Question Helping my daughter in an introductory IT course. Funny.

[iamgenius]

I just thought this is funny. My daughter asked me to help her in an introductory general IT course she is taking in the university and guess what I found. They were teaching them to compute the overall performance of CPUs and the question goes like this:

Which cpu will have better performance?

A) 2GHz quad core cpu
B) 4GHz dual core cpu
C) 2GHz octa core cpu
D) 5 GHz single core cpu

What you are supposed to do is to multiply the mentioned speed by the core count to get the overall speed of the cpu, which will mean the correct answer here is C because you will get 16 GHz !!! This is insane.

I told my daughter to do it the same way they want her to do it, but also told her this is actually wrong. It is not true for all cases. A higher speed single core cpu can outperform other mutli-core cpus in single-threaded applications.

Maybe it is true in the general sense but I don't understand why a teaching institution will do it this way.

 

[SamMaster]

Well it is an "introduction". I would hope that the finer details are taught later in.

 

[TheELF]

There are no other qualifiers given? no other context? Not even in the rest of the course, lessons, questions?
Can they only choose one answer? Is there space to leave comments?
Because you could tick both C and D.
The question doesn't even specify if all CPUs are the same architecture, just write 13th gen behind A and choose that.

Are you sure they didn't talk about this in class, your daughter might be holding back crucial info.

 

[Thibsie]

Well it is an "introduction". I would hope that the finer details are taught later in.

Still, no one would say the better performing car is the one which the motor goes to higher RPM.

Most people are clueless on this topic I have to say.

 

[mikeymikec]

I just thought this is funny. My daughter asked me to help her in an introductory general IT course she is taking in the university and guess what I found. They were teaching them to compute the overall performance of CPUs and the question goes like this:

Which cpu will have better performance?

A) 2GHz quad core cpu
B) 4GHz dual core cpu
C) 2GHz octa core cpu
D) 5 GHz single core cpu

What you are supposed to do is to multiply the mentioned speed by the core count to get the overall speed of the cpu, which will mean the correct answer here is C because you will get 16 GHz !!! This is insane.

I told my daughter to do it the same way they want her to do it, but also told her this is actually wrong. It is not true for all cases. A higher speed single core cpu can outperform other mutli-core cpus in single-threaded applications.

Maybe it is true in the general sense but I don't understand why a teaching institution will do it this way.

I'd have a chat with the teacher running the course, because that's clearly a stupid question on so many levels.

Here's how I'd break it down:

A) is a reasonably new 2GHz atom-based quad-core CPU
B) is a C2DE OC from over ten years ago
C) is an AMD Jaguar CPU found in what, PS4 or PS5?
D) is a Pentium 4 OC

That's ignoring non x86/x64 architectures, where absurdly high clock rates are possible for specific tasks, but it doesn't mean it's any good at... whatever the task is, or might not even run on the OS that the task is required to run on.

They may as well have asked which vehicle can get from A to B quickest, and list vehicles by the number of wheels they have and how high each rev-counter goes.

All the teacher had to do was to provide some limited context like is the task single or however-many-multi-threaded and that would have been fine, the nuance can come later.

Is there any chance that the teacher is purposefully asking a trick question? How do the rest of the questions fare competence-wise?

 

[igor_kavinski]

What you are supposed to do is to multiply the mentioned speed by the core count to get the overall speed of the cpu, which will mean the correct answer here is C because you will get 16 GHz !!! This is insane.

Maybe they are trying to tell the students that more cores at higher speed would always be faster? But yes, I agree that the multiplication part is very wrong. Maybe that's not actually part of the course and the teacher just told them to do that to avoid getting too deep?

 

[moinmoin]

Which cpu will have better performance?

If that's really the way the question is worded, big lol.

I'd change the question to "Assuming otherwise identical cores and systems, which CPU would have the highest possible multi-thread peak performance?" Still silly, but at least it's spelled out.

 

[sdifox]

It's computer for art majors, don't look too closely.

 

[maddie]

It's computer for art majors, don't look too closely.

The problem with that thinking (not you), is that one then assumes that they know a subject. Explains a lot of what's happening worldwide. What's the old saying? It's not what you actually know or don't know, but what you think you know, but is wrong or incomplete.

 

[sdifox]

The problem with that thinking (not you), is that one then assumes that they know a subject. Explains a lot of what's happening worldwide. What's the old saying? It's not what you actually know or don't know, but what you think you know, but is wrong or incomplete.

But that is how teaching is done these days. They introduce a subject early but shallow. As you advance in grades they go deeper and deeper.

 

[Markfw]

This guy should be fired for incompetence (the teacher)There is no excuse for being wrong when you are a teacher. Either be right, or don't cover the subject.

