Daily use cpu: How much is enough?

[Concillian]

I see your point (my Core 2 duo seems plenty strong for basic web browsing), What are your recommendations for mobile?

In the Anandtech iPad review several processors were tested using web page loading times.

For example, Apple iPad averaged 4.7 seconds for Anand's web page load test, but ASUS Eee PC 1001P atom netbook only took 2.5 seconds on average.

That definitely seems like a noticeable difference to me, but at what point does someone usually stop noticing web page loading time reductions?

How much quicker than atom? How much does mobile GPU contribute to reducing web page loading times?

I would think 1-2 seconds would be acceptable. You have to account for some network traffic anyway. As long as the CPU contribution is less than people expect for network latency and transfers it becomes negligible.

AT has a fair amount of flash. I doubt it loads too much faster than 2.x seconds on a generic middle of the road notebook. Keep in mind a lot of what people are talking about are perceived speed that will not show up in a single application launch with nothing else happening. Dual core benefits have more relevance in the real world than most benchmarks of launching applications with a stopwatch.

The n450 in the eeePC is a slightly stripped single core of a Core2 proceesor, it's a decent design, just clocked low for power savings. It's a reasonable processor, and you only really notice the hit using a netbook like that when doing something that shows the significant flaws in the terrible Intel GMA3150 IGP it's shackled to or doing something that dual core will see significant benefit from.

 

[cbn]

AT has a fair amount of flash. I doubt it loads too much faster than 2.x seconds on a generic middle of the road notebook.

So in some cases a fast notebook CPU may actually be bottlenecked (or at least somewhat limited) by its GPU (as far as web surfing goes)?

EDIT: No wonder Intel has plans to double up the GPU on Sandy Bridge and double it yet again with Ivy Bridge.

I would think 1-2 seconds would be acceptable. You have to account for some network traffic anyway. As long as the CPU contribution is less than people expect for network latency and transfers it becomes negligible.

So faster CPU/GPU for Cable internet vs slower CPU/GPU for 3G? The idea is to match processing speeds to the internet connection right? Where does Wifi fit in this scheme? How much processor would be ideal for that? (Scratching my head, I know these questions are getting tough now).

 

[IntelUser2000]

What? The N450 isn't a low-clocked Core 2. Core 2 clocked at 800MHz will be still faster than the 1.6GHz N450. Do you know anything about these CPUs Concillian?

Web page loading is in no way bottlenecked by GPU. They are all 2D operations that every single GPU since the TNT2 has been equally good at, regardless of whether its 5-year old integrated or a $1200 SLI setup. Plus, that's only for rendering. If its doing any compute, the CPU is doing it. Intel has been doubling 3D performance every generation, so this isn't related.

 

[Absolution75]

Web page loading is in no way bottlenecked by GPU. They are all 2D operations that every single GPU since the TNT2 has been equally good at, regardless of whether its 5-year old integrated or a $1200 SLI setup. Plus, that's only for rendering. If its doing any compute, the CPU is doing it. Intel has been doubling 3D performance every generation, so this isn't related.

Not necessarily anymore - Firefox/IE 9 are both [going] to be rendered in Direct2D which is definitely GPU accelerated.

Windows aps of the past have been using GDI/GDI+, which will give you the same results regardless of the graphics card/cpu.

The reason I mention this is that D2D will fallback on software if it doesn't find a GPU that's compatible with DX9+, making a GPU significantly faster. Either way its still faster than GDI though.




Though the point still stands that the biggest bottleneck in PC browsers is going to be their internet & the way the browser handles the HTML code steam.

 

[aigomorla]

MOAR is BETTER!

Being a typical Fat american, i will gourd myself on cores until i am guilty of gluttony from the cpu god himself.

 

[RussianSensation]

MOAR is BETTER!

Being a typical Fat american, i will gourd myself on cores until i am guilty of gluttony from the cpu god himself.

hehe of course more is better! But after using my friend's Acer Timeline SU9400 C2D 1.4ghz 3mb cache with Intel graphics w/ Intel SSD 80GB Gen1 vs. my Core i7 @ 3.9ghz + GTX470 w/ 7200 rpm drive, his system was hands down faster in "every day" tasks. :'(

 

[cyclo]

At home I have a mix of C2D, C2Q and i7 PCs for the kids, wife and myself. The C2D with a decent graphics card (GTX 8800 and above) is good enough for most things including gaming at 1280 x 1024 or even 1680 x 1050 resolutions. The only reason I built an i7 is for HD video editing. I was using the C2Q but it was slowing me down doing HD video editing. Other than that it was fine for everything else including software development and gaming.

 

[tyl998]

I had a Athlon 64 3200 Single Core 2 ghz cpu with my GTX280 video card It was slow as molasses for most things and I couldn't even browse some webpages although that may have been my low RAM (only 2 GB). More than a few you-tube pages at once? Forget it! Wanna run games? Sure, extremely choppily and at low res. Load times were horrendously long too.

Now that I have SATA drives instead of IDE drives, an i7 930 @ 3.8 ghz, 6GB of RAM, and 2x GTX 460s, most everything runs smoothly and I only complain about my boot time. Still takes a long time to get to the desktop and even then it still tkaes time to load all the background programs.

 

[Skiprudder]

I'd agree with most folks here that a dual-core machine is currently the cutoff for "most folk's average use". Most people, even my mostly retired clients, are simply accustomed these days to having multiple applications open at once, and the difference there between at least a dual-core machine with 2GB ram and a single core is night and day.

Nowadays prices are slow low on Athlon X4s for instance I usually buy those for my clients. It's more than they need now, but when one can pick up a quad core Phenom II, 4GB of Ram, Win7 system for $499 I say go for it and be a little more future proof.