Can anyone give me a quick overview of current CPUs?

[Josh7289]

I've been out of the loop for a long time. Catching up on GPUs was relatively easy because of ATi's recent Evergreen launches and Anandtech's coverage of them, but what's the current situation on CPUs?

I'm looking at these Athlon, Phenom, Core 2, Core i5, Core i7, slapping numbers like II or X3 onto these things... I just don't know how to make any order out of it all.

So can anyone give me a quick overview of all these products, what order they go in, performance- and price-wise?

 

[alyarb]

performance increasing from left to right:

Athlon II X2, Core2 Duo, Phenom II X3, Athlon II X4, Phenom II X4, Core2 Quad, Core i5, Core i7.

Core2 Duo and Core2 Quad are only viable purchases if you are well-vested in the socket 775 ecosystem. a brand new build designed around 775 is not recommended, however, as there are far more cost effective alternatives available. The Athlon II and Phenom II have the sub-$250 segments very well covered. i5 is overpriced for its marginal performance offerings over Phenom II X4. i7 860 is the sweet spot of price/performance for a 4-core, 8-threaded CPU, but the additional 4 logical cores do not work with every application, so the i7 doesn't leave the competition in the dust every single time.

Furthermore, an ordered list like this doesnt do justice, at all, to how closely these chips can perform relative to one another in certain apps. read an i7 860 review and a phenom ii x3 review. those articles will provide you with comparisons of all competing chips in their price range and you'll see where they are equal and where they are not.

price-wise, the breakdown is far simpler and more consistent:

AMD, intel.

 

[Vertibird]

When do the 32nm CPUs launch?

 

[alyarb]

32nm dual cores are coming from intel very soon. 32nm 6-cores from intel will be out 1Q 2010.

32nm quads from intel and AMD Q4 2010/Q1 2011

if you're looking for a 4 GHz quad core, just buy now.

 

[Vertibird]

Originally posted by: alyarb

32nm quads from intel and AMD Q4 2010/Q1 2011

This is when Sandy Bridge launches?

 

[alyarb]

http://www.guru3d.com/news/int...ng-release-in-q4-2010/

not the best link for this kind of announcement but it's widely accepted that Q4/Q1 10/11 is the time.

 

[Josh7289]

Originally posted by: alyarb
i5 is overpriced for its marginal performance offerings over Phenom II X4. i7 860 is the sweet spot of price/performance for a 4-core, 8-threaded CPU, but the additional 4 logical cores do not work with every application, so the i7 doesn't leave the competition in the dust every single time.

Anandtech seems to really like the Core i5-750. But you say the Phenom II X4's are close enough in performance to make the i5 not worth it...

But that's for which specific Phenom II X4 models and in which usage scenarios?

 

[alyarb]

don't get me wrong. i5 is faster than Phenom II X4 across the board, even with a lower clock speed but the difference isn't so large that it's worth the money (to most people). i just don't think it's a $200 CPU. If you're doing general purpose multitasking, gaming, or multimedia, the phenom is the better value because it's more than fast enough and the overall platform cost is considerably less than i5. tweakers and overclockers find the phenoms to be a considerable value because $100 dual and tri-cores can be unlocked and overclocked to ~3.8 ghz, offering performance that would cost an additional hundred bucks if you went down the intel route.

on the other side of that coin, if you're a power user who does encoding/multimedia content creation, the i5 doesn't really have a place either since the i7 is less than $100 more and significantly faster. the i7 is simply the fastest chip, a good overclocker and is very power efficient for the performance it provides, and the phenoms have the value aspect well covered.

if you are not an overclocker and you want to pay "full price" for a high-freq quad, then the i5 becomes cost effective. $220+ for a Phenom II is absurd and I would not pay it. I just think intel can definitely afford to knock $30-40 off the i5 750 to take more of the value segment away from AMD.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Depending on how long you have been out of the loop you really can't go wrong, but the Phenom 720BE / Asus M4A79XTD Evo AM3 790X combo will be tough to top for general buck-bangin'.