can an AMD Athlon 2 X2 be snappier than an E8500?

[Blastman]

It could come down to graphics speed and the screen resolution you are running.

When I built my i3-530 last year I was initially using my old 17" CRT monitor at 1024x768 resolution. Windows and everything opened and closed very snappy. Now I'm on a 22" LCD at 1920x1080. I can notice a slowdown in how fast the screens plot when I hit the show-desktop button to bring up all the Windows screens. Feels less snappy than when I was running on the CRT because the screen takes so much more graphics power to plot. Same machine on different monitor at much higher resolution feels less snappy.

 

[toyota]

It could come down to graphics speed and the screen resolution you are running.

When I built my i3-530 last year I was initially using my old 17" CRT monitor at 1024x768 resolution. Windows and everything opened and closed very snappy. Now I'm on a 22" LCD at 1920x1080. I can notice a slowdown in how fast the screens plot when I hit the show-desktop button to bring up all the Windows screens. Feels less snappy than when I was running on the CRT because the screen takes so much more graphics power to plot. Same machine on different monitor at much higher resolution feels less snappy.

I don't see how that could make a difference with a text document though. plus the monitors remained the same anyway.

 

[VirtualLarry]

and again you are trying to be way too specific. from what I have seen the X2 systems open the text document quicker compared to Core 2 architecture cpus. we are talking a minuscule amount of difference here but it is indeed snappier. its not something hardly any person would ever know unless doing it back to back. if I was on various comps of all different types the subtle differences might not be noticed between just two systems. I was 100% accustomed to how my E8500 handled doing that for 2.5 years though so it was something I noticed immediately since I use a lot of text documents throughout the day.

Did you disable application pre-fetching, and superfetch caching, on both rigs? Those alone could account for the differences.

 

[toyota]

Did you disable application pre-fetching, and superfetch caching, on both rigs? Those alone could account for the differences.

I have not touched those settings an any pc I have owned or used.

 

[apoppin]

anybody can see your intentions here and I don't play that passive aggressive crap. that's the kind of stuff that girls do just to stir up crap and then claim to be the victim if someone retaliates.

all I was doing was mainly pointing out a subtle difference here in how the X2 responded to normal daily stuff. no matter how small the difference it is there and is noticeable. so going up there and seeing the exact same difference between another X2 and Core 2 system shows it was nothing to do with my pc. if you don't accept that then fine.

A pattern is becoming clearer. You made broad assertions about CPU and game performance based on only your CPU that contradicted reality in most cases - and you argued with most of the video forum about your rightness then - an now you are questioning your own CPU's performance and arguing with the CPU forum.

My intentions are to make it clear. i can't relate to your assertions about girls either.

 

[toyota]

A pattern is becoming clearer. You made broad assertions about CPU and game performance based on only your CPU that contradicted reality in most cases - and you argued with most of the video forum about your rightness then - an now you are questioning your own CPU's performance and arguing with the CPU forum.

My intentions are to make it clear. i can't relate to your assertions about girls either.

no you are twisting crap because we did not agree in the past. my gaming and overall system benchmarks matched or beat anyone else's with the same setup. there was not one thing wrong with my system from a performance standpoint. some of the games I tested and made conclusions about you did not test at all. even when your buddy argued with me about stuff like vsync, I had to go out of my way to make a freaking video to show that it was doing exactly what I said it was. you two guys seem to think that because you run a site that you know everything and can never be mistaken.

as for this topic its clear that the X2 is wee bit snappier than my E8500 or the E6800 at opening a text document. again if you do not agree then that is great for you but stop with your clear attempts at baiting.

 

[apoppin]

no you are twisting crap because we did not agree in the past. my gaming and overall system benchmarks matched or beat anyone else's with the same setup. there was not one thing wrong with my system from a performance standpoint. some of the games I tested and made conclusions about you did not test at all. even when your buddy argued with me about stuff like vsync, I had to go out of my way to make a freaking video to show that it was doing exactly what I said it was. you two guys seem to think that because you run a site that you know everything and can never be mistaken.

as for this topic its clear that the X2 is wee bit snappier than my E8500 or the E6800 at opening a text document. again if you do not agree then that is great for you but stop with your clear attempts at baiting.

Baiting?

You mean i don't agree with your "feelings".
- and i believe you are just spouting nonsense about the supposed difference in opening a text document between two CPUs.

 

[toyota]

Baiting?

