POLL: Core Refinement Vs. Higher Clocks for FPS

acemcmac

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
13,712
1
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Generally speaking, which do you think is a better approach for the achievement of higher framerates: AMD?s emphasis on refining the processor core before enhancing clock speeds or Intel?s approach of emphasis on enhancing clock speeds before refining the processor core?

I got into an interesting discussion with some of my real world peers the other evening and I was interested in hearing the Anand concensus :beer:

Thanks :)

Edit: LETS KEEP THIS ON TOPIC! Hard drives, video cards, chipsets and the like are both irrelevant and are not in question here...
 

Jeff7181

Lifer
Aug 21, 2002
18,368
11
81
Core refinement. We're already approaching the physical limits of silicon... which is why AMD switched to SOI and Intel switched to Strained Silicon. I think until they find a way to use synthetic diamond (which people are already working on) the key is going to be how much work can be done at one time. Eventually we will reach the limits of SOI and SS, and diamond semi-conductors are VERY far in the future... so they're going to have to make some compromises... either go to extreme cooling solutions... or dual processor configurations... or maybe just dual cores on a single die? There is much speculation that can be done, but I think it's safe to say 99% of us here don't have the knowledge to know which of these would be the most effective as far as performance and cost.
 

sao123

Lifer
May 27, 2002
12,656
207
106
Forget the cpu.


Im going with option C: Eliminate bottleneck areas.

Increase FSB.
Increase I/O rates and efficiency with better north and south bridge chipsets.
Increase speed of video & storage technology.
 

bjc112

Lifer
Dec 23, 2000
11,460
0
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Originally posted by: sao123
Forget the cpu.


Im going with option C: Eliminate bottleneck areas.

Increase FSB.
Increase I/O rates and efficiency with better north and south bridge chipsets.
Increase speed of video & storage technology.

Until harddrives reach solid state, or something MUCH faster than current 7200/10000k rpm drives... that will be our biggest bottle neck.
 

chsh1ca

Golden Member
Feb 17, 2003
1,179
0
0
Try switching to some 147GB 15k RPM SCSI Ultra320 drives, that will be a LOT faster than 7500/10k RPM IDE drives.
 

nowayout99

Senior member
Dec 23, 2001
232
0
76
I don't think there is a right or wrong way about it... I just care about the performance at the end of the day. Either approach can get you there.
 

Excelsior

Lifer
May 30, 2002
19,047
18
81
Originally posted by: bjc112
Originally posted by: sao123
Forget the cpu.


Im going with option C: Eliminate bottleneck areas.

Increase FSB.
Increase I/O rates and efficiency with better north and south bridge chipsets.
Increase speed of video & storage technology.

Until harddrives reach solid state, or something MUCH faster than current 7200/10000k rpm drives... that will be our biggest bottle neck.

In overall system performance, but the topic is only covering FPS smart guy.
 

Lyfer

Diamond Member
May 28, 2003
5,842
2
81
AMD squeezed every little bit of the old Athlon XP core thats why they have a new core. Intel is doing what AMD did, and will be introducing a new core witht he Prescott.



BTW all that matters for me is Price/Performance ratio which no other cpu can touch the Athlon XP2500/XP1700.:)
 

bjc112

Lifer
Dec 23, 2000
11,460
0
76
Originally posted by: chsh1ca
Try switching to some 147GB 15k RPM SCSI Ultra320 drives, that will be a LOT faster than 7500/10k RPM IDE drives.

Still a bottleneck of the system. But toooooons better than my little WD 7200...

:)
 

bjc112

Lifer
Dec 23, 2000
11,460
0
76
Originally posted by: Excelsior
Originally posted by: bjc112
Originally posted by: sao123
Forget the cpu.


Im going with option C: Eliminate bottleneck areas.

Increase FSB.
Increase I/O rates and efficiency with better north and south bridge chipsets.
Increase speed of video & storage technology.

Until harddrives reach solid state, or something MUCH faster than current 7200/10000k rpm drives... that will be our biggest bottle neck.

In overall system performance, but the topic is only covering FPS smart guy.


Well i was quoting the previous guy, and expanding on the storage part...

I voted for Core refinments... "Smart Guy"

I see you contributed quite nicely to the thread...


rolleye.gif
 

Jeff7181

Lifer
Aug 21, 2002
18,368
11
81
Originally posted by: bjc112
Originally posted by: sao123
Forget the cpu.


Im going with option C: Eliminate bottleneck areas.

Increase FSB.
Increase I/O rates and efficiency with better north and south bridge chipsets.
Increase speed of video & storage technology.

Until harddrives reach solid state, or something MUCH faster than current 7200/10000k rpm drives... that will be our biggest bottle neck.

