Inexpensive quad core?

[ehume]

I will admit that I don't know a lot about these cpu's -- especially the new ones. I bought an HP Stream 11 for a February conference because I have given my old 2008 desktop replacement to my daughter. With an SSD it runs OK but has very bad graphics, even for MS Office and the like.

Well, I waited on the sales and got a Signature Edition from the MS Store with no crapware on it, for $179. But I learned that the screen is just a bit too small for me. It runs for 10 hours with the radio turned off and the screen on dim, but I wish I had splurged and spent $50 more for the 13" screen.

I also note that it drags a bit, even doing pdf's. I suspect that is partly due to running Win 8.1 with only 2GB RAM, but I'm thinking that if the machine had 4 cores, it would run better.

I'm looking at Intel Ark, at quad-core Atoms. The Cherry Trail chips aren't out yet, but I'm seeing quad-core cpu's down at $17 each. Would it cost us so much if the OEM's put quad-cores in their cheap laptops?

Anyway, I'll be looking for another 'top for next year's conference. Lucky me that I can catch the post holiday sales. So what should I be looking for? SSD (HD's slow you down), SD card reader (I more than tripled my available space with one); the resolution at 1366 x 768 is passable, but I'll want a 13" display. What kind of cpu should I look for? What's the cheapest laptop with 4 cores now?

I know a lot will change in the next year, but I'd like to know enough to follow what's going on.

 

[ninaholic37]

I'm looking at Intel Ark, at quad-core Atoms. The Cherry Trail chips aren't out yet, but I'm seeing quad-core cpu's down at $17 each. Would it cost us so much if the OEM's put quad-cores in their cheap laptops?

The 2-in-1s (Atom Z3xxx) are usually quad core like the Asus T100 and Acer Switch, but they charge a premium for tablet separation / touchscreen / etc.

 

[Burpo]

http://www.zdnet.com/pictures/ces-2...ps-powered-by-intels-new-broadwell-processor/

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-XPS-13...243?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d558e6a6b

 

[Deders]

Don't bother with the original atoms, they are awful for performance (but great for battery life) Having a quad core version of one of these chips wouldn't help you at all.

The bay trail generation of atoms are better, or you might consider something something with an A-Series AMD chip for reasonable performance for a good price and good power consumption.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Why do you want 4 awful slow cores? Isnt there enough threads already about people complaining about their performance?

 

[waltchan]

If you can find a Celeron 2957U or Pentium 3558U that are real notebook Haswell processors, go for that one. Dual-core can outbeat quad-core in some cases depending on CPU architecture.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Why do you want 4 awful slow cores? Isnt there enough threads already about people complaining about their performance?

Once again your ignorance is on display. Over and over we've shown most user tasks are indeed multithreaded. More cores, much more responsiveness. That is the reason why most people get a new computer.

You've clearly never used the budget quads (or modern FX for that matter) and just base your opinions on single application or non-sequitur benchmarks. After extensively using the a4-5000, Z3735F, T6400, P8700, Q8200, A8-3850, E8400 and FX-8350 over the past year, if there's more cores that are available to the user the system is much more responsive during real-world usage. Unless I was playing Starcraft 2, I'd choose the A4-5000 above the E8400 for everyday tasks or work.

Something that most people and benchmarks look over, even moving your mouse cursor and/or quick typing eats up quite a bit of CPU cycles in both Windows and Ubuntu. If the application uses two cores and is demanding , getting a CPU only with two cores will dramatically reduce user responsiveness. Compare office boxes with the Q6600-E8400 or the Athlon x2 Regor-Phenom x4 9150e. The quads are much better despite the significantly lower clocks. Any IT professional knows this.

 

[Deders]

Once again your ignorance is on display. Over and over we've shown most user tasks are indeed multithreaded. More cores, much more responsiveness. That is the reason why most people get a new computer.

