Midrange CPU Roundup: It's Time to Buy
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 28, 2007 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
Looking at the platform as a whole, AMD has a much better integrated graphics story. The AMD 690G chipset is every bit as stable and reliable in our experience as Intel's offerings, all while offering far superior graphics performance at competitive prices. In our opinion however, if you really want to game with a machine built on one of these platforms you're far better off picking up a cheap graphics card rather than trying to rely on mediocre integrated graphics.
Both AMD and Intel have enough horsepower with their integrated graphics solutions to drive Windows Vista's Aero interface, so if you're not going to be gaming then either integrated graphics solutions is more than enough. Windows and animations did seem to render more smoothly on the Intel platform but we're not sure if that's a driver, GPU, or CPU advantage.
AMD and Intel are unbelievably close when it comes to mainstream CPU performance - far closer than we expected. There are a couple of exceptions, however. DivX encoding in particular is extremely strong on Intel CPUs where AMD just can't compete these days.
If you're choosing between the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and 4800+ definitely go for the latter. The performance difference is so small that we don't even understand why AMD has both speed grades. At the 2.5GHz+ clock speeds we're talking about, 100MHz differences don't amount to a significant enough performance difference to justify any increase in cost.
The Athlon X2 BE-2350 does reduce power consumption, but at a noticeable increase to cost. However, if you're building an AMD system, we'd recommend the BE-2350 over the Athlon 64 X2 4000+ given the reduction in power consumption. Power costs over the life of the system should eventually negate the $18 price penalty.
Although AMD remains very competitive in the vast majority of benchmarks, given the virtual price parity Intel's performance advantages in some tests make the Core 2 or Pentium Dual-Core a more sensible buy. Both the Core 2 Duo E4500 and Pentium E2160 are great choices, as are their lower clocked variants; it really boils down to price point.
Once you take overclocking into account though, it's tough to beat Intel's Pentium Dual-Core lineup. With 65%+ overclocks - with little effort and using stock cooling - the Pentium E2140 and E2160 are easily the best buys on the market today. If you're absolutely opposed to overclocking, then the AMD/Intel question is a tossup, but if you've got no problems pushing clocks then Intel is the clear choice at all price points.
Where does the future lie?
Performance between these two companies is quite close already in the mainstream segment but what about when Phenom and Penryn reach these affordable price points?
One of the biggest gaps we saw in the performance comparison is DivX performance. If we look at our Phenom Preview, it looks like Phenom will improve DivX encoding performance by around 11% at the same clock speed, which would be enough for AMD to be more than competitive; unfortunately, Penryn will also improve DivX performance by around 10% (and upcoming SSE4 optimizations could increase that figure dramatically).
It's really a question of whether Penryn or Phenom will reach these lower price points first, but we have a feeling that both may make it down here at about the same time. If that's true then it looks like although AMD and Intel will remain competitive in the future, Intel will hold the slight edge just as it does today.
We honestly don't expect Phenom/Penryn to really change the picture much from the overclocker's perspective either. While we're hearing rumors that Phenom will clock higher than K8, Penryn will be on a cooler running 45nm process, which should allow for even higher clock speeds (read: even higher overclocks). As long as competition stays reasonably tight, though, the real winner isn't going to be Intel or AMD: it's going to be the end-users. At least we won't have to feel too guilty about indulging our computer addictions.
Looking at the platform as a whole, AMD has a much better integrated graphics story. The AMD 690G chipset is every bit as stable and reliable in our experience as Intel's offerings, all while offering far superior graphics performance at competitive prices. In our opinion however, if you really want to game with a machine built on one of these platforms you're far better off picking up a cheap graphics card rather than trying to rely on mediocre integrated graphics.
Both AMD and Intel have enough horsepower with their integrated graphics solutions to drive Windows Vista's Aero interface, so if you're not going to be gaming then either integrated graphics solutions is more than enough. Windows and animations did seem to render more smoothly on the Intel platform but we're not sure if that's a driver, GPU, or CPU advantage.
AMD and Intel are unbelievably close when it comes to mainstream CPU performance - far closer than we expected. There are a couple of exceptions, however. DivX encoding in particular is extremely strong on Intel CPUs where AMD just can't compete these days.
If you're choosing between the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and 4800+ definitely go for the latter. The performance difference is so small that we don't even understand why AMD has both speed grades. At the 2.5GHz+ clock speeds we're talking about, 100MHz differences don't amount to a significant enough performance difference to justify any increase in cost.
The Athlon X2 BE-2350 does reduce power consumption, but at a noticeable increase to cost. However, if you're building an AMD system, we'd recommend the BE-2350 over the Athlon 64 X2 4000+ given the reduction in power consumption. Power costs over the life of the system should eventually negate the $18 price penalty.
Although AMD remains very competitive in the vast majority of benchmarks, given the virtual price parity Intel's performance advantages in some tests make the Core 2 or Pentium Dual-Core a more sensible buy. Both the Core 2 Duo E4500 and Pentium E2160 are great choices, as are their lower clocked variants; it really boils down to price point.
Once you take overclocking into account though, it's tough to beat Intel's Pentium Dual-Core lineup. With 65%+ overclocks - with little effort and using stock cooling - the Pentium E2140 and E2160 are easily the best buys on the market today. If you're absolutely opposed to overclocking, then the AMD/Intel question is a tossup, but if you've got no problems pushing clocks then Intel is the clear choice at all price points.
Where does the future lie?
Performance between these two companies is quite close already in the mainstream segment but what about when Phenom and Penryn reach these affordable price points?
One of the biggest gaps we saw in the performance comparison is DivX performance. If we look at our Phenom Preview, it looks like Phenom will improve DivX encoding performance by around 11% at the same clock speed, which would be enough for AMD to be more than competitive; unfortunately, Penryn will also improve DivX performance by around 10% (and upcoming SSE4 optimizations could increase that figure dramatically).
It's really a question of whether Penryn or Phenom will reach these lower price points first, but we have a feeling that both may make it down here at about the same time. If that's true then it looks like although AMD and Intel will remain competitive in the future, Intel will hold the slight edge just as it does today.
We honestly don't expect Phenom/Penryn to really change the picture much from the overclocker's perspective either. While we're hearing rumors that Phenom will clock higher than K8, Penryn will be on a cooler running 45nm process, which should allow for even higher clock speeds (read: even higher overclocks). As long as competition stays reasonably tight, though, the real winner isn't going to be Intel or AMD: it's going to be the end-users. At least we won't have to feel too guilty about indulging our computer addictions.
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wdb1966 - Monday, October 1, 2007 - link
Wow, very mature response.BTW, I'm an Intel user with a pair of Q6600 rigs as well as an older 939 rig.
I stand by my comments, Anand got the pricing and hardware wrong, period.
AkumaX - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link
are there any good intel matx mobos with hdmi (or integrated gfx?)that's the only reason why i would consider going with AMD, because cpu performance doesn't make that much of a big deal to me, but having onboard hdmi would (and a better integrated chipset overall)
ltcommanderdata - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link
Can we please get a review of the 14.31.1 XP driver for the GMA X3000 that enables hardware DX9.0c SM3.0 acceleration? I know you've switched over to Vista, but the 15.6 driver release notes don't mention that they added hardware acceleration so it looks like only the 14.31 and the newer 14.31.1 XP drivers have it. I would love to see a comparison between the GMA X3000, Xpress X1250, Geforce 7150, and a discrete X1300HM and 8500GT.You're probably saving the new drivers for an IGP review when the G35 GMA X3500 comes out (October 21?), but it would be nice to have numbers for the GMA X3000 too for comparison.
Leinad - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link
Would be wonderful to have a MB roundup to go along with a processor roundup.Please?
yyrkoon - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link
I feel that the mothernoards you used for your tests were not up to the task. Earlier this year, I went out on a limb(for my personal standards) in buying a very in-expencive motherboard in hopes of saving $20-$30 usd on my system costs. While I did not experience any of the issues you mention having with the Geforce 6000 chipset that you mentioned here, I found this board to be completely un-exceptable stability wise. Every 3-5 days, the system would lock up, or BSoD(and sometimes much sooner). This system board did not have any memory voltage adjustment settings what-so-ever, and this was probably a big part as why the motherboard would not run smoothly(the board defaulted my memory lower than it should have been). Overclocking this system board also proved to be fruitless, even though there were enough options(short of the memory voltage settings) to do so. This motherboard was also plauged by other problems, one of which where talking to the 'tech' staff at the manufactuer proved that I was obviously more knowledgable concerning their own hardware, and every other set of words out of this 'techs' mouth seemed to be 'This is a budget motherboard'. This is the responce I got even when asking for an updated BIOS link, and to this day, the BIOS for that board has never been updated.
On the flip side, I purchased a similar board from a company that I trust, and have been dealing with for many years. This board was based on the 6150 chipset, has voltage settings for memory, and will easily overclock my AM2 1210 opteron to 3.0 Ghz(base frequency is 1.8Ghz). At current, the BIOS for this board has been revised 3-4 times, and while the motherboard has been phased out for a few months now, I suspect that the BIOS revisions will keep on comming based on past experiences with this company. This board has been very stable, with only a handful of BSoDs because of overclocking too high on the stock cooler, or a few other software related glitches. All while running WinXP Pro 32BIT with the /PAE boot option enabled. Also, since this motherboard OEM has a top notch Forum, and I have found this board to be virtualy trouble free(but not perfect), I have had no reason to even bother their tech representatives.
These two different motherboards both used the same exact hardware on them, and the second one will work perfectly fine with Windows 2003, where as the first will not(no networking drivers).
Leaving the two company names out of it, the moral of the story is; I had hoped to save myself $20-$30 usd, and it ended up costing me another $75 usd in the long run.
Now naming names, the first board was an Asrock AM2NF-4G-SATA2, and the second board was an ABIT NF-M2 nView. Since I have named names yet again, I suspect a few 'Fan-boi' comments, but this is not about Fan-boi-ism; this is about an experience out of many similar in dealing with different companies over the past 13 years when purchasing parts for systems. Top Tier manufactuers are top tier for a reason . . . and trust me, I would rather pay less for another brand, for the same performance/stability, but it has been this users experiences(many times . . .) that I will be let down, and end up paying more in the long run to correct issues for sub standard parts/service.
Myrandex - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link
I have sold many GeForce6150 based computers to people without a problem at all. I have not tried to overclock them, but from what I understand I hear that they perform better than the 70xx series of integrated GPU's (I could be remembering wrong). I have had some sweet Winfast Foxconn boards with Nvidia 6150 chipsets, but also that new AMD chipset is pretty good.strikeback03 - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link
We needed new workstations earlier this year for a couple of students, so I built 2 computers using really cheap components. Used ECS motherboards (nVidia 6100 chipset) with some cheap X2 processors and a GB of Corsair ValuRam, powered by a power supply included in a cheap Rosewill case. No overclocking (obviously) but everything has been stable so far.yyrkoon - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link
I have built quite a few systems for customers using ECS motherboards. Have also replaced a few motherboard from eMachines, and whatnot with ECS motherboards. They all seem to work fine, as I have had zero complaints so far.In my own personal machines however, I may require extra features that the average user may not, and my most recent personal purchase has exactly what I want, for a fair price, and stability second to none.
Having said that, we here also avoid Asus motherboards like the plauge, as we have had bad experiences with their boards, with the most 4 recent boards made by them showing up DOA here in our shop. Obviously, I do realize since Asus seems to be a trend among the younger users I've seen post around, that I do not think they do not work all the time; this is just our experiences here.
I really do not respect DFI, BIOSTAR, like other brands such as ABIT, Gigabyte, and MSI(for Intel based systems) though. But if a customer wants a 'cheap' PC, thats what they get . . . and we usually recommend Dell in this case anyhow.
leexgx - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link
little picky on nvidia's driversnvida chip set drivers are updated every year (thay never seem to bother to update them) so there chipset drivers will not allways have the Nvidia display drivers and even if it did the first thing i do any way is get the new video drivers as well and install them after chpset drivers no problem
ThatLukeGuy - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link
Just wondering about this part of the article:"We'd take the slowest Pentium Dual Core over the fastest available Pentium D, so stay away from the last remnants of the NetBurst architecture if you know what's best for you."
I bought a Pentium D 805 Smithfield 2.66GHz LGA 775 Processor a while ago as a stopgap for my new rig. Basically it was so I could use the system which had a 775 and wouldn't take my old P4, looking to upgrade to a Core 2 at the earliest opportunity. I found on the internet some information however that the Pentium D 805 was a diamond in the rough and could be easily overclocked to rival performance with some of Intel's extreme chips. Sure enough I got it to goto 3.2GHz without even changing anything but the FSB. Same cooling solution, same everything and the system is rock solid and pretty darn fast. Thus I decided to just stick with the Pentium D. Was I wrong to stay with it? Is going to the slowest Core 2 better than the setup I have now? Not trying to get in an argument, I'm honestly curious if I made a misjudgement and what the reasons for the slowest Core 2 being better than a Pentium D @ 3.2GHz (with supposed potential up to 3.6GHz or higher) are.