 

[maddie]

But that is how teaching is done these days. They introduce a subject early but shallow. As you advance in grades they go deeper and deeper.

At University level?

 

[aigomorla]

just write 13th gen behind A and choose that.

the teacher would of probably just given her an A in the class and then went, go to intermediate course.

Seriously tho, with an incompetitent teacher like that, i would of probably went:
E. Which ever has the most RGB, because Linus Tech states RGB makes PC's faster.

 

[Hulk]

Well it is an "introduction". I would hope that the finer details are taught later in.

Introductory! We've been arguing this question for 20 years!

Just kidding of course, kind of anyway.

 

[JustViewing]

Believe it or not most people don't know these stuff. Even lecturers. Common wisdom "More is better". Same for video cards more RAM, better the card will be. Many years ago I was trying to sell my GT8800 512MB card to a friend, but an IT guy convinced him to get a GT8500 1GB instead.

 

[aigomorla]

I think the RTX 4090 is the clear winner then.
It has 16384 Cuda cores clocked at 2.52ghz.
That would take roughly 170 AMD EYPC Genoa processors at 96cores each... oh wait they hyper thread, so i guess 85 could do it.
But it would take that many AMD processors to match 1 RTX 4090.

 

[mikeymikec]

Does anyone remember that hardware review site that did an April Fool's series of benchmarks that included how quickly the hardware could play back the LotR movies?

 

[Kocicak]

... the question goes like this:

Which cpu will have better performance?

A) 2GHz quad core cpu
B) 4GHz dual core cpu
C) 2GHz octa core cpu
D) 5 GHz single core cpu

What you are supposed to do is to multiply the mentioned speed by the core count to get the overall speed of the cpu, which will mean the correct answer here is C because you will get 16 GHz !!! This is insane.

What is the problem? That they did not mention, or you ommited to note, that the CPUs to be compared are made from the same cores?

Why do you say overall "speed", did they say it? Or did they say "performance"? By multiplying those you get a number, that reflects performance of the chip and still is formally in GHz. Nobody cares, if they work with the number alone or they add GHz to that, because it is formally correct.

You are making a camel out of a mosquito, as we say say in our country. Or also making s**t out of f**t.

 

[TheELF]

Does anyone remember that hardware review site that did an April Fool's series of benchmarks that included how quickly the hardware could play back the LotR movies?

I had to google to see when the first one came out, that was 2001!
Back then hardware acceleration wasn't really a thing other than mpeg...Oh wait, they would have used DVD for that back then right?!
Never mind, of course I thought they would have used blueray/1080 and PCs back then would take ages to play that back so a benchmark based on that wouldn't be that crazy.

 

[Shmee]

That is pretty silly. But is it just from some multiple choice coursework, or is the professor actually teaching that way?

 

[mikeymikec]

What is the problem? That they did not mention, or you ommited to note, that the CPUs to be compared are made from the same cores?

Why do you say overall "speed", did they say it? Or did they say "performance"? By multiplying those you get a number, that reflects performance of the chip and still is formally in GHz. Nobody cares, if they work with the number alone or they add GHz to that, because it is formally correct.

You are making a camel out of a mosquito, as we say say in our country. Or also making s**t out of f**t.

GHz is not a measurement of performance, so no, it's not "formally correct".

Clock rate - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[sdifox]

At University level?

Breadth requirement course probably.

 

[Kocicak]

GHz is not a measurement of performance, so no, it's not "formally correct".

"Performance" has no units defined. If you multiply those two figures, one in GHz and the second in number of cores, you still have GHz.

4GHz dual core cpu has the same performance as an 8 GHz 1 core CPU would.

2GHz octa core cpu has the same performance as a 16 GHz 1 core CPU would.

16 GHz 1 core CPU has twice the performance than 8 GHz 1 core CPU.

I still fail to see where is the problem.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

The "correct answer" would've been the question showing a properly labeled benchmark graph to begin with or maybe the answer is provided in the lecture slides or notes ...

 

[JustViewing]

"Performance" has no units defined. If you multiply those two figures, one in GHz and the second in number of cores, you still have GHz.

4GHz dual core cpu has the same performance as an 8 GHz 1 core CPU would.

2GHz octa core cpu has the same performance as a 16 GHz 1 core CPU would.

16 GHz 1 core CPU has twice the performance than 8 GHz 1 core CPU.

I still fail to see where is the problem.

That is not true even rest of the system remain same. It depends on the application being run. Having fast dual core may run certain application faster than 2GHz Octa core. Now we also have efficiency cores to the mix... Intel marketing would love to use this methodology 16*4200+8*5500