You've clearly never used the budget quads (or modern FX for that matter) and just base your opinions on single application or non-sequitur benchmarks. After extensively using the a4-5000, Z3735F, T6400, P8700, Q8200, A8-3850, E8400 and FX-8350 over the past year, if there's more cores that are available to the user the system is much more responsive during real-world usage. Unless I was playing Starcraft 2, I'd choose the A4-5000 above the E8400 for everyday tasks or work.

Something that most people and benchmarks look over, even moving your mouse cursor and/or quick typing eats up quite a bit of CPU cycles in both Windows and Ubuntu. If the application uses two cores and is demanding , getting a CPU only with two cores will dramatically reduce user responsiveness. Compare office boxes with the Q6600-E8400 or the Athlon x2 Regor-Phenom x4 9150e. The quads are much better despite the significantly lower clocks. Any IT professional knows this.

Have you tried the original Atom or Kaveri?

 

[XavierMace]

Once again your ignorance is on display. Over and over we've shown most user tasks are indeed multithreaded. More cores, much more responsiveness. That is the reason why most people get a new computer.

It's not that cut and dry. The original Atom's were complete POS's. Adding more cores wouldn't have mattered. They had issues with HD video playback with nothing else running. Every single aspect of the system was just sluggish. More cores doesn't automatically make it better. Single thread performance matters regardless of what you are doing.

I'm also curious where "we've shown most user tasks are indeed multithreaded".

 

[frozentundra123456]

Slow is slow, no matter how many cores you have. I am not a fan of atom or mullins /beema laptops at all. I would take a haswell dual core any day of the week over either of those.

A for the poster that said he would take a quad core atom or cat core against an E8400, I very strongly disagree. I use both, and while there might be some perfectly threaded benchmarks in which the quad could compete, in normal everyday use the E8400 feels vastly superior. In fact even my backup 2.2 ghz core 2 duo is night and day better.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Once again your ignorance is on display. Over and over we've shown most user tasks are indeed multithreaded. More cores, much more responsiveness. That is the reason why most people get a new computer.

You've clearly never used the budget quads (or modern FX for that matter) and just base your opinions on single application or non-sequitur benchmarks. After extensively using the a4-5000, Z3735F, T6400, P8700, Q8200, A8-3850, E8400 and FX-8350 over the past year, if there's more cores that are available to the user the system is much more responsive during real-world usage. Unless I was playing Starcraft 2, I'd choose the A4-5000 above the E8400 for everyday tasks or work.

Something that most people and benchmarks look over, even moving your mouse cursor and/or quick typing eats up quite a bit of CPU cycles in both Windows and Ubuntu. If the application uses two cores and is demanding , getting a CPU only with two cores will dramatically reduce user responsiveness. Compare office boxes with the Q6600-E8400 or the Athlon x2 Regor-Phenom x4 9150e. The quads are much better despite the significantly lower clocks. Any IT professional knows this.

Mostly incorrect. Single-threaded performance is what improves the user experience, makes it "snappy". My G3258 @ 3.8 is much "snappier" for what I use my PC for than my Q9300 @ 3.0. Both rigs have 8GB of RAM and SSDs. Raw compute performance is roughly the same or less for the G3258, as far as my DC goes.

 

[Shivansps]

Mostly incorrect. Single-threaded performance is what improves the user experience, makes it "snappy". My G3258 @ 3.8 is much "snappier" for what I use my PC for than my Q9300 @ 3.0. Both rigs have 8GB of RAM and SSDs. Raw compute performance is roughly the same or less for the G3258, as far as my DC goes.

I think storage controller is making a difference in that scenario.

 

[schmuckley]

This is Greek to me.
The only CPU i recognize in this thread is G3258.
..That's a pretty good chip.

 

[Ramses]

It is not nearly as simple as fewer cores are better or multicores are better.
Multicore is always, always, always better, IF the performance of a given core is at an acceptable level. What that level is I'm sure warrants a forty page thread of it's own.

 

[schmuckley]

G3258> any atom/bay trail/kaveri + whatever else it is that's been mentioned+VIA quad cores.
:awe:
$120 for mobo + CPU
List of mobos that OC g3258: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2389948&highlight=overclock+pentium

 

[waltchan]

I would take a haswell dual core any day of the week over either of those.