You mean i don't agree with your "feelings".
- and i believe you are just spouting nonsense about the supposed difference in opening a text document between two CPUs.

yes, I was really bored today and thought I would just make up a topic. would you like a video? then you can make a new excuse. you and your sidekick have the same M.O. nearly every time. you argue about something and then if someone posts a benchmark or video for proof you say something is wrong with their system.

all I did today was point on something I noticed. to quench my curiosity, I went and checked out another X2 and Core 2 duo pc and the difference was the same there too. if anything that made me feel better because I was wondering why this pc felt snappier with some things. this thread was doing just fine until you brought your shitty, passive aggressive and accusatory attitude in here.

 

[apoppin]

yes, I was really bored today and thought I would just make up a topic. would you like a video? then you can make a new excuse. you and your sidekick have the same M.O. nearly every time. you argue about something and then if someone posts a benchmark or video for proof you say something is wrong with their system.

all I did today was point on something I noticed. to quench my curiosity, I went and checked out another X2 and Core 2 duo pc and the difference was the same there too. if anything that made me feel better because I was wondering why this pc felt snappier with some things. this thread was doing just fine until you brought your shitty, passive aggressive and accusatory attitude in here.

You are making baseless rude accusations. i have no "sidekick" here, and i am pointing out your pattern of making "observations" without testing them and then expecting others to believe your "feelings" are fact.

You are the one casting doubt on your own system's performance and it appears that it could well be the reason you saw some extreme CPU bottlenecking that no one else in Video believed should be there. Thank-you for that!

 

[toyota]

You are making baseless rude accusations. i have no "sidekick" here, and i am pointing out your pattern of making "observations" without testing them and then expecting others to believe your "feelings" are fact.

You are the one casting doubt on your own system's performance and it appears that it could well be the reason you saw some extreme CPU bottlenecking that no one else in Video believed should be there. Thank-you for that!

and AGAIN my E8500 system matched or surpassed similar systems. I love how you keep skipping over that part. and you know who I am referring to because he would argue until I posted benchmarks or a video and then he would have to come with a different excuse just like you always do.

you do not want proof of anything. if I had 10 comps in here(5 with Core 2 duo and 5 with Athlon 2 X2) with fresh installs of Windows 7 and still noticed the same difference between them it would not matter.

its not just my feeling that the Athlon 2 X2 systems are snappier at opening a text document because the difference is real. you are so hell bent on arguing that you cannot accept the fact that an X2 can be snappier at something than a Core 2 duo.

 

[apoppin]

and AGAIN my E8500 system matched or surpassed similar systems. I love how you keep skipping over that part. and you know who I am referring to because he would argue until I posted benchmarks or a video and then he would have to come with a different excuse just like you always do.

you do not want proof of anything. if I had 10 comps in here(5 with Core 2 duo and 5 with Athlon 2 X2) with fresh installs of Windows 7 and still noticed the same difference between them it would not matter.

its not just my feeling that the Athlon 2 X2 systems are snappier at opening a text document because the difference is real. you are so hell bent on arguing that you cannot accept the fact that an X2 can be snappier at something than a Core 2 duo.

. . . and fell flat in the minimums

If - IF you had ..
-- but all you have is "feelings" .. no testing, just feelings ... "it feels snappier" .. maybe you are feeling snappier today - you are certainly snapping at me for absolutely nothing except doubting your story - without a shred of proof.

And don't strawman me .. i can accept that the Phenom II is faster at some things than C2D - but i doubt that you can "feel" the difference opening a text document. The HDD on one PC may just need defragging.

i am out of here ... you can keep your fantasies

 

[toyota]

. . . and fell flat in the minimums

If - IF you had ..
-- but all you have is "feelings" .. no testing, just feelings ... "it feels snappier" .. maybe you are feeling snappier today - you are certainly snapping at me for absolutely nothing except doubting your story - without a shred of proof.

And don't strawman me .. i can accept that the Phenom II is faster at some things than C2D - but i doubt that you can "feel" the difference opening a text document. The HDD on one PC may just need defragging.

i am out of here ... you can keep your fantasies

no my cpu got the appropriate minimums too which is something you could never accept. there are several games where a Core 2 duo would drop well under 30 fps for a minimum and that is a fact.

would you like to me get out a freaking stopwatch? the difference is small but it is there and is noticeable. its something that I easily notice because I use many text documents throughout out the day and knew exactly how my E8500 responded after 2.5 years.

so I guess the hard drive in the brand new E6800 pc needed defragging but the one in brand new X2 pc and the one in the X2 pc at home did not?

but yes please leave and take that shitty attitude with you.

as for the others here, I appreciate you being civil and having an open mind for the most part.