I've often wondered why we haven't seen dual heads yet. Two independant heads in a hard drive located 180 degrees from eachother. That would be especially useful in laptops, where 5400 RPM is kinda the top end... with two heads, they could make a 5400 RPM drive as fast or faster than a Raptor. If they can do that, then why not 3... or why not 4? The technology is there I believe... as RAID 0 is pretty easy to impliment... they'd just have to do sorta the same thing INSIDE one drive.
 

acemcmac

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
13,712
1
0
My opinion is that if AMD is only now approaching the FPS performance of the uppermost limits of the Northwood core, Prescott should blow everything away. I truly believe that although core refinement is obviously necessary, AMD's unwilliness to explore higher clock speeds will always give it a back seat in FPS performance.

And all of you morons talking about hard drives in this thread... WTF are you thinking? Since when did faster hard drives help anything except load times? Did any of you even read the question or the title of the thread?
 

Excelsior

Lifer
May 30, 2002
19,047
18
81
Originally posted by: bjc112
Originally posted by: Excelsior
Originally posted by: bjc112
Originally posted by: sao123
Forget the cpu.


Im going with option C: Eliminate bottleneck areas.

Increase FSB.
Increase I/O rates and efficiency with better north and south bridge chipsets.
Increase speed of video & storage technology.

Until harddrives reach solid state, or something MUCH faster than current 7200/10000k rpm drives... that will be our biggest bottle neck.

In overall system performance, but the topic is only covering FPS smart guy.


Well i was quoting the previous guy, and expanding on the storage part...

I voted for Core refinments... "Smart Guy"

I see you contributed quite nicely to the thread...


rolleye.gif

You didn't help the thread much out either "smart guy". Try staying on topic.
 

chsh1ca

Golden Member
Feb 17, 2003
1,179
0
0
Originally posted by: bjc112
Still a bottleneck of the system. But toooooons better than my little WD 7200...:)
And probably the price of your whole system. :D



 

acemcmac

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
13,712
1
0
I can't help but wonder if leaving out the comany affiliation would have gotten a more thought out set of poll returns :confused:

I figured it should have been closer to a split, but I think that fanboy-ism has gotten the best of me
 

sao123

Lifer
May 27, 2002
12,656
207
106
Generally speaking, which do you think is a better approach for the achievement of higher framerates: AMD?s emphasis on refining the processor core before enhancing clock speeds or Intel?s approach of emphasis on enhancing clock speeds before refining the processor core?

I got into an interesting discussion with some of my real world peers the other evening and I was interested in hearing the Anand concensus

Thanks

Edit: LETS KEEP THIS ON TOPIC! Hard drives, video cards, chipsets and the like are both irrelevant and are not in question here...

Define FrameRates.
I assume you are talking frames per second (FPS)...which is a fundamental video question!!!?! How are hard drives and video cards not involved?
Very Little of the Video FPS is CPU based anymore, thats why most systems have an indepentent GPU, either onboard or card based.



And all of you morons talking about hard drives in this thread... WTF are you thinking? Since when did faster hard drives help anything except load times? Did any of you even read the question or the title of the thread?

Load times of your textures (which must come from your hard drive) totally affect the number of Frames per Second, and your ability/necessity of frame buffering.
 

acemcmac

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
13,712
1
0
Originally posted by: sao123
Define FrameRates.
I assume you are talking frames per second (FPS)...which is a fundamental video question!!!?! How are hard drives and video cards not involved?
Very Little of the Video FPS is CPU based anymore, thats why most systems have an indepentent GPU, either onboard or card based.

[...]

Load times of your textures (which must come from your hard drive) totally affect the number of Frames per Second, and your ability/necessity of frame buffering.
1) umm... yeah... I dont really know of any other kinds of framerates.... [edit: yeah... just checked the top of the thread, where the poll is? Yeah... its all spelled out. Sorry you had so much trouble reading it.]
2) The question did not set out to ask anythign about video cards, hard drives or anything except processors. Processors will always have an affect on framerates no matter how neglibible you believe them to be. That is the basis of the whole question. This isn't a video card poll... Hard drives only affect load times unless you don't have a gig of dual ddr 3200 like I do. Load times do not affect frame rates... If you don't understand the concept that's being debated here, there's no need to prove it...
 

jiffylube1024

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
7,430
0
71
Originally posted by: sao123
Load times of your textures (which must come from your hard drive) totally affect the number of Frames per Second, and your ability/necessity of frame buffering.

They do, but textures are preloaded into memory before levels, etc. This is why you need hundreds of megabytes for modern games; some like a Gig of RAM now. HD speed is important, but not a key factor like memory speed, CPU and video card speed, etc.
 

sao123

Lifer
May 27, 2002
12,656
207
106
Although your question is fundamentally flawed...I will try to give you the answer you are expecting...
But let me digress for a moment...