In the other "Bay Trail not so bad" thread, one user claims the Pentium N3540 quad-core Bay Trail needs to be overclocked at 4.5GHz in order to match a 1.4GHz Celeron 2957U dual-core Haswell performance.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Have you tried the original Atom or Kaveri?

Kaveri? No. Kabini, yes. Atom? I've had the diamondville, cedarview, and silverthorne models in my netbooks and a set top box in the past. Now I've got a quad Bay-Trail netbook for the wife. Any of the older atoms are niche category chips and they worked out very well for me in college and the military while traveling. Slow, but they worked. Bay-trail is a game changer though. Where I had a hard time even playing SD video in my older products, the Bay-Trail does 1080p video on my t.v. with ease. Multiple tabs, office and Pandora running? Zero slowdowns. Any atom prior chokes hard even doing a couple tabs.

It doesn't feel any different than my laptop in sig (which now has the SSD from my desktop) and on those CPU heavy pages like the Hume thread in OT, it doesn't bog down/hang like the C2D does. Responsiveness doesn't change when I'm doing cpu heavy activities on it.

As stated earlier, I'd much rather do work on an A4-5000/Bay-Trail/Phenom-e cpu than a "fast" E8400 C2D. Hell, just the receptionist at my job has two excel instances, a shared Google doc tab, a scheduling app, VOIP app, and a contracts and bidding application open at all times at the minimum. Real world work requires more threads available to the user if they care about responsiveness. That and an SSD of course.

 

[Shivansps]

That is mostly because even a lowly Z3735D has the exact same MT perf of a E2200, so maybe a faster E8400 may be better overall than most BTs, but IGP matters now, and 775 had awfull IGPs, the only exection was the Nvidia 7100 and 9x00, kinda the only decent igps on 775.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Why do you want 4 awful slow cores? Isnt there enough threads already about people complaining about their performance?

Most of the threads complaining about slow quads seem aimed at stuff like Atom and Jaguar/Kabini. Mobile Kaveri quads have been hard to find for most buyers.

 

[Abwx]

In the other "Bay Trail not so bad" thread, one user claims the Pentium N3540 quad-core Bay Trail needs to be overclocked at 4.5GHz in order to match a 1.4GHz Celeron 2957U dual-core Haswell performance.

That s not true and pure wild speculation, for instance a J1800 at 2.4 is 50% of a Celeron G1820 in Integer and about 38% in FP, so it almost match a 1.4 Haswell 2C in Integer and a 1GHz one in FP.

Frequency ratios are 1.78 in Integer and 2.35 in FP, a 1.4 HW is matched on Integer and FP by respectively a 2.5GHz and 3.3GHz Baytrail, we are far from the 4.5GHz figure, even in FP, and it s a dual core while the N3540 is a 4C...

 

[NTMBK]

You may want to consider something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...9SIA7AB2K34238 It has a Haswell Celeron, instead of a Bay Trail one.

 

[ehume]

. . . Now I've got a quad Bay-Trail netbook for the wife. . . .

What model did you get?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I know someone that got an N3540 4GB laptop for his woman, and he told me she said it was "slow". And I don't even think that she had any experience with an i3 or faster laptop.

 

[ehume]

Well, a 2-core i3 desktop or AiO can definitely drag at times.

I guess at bottom I'm curious about the Cherry Trail quads -- z8700, z8500, z8300. Don't understand about the x3, x5, x7 yet. What kind of laptop do you think they'll go in? I know MS has some limits on the size/specs of 'tops having free Windows. I know that paying for Win 10 (it will be that when I get one) will jack the price up. But I feel like I've spent $180 on a machine I won't use again -- to far down the food chain. So I'm wondering what I should look for to in a Cherry Trail quad; or will there be another cheap chip that will overtake Cherry Trail the way Skylake will overtake Broadwell?

 

[schmuckley]

The way this thing is going..Via quad-core is kick-butt