 

[JoJoman88]

I don't see the reason except that MR TOYOTA thinks he has someway of showing that Core 2 wasn't all that and he is hell bent on showing so. Even though many people have suggested that other factors come into play, he will have none of that. He said it the CPU, and it could only be the CPU in this case.

Good luck with that, seems to me that you would like to rewrite history or something like that. Crying about how long a text or word doc takes to open is also plain silly. Like that extra second is going to get somebody killed. Both systems are fast compared to systems 10 to 15 years ago.

That is my two cents!

 

[apoppin]

Fact or fantasy? Yes, get out a stopwatch. Test something other than "it feels"

And are the two PCs absolutely identical to each other - except for the CPUs? Are the HDDs identical with the same installed programs, updated and everything running in the background is the same. i doubt it.

If they are not identical then you are being utterly ridiculous. There are too many other factors involved between the two platforms to judge by feelings how quickly a document opens.

Politeness has nothing to do with it as you are proving by your rudeness to me; and i have an open mind but i am not stupidly gullible.

no my cpu got the appropriate minimums too which is something you could never accept. there are several games where a Core 2 duo would drop well under 30 fps for a minimum and that is a fact.

would you like to me get out a freaking stopwatch? the difference is small but it is there and is noticeable. its something that I easily notice because I use many text documents throughout out the day and knew exactly how my E8500 responded after 2.5 years.

so I guess the hard drive in the brand new E6800 pc needed defragging but the one in brand new X2 pc and the one in the X2 pc at home did not?

but yes please leave and take that shitty attitude with you.

as for the others here, I appreciate you being civil and having an open mind for the most part.

 

[toyota]

I don't see the reason except that MR TOYOTA thinks he has someway of showing that Core 2 wasn't all that and he is hell bent on showing so. Even though many people have suggested that other factors come into play, he will have none of that. He said it the CPU, and it could only be the CPU in this case.

Good luck with that, seems to me that you would like to rewrite history or something like that. Crying about how long a text or word doc takes to open is also plain silly. Like that extra second is going to get somebody killed. Both systems are fast compared to systems 10 to 15 years ago.

That is my two cents!

I am not complaining about how long it takes to open a text document. if you were not so busy trying to be rude you would have seen that. I was simply saying that I noticed it was snappier.

some people said to check another Core 2 pc so I did. it was the same difference between another Core 2 duo and another X2. but yeah that does not mean anything at all...

 

[toyota]

Fact or fantasy? Yes, get out a stopwatch. Test something other than "it feels"

And are the two PCs absolutely identical to each other - except for the CPUs? Are the HDDs identical with the same installed programs, updated and everything running in the background is the same. i doubt it.

If they are not identical then you are being utterly ridiculous. There are too many other factors involved between the two platforms to judge by feelings how quickly a document opens.

Politeness has nothing to do with it as you are proving by your rudeness to me; and i have an open mind but i am not stupidly gullible.

again its not feeling when you can look right at it and see it take longer.

so after I show the difference as being consistently around 1 second then what? I am not pushing the start button right or the stopwatch is not calibrated?

 

[apoppin]

again its not feeling when you can look right at it and see it take longer.

so after I show the difference as being consistently around 1 second then what? I am not pushing the start button right or the stopwatch is not calibrated?

ONE more time. We are not doubting your observations nor your sanity

We are doubting your conclusion that it is the CPU that is making the difference. It could and likely is a plethora of other reasons.

Here is why i doubt you from before; in the OP:

with the Athlon 2 X2 something as simple as opening a text document is instantaneous where on the E8500 there was always a slight delay. I even remember noticing that coming from my old 5000 X2. it cant be the hard drive since my E8500 pc had a WD Black where this is just entry level Hitachi.

also I had spent over 4 hours playing Fallout 3 on my E8500 pc and it always would hitch every few seconds when walking around no matter what settings I used. well on this Athlon 2 X2 pc there was none of that when I played a couple days ago. it would only hitch when it had to load that new area but the other time no hitching at all. that was on the same version of the game and video card drivers.

1. They are two different PC with a completely different MB, RAM, HDDs and programs installed. Some drivers may be more up to date than others and one system might be borked - yours because
2. Your e8500 should NOT have behaved that way on F3 any more than the Athlon X2 - a slower CPU
​

 

[toyota]

ONE more time. We are not doubting your observations nor your sanity

We are doubting your conclusion that it is the CPU that is making the difference. It could and likely is a plethora of other reasons.

Here is why i doubt you from before; in the OP:

1. They are two different PC with a completely different MB, RAM, HDDs and programs installed. Some drivers may be more up to date than others and one system might be borked - yours because
2. Your e8500 should NOT have behaved that way on F3 any more than the Athlon X2 - a slower CPU
​

yes it could be something else. but I am saying that Core 2 cpus I tried it on BOTH had the same tiny little delay before opening it up. again I know exactly what that looks and feels like because I have seen it probably thousands of times over the last 2.5 years. next BOTH of the X2 comps opened it instantaneously. I even mentioned that my old 5000 X2 was even snappier than the E8500 in that respect because when I first got the E8500 pc it was something that I noticed.

 

[Arkaign]

Toyota, I fully believe you that in the scenarios you've personally witnessed that your old X2 5000s indeed performed better in windows responsiveness than your E8500 or the display model Pentium Dual Core E6800 (I'm assuming a big box store doesn't have any ancient C2D E6800s in stock by this point, lol).

What we're trying to get at is that a lot of configurations can be sluggish and not all that snappy in Windows performance, opening the start menu, opening a file browser, opening a text document, etc. It really has nothing to do with the processor itself, as I am an incredibly picky person and would have definitely noticed if every_single_C2D processor was slower than 5-year-old Athlon X2s in these areas. Test cases involving big-box store display PCs are probably worthless as well, because they're basically invariably loaded down with OEM/trialware garbage like Norton, toolbars galore, startup experience nonsense, demonstation wizards that play videos showing specs/features/etc.

It muddies things considerably when you described the horrible hitching problem with FO3 on the E8500, as that's seriously abnormal behavior.

I've spent a few hours of googlage on the 'snappiness' issue, and have found nothing to support it other than a few forum posts from either people with limited exposure to various configs or just plain fanboys of each side (oh my C2D is sooooo much faster/more responsive than my new Athlon II X4, what gives, or my old Opteron 185 was much snappier than my new i5, etc).

You can bet dollars to doughnuts that if there WAS a measurable difference in real-world snappiness/responsiveness (this could easily be displayed by videos showing mouse clicks timed to screen response in a controlled test) that it would have made its way into serious comparison videos online.

 

[apoppin]

yes it could be something else. but I am saying that Core 2 cpus I tried it on BOTH had the same tiny little delay before opening it up. again I know exactly what that looks and feels like because I have seen it probably thousands of times over the last 2.5 years. next BOTH of the X2 comps opened it instantaneously. I even mentioned that my old 5000 X2 was even snappier than the E8500 in that respect because when I first got the E8500 pc it was something that I noticed.

Thank-you! There are SO many factors involved that it is impossible to say it is any one thing without doing a lot of testing and research - and making the PCs identical in every way they can be except for CPU and MB.

Now it *could* be the CPU; however, whenever we see office suites run, Intel is faster.

The problem is you say "BOTH" like it means anything. Your sample is too small to draw firm conclusions from. It is called "anecdotal"

 

[toyota]

snip

and I understand what you are saying but again the difference is consistent though. I do not know how to make that any more clear. it is absolutely instantaneous on the X2 comps where again there is the exact same little delay on the E6800 just like on my E8500.

if it is not the cpu then it seems like it has to be something related since all the comps had various hardware yet the difference was consistent and reproducible between the X2 and Core 2 cpu equipped comps.

 

[Arkaign]

Maybe it had something to do with the dingo, lol.

What you're describing would definitely not go unnoticed if it were a unified phenemonon that was reproducible across all configurations with particular processors; ie; every E8500-based system had lag that was impossible to eliminate in general windows usage. You're correct in that many general users probably wouldn't notice the difference between .1s and .7s time to open notepad or calc for example, but you know that people like us supernerds on AT would notice that in a heartbeat. We could make videos, and the word would spread like wildfire. This would have particularly been pronounced at the beginning of the C2D era, when it was a shocking development to see Intel go from the back of the pack to a commanding lead overnight. Much like the Nvidia FX5xxx series debacle, and the ATI 2900 mis-step, die-hards from either camp would go to great lengths to seize upon any possible shred of evidence to back up their team, and if there were evidence, we'd definitely have seen it at the time.

Remember that the X2-5000+ was only available in Windsor and Brisbane forms, and all were 512k L2 cache units. One of the closer things I can think of that is a test of real-world performance in general windows/office is the old PC Worldbench, which times response times to perform simple tasks (open word, change font, save test file, etc). Check out this old AT comparo at the $180 price point waaaaaaaaay back in '07 :

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2276/6

Notice that the X2 6000+ (marginally better than the X2 5000+) is handily beaten despite a clock speed advantage by the old E6750, including the worldbench 6 test.

Now consider this, the E6750 was an old 2.66ghz CPU with 4mb of cache, running on old chipsets with older memory. The E8500 is a 3.16ghz CPU with 6mb of cache, and they typically were mated to much newer chipsets and better memory. If the old E6750 tested better in running those simple routines against a 6000+, how is a 5000+ supposed to be faster than an E8500. Does not compute, literally.

Again, and I can't say this clearly enough, I absolutely believe you saw/witnessed what you describe, as I've seen similar oddities myself in all kinds of setups. I can say with all confidence that the following is true :

(1)- Your X2 5000+ system is working perfectly.
(2)- The E8500 system is fubared somewhere. Not only is it lagging with a faster HDD, but the hitching in FO3 that you describe is absolutely an indication of some more serious problem lurking under the surface.
(3)- The E6800 Pentium Dual Core system in the big box store is virtually useless as a comparitive tool as the OEMs gum up PCs so badly out of the box that it's borderline criminal. I've seen brand-new PhII X6 and Core i7 boxes with 8GB or 12GB of ram and fast hard drives/etc running like dog crap because they have 90 or 100 processes running and so much crapware/demoware that it just brings Windows to a disgusting crawl. I'm a picky SOB, and my old extra-box E5200 (much slower than E6800) produced no appreciable lag in Windows Vista x64 or Windows 7, even at stock speeds, on a low-level G31-based mobo and generic DDR2, with a mediocre hard drive. I'm talking about the performance you probably see with your 5000+, literally by the time I'm lifting my finger from the second double-click, any simple task was already complete and waiting. And I played all of FO3 on that setup with no hitching

I'm not saying that I'm some all knowing genius or anything of the sort, but I slog through this crap 50+ hours a week, year after year, migrations, mass loadset rollouts, clean and wipe/reloads for new hires, and although some weeks I might be up to my ears in purely software/server/remote work, most weeks I have to do minor to serious hands-on work with 5-10 desktops or laptops. I'd have definitely noticed if there were something to this. About the only thing I have noticed that's relevant is the oddballs that seem out of place. Like having a P4 or Sempron run like a top, or running into a quad-core system with plenty of ram and no crapware running like a dog. Most of the time an answer can be found, but sometimes it's just not easy to find or worth an infinite investment in time to grind out the root cause.

 

[AnandThenMan]

I have an old P4 2.4 GHz Northwood that felt snappier than any X2 system I built or used. And it wasn't just me either; others used it said the same thing. It defies explanation and logic, but there it was.

It doesn't defy logic or explanation. If both the P4 and the X2 system are working properly, the X2 will yield a better user experience. The P4 was a horrible CPU, I still see them today in use and they are sluggish and frustrating to use.

I also had a Phenom II very briefly and it felt like a complete pig next to all my other boxes. I attributed it to a crappy chipset and returned it instead of swapping parts until I was blue in the face.

On the other hand, I've got an AMD M300 which doesn't feel any different than any of my other boxes.

I'd wager that any unresponsiveness is due to bad/flaky BIOS/Motherboard/Chipset than CPU.

You're mixing things up, a broken, buggy, or poorly configured system just means it's not working properly, it does not indicate the actual usability and responsiveness inherent of a particular processor/platform.

 

[toyota]

Arkaign, it was Fallout New Vegas actually but both it and Fallout 3 are very well known for hitching and stuttering on various configurations. you can google "Fallout" and "hitching" if you doubt me as you are in the minority not to have hitching at some point in that game. again nothing was wrong with my E8500 setup.

if you were here and I went to these different comps and showed you what the difference was back to back you would see it. you telling me that your E5200 does not do it is meaningless because you may not even notice exactly what it is I am talking about. no one would think anything was actually wrong with the Core 2 setups. and no one that was not looking for the difference would ever see it but again I use text documents extensively so I noticed. the X2 systems do indeed load a text document faster from what I have seen so far.

 

[Tsavo]

How big are these dingo documents?