There are many things which affect your FPS at which the CPU nearly comes in at the bottom of the list (list included) because of todays architecture.
List: 1)GPU Speed, 2)GPU Memory Size and Speed, 3)AGP/FSB Bandwidth, 4)RAM Size/Speed/Bandwidth, 5)GPU driver efficiency, 6)graphics rendering algorithms, 7)HDD bandwidth Speed, 8)CPU Speed & L2 Cache

Since the dawn of AGP bus technology and DirectX 6, unless you have a system with no GPU, the CPU does 0% of any video work. The AGP bus is located directly on the FSB with the CPU and Memory. The reason for this is to allow all AGP transactions to take place in a sort of quasi-DMA. Meaning it does not get assigned a DMA channel number, but the same principal is at work. This AGP transfer takes place directly from RAM to AGP using the MCH and bypasses the CPU entirely, and the GPU is responsible for all graphics calculation and rendering.

Now that being said... the only case when the CPU is doing video work in when no hardware rendering technology is available, the CPU must use its floating point capacity to run software rendering through DirectX or OpenGL. (MPEG/DVD decoding which uses the CPU does not count here, because those still use the GPU to render if available.) In this case, any refinement to the algorithms and microarchitecture of floating point instructions (FP-ALU) would be beneficial. However, since most algorithms have already approached max efficiency asymptotically then clock speed is now and will be for a long time most beneficial.
 

acemcmac

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
13,712
1
0
Never did I say that the CPU was by any means the driving force behind any large frame rate difference. You insult me by challenging the background of my question, and to this I take serious offence. It is assumed by the basis of the question that all factors other than the processor... everything except clock speed, core engineering and L1/L2 cache size is held constant. Two of these factors specifically seem to be perused more consistently by particular manufacturers. Both AMD and Intel are dramatically increasing their L1/L2 cache sizes, while only Intel seems aggressively interested in increasing clock speed and while only AMD seems aggressively interested in adding new levels of capability to their processors (64 bit?).

Which tactic is of more merit from a gamer's prospective considering the maintaining of high framerates with ever more demanding games?
-or-
"Which do you think is a better approach for the achievement of higher framerates?"

How can you possibly question the validity of any part of such a simple question?
 

sao123

Lifer
May 27, 2002
12,656
207
106
Never did I say that the CPU was by any means the driving force behind any large frame rate difference
No...you said.
Generally speaking, which do you think is a better approach for the achievement of higher framerates: AMD?s emphasis on refining the processor core before enhancing clock speeds or Intel?s approach of emphasis on enhancing clock speeds before refining the processor core?
Neither approach is going to affect your framerate in any way.


You insult me by challenging the background of my question, and to this I take serious offence.
There is no reason to be insulted.

**Here is what I feel like...you asked a question about relating 2 unrelated things. it just doesnt make sence.
For example...you could have just asked me: Company A created coffee grinder X to grind whole bean coffee. Its technology is a 10000rpm 2 blade system...it grinds coffee excellently. Company B created coffee grinder Y to grind whole bean coffee. Its technology deptartment believes it grinds coffee better, because it uses a 5 blade system which rotates at 4000rpms. Now...which grinder makes a better tasting coffee??

Ask a relevent question...like which approach to cpu development will lead to more effective processors.

It is assumed by the basis of the question that all factors other than the processor... everything except clock speed, core engineering and L1/L2 cache size is held constant. Two of these factors specifically seem to be perused more consistently by particular manufacturers. Both AMD and Intel are dramatically increasing their L1/L2 cache sizes, while only Intel seems aggressively interested in increasing clock speed and while only AMD seems aggressively interested in adding new levels of capability to their processors (64 bit?).
1)"all other factors other than the cpu is held constant..." impossible. there is not a comparable equilovent MCH north controller chip to create this test with.
Intel uses a quad pumped FSB. AMD uses only a double pumped FBS. The bandwidth is simply too different to provide such a control.
2)"only Intel seems aggressively interested in increasing clock speed and while only AMD seems aggressively interested in adding new levels of capability to their processors (64 bit?)"
Fact: Both company performs core refinements regularly. Example:prescott core. 13 new instructions. better hyperthreading. better branch prediction for piping. So did AMD. Releasing the first 64bit x86 instruction set. Core refinements really only happen every generation of new CPU's. 1st it was mmx, then 3dnow, then SSE and SSE2, P4 pipelining & quad pumped bus, FSB increments, hyperthreading, and AMD dual core. Now its x86 64. I dont see a clear AMD winner here as the only one interested in core revisions.

Fact: The difference between AMD & Intel architecture is the driving force why AMD cant increase its clock speed as much as intel. AMD's cpu logic is much more in depth and advance and complex than intels. it does more calculations and work per clock cycle, requiring more propogation delay between clock cycles. Intels approach is keep it simple. by simplifying work done per cycle, with no complex logic and less propogation delay, it can cause an instruction to use up