboard (Abit IC7-G) another $160. So I paid a lot more for a little more. If you're going to overclock, AMD is definitely the way to go, simply from a fiscal standpoint alone.

Plus, AMD has only just recently begun locking their multipliers, and even now only on the latest steppings of the Barton core. A multiplier that is unlocked or can be easily unlocked is a boon to overclockers because it lets us pump up the FSB for insane memory bandwidth.

EDIT: If anybody wants a perfect example of this, look at the figures in Repo Man's post up there. You can't beat that per-dollar-yield.

:rolleyes: don't baby me about overclocking. I won't doubt your result even though you did not post screen shot of it. :p you forgot to add in the cost of the cooling system how much does a direct phase change cooler cost these days? I manage a ~500Mhz increase with stock cooling.

The G5 looks cool in combination with the 600inch screen (na ja, not 600).

am I superficial or what?

Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
:rolleyes: don't baby me about overclocking. I won't doubt your result even though you did not post screen shot of it. :p you forgot to add in the cost of the cooling system how much does a direct phase change cooler cost these days? I manage a ~500Mhz increase with stock cooling. Around $650 if you buy it right now. But I've had this one for four years, and I will have it for another ten. They don't go obsolete.

I can dig up some screens of my recent overclocks if you want them. The 900+ MHz out of that 1700+ was my second best ever, seconded only by a 120% increase I got from a Celeron 300A at 650MHz, in 1998. All on stock air cooling. That thing was the shit.

I seen a 300Mhz K6 at over 700Mhz with a phase cooler, surely you could do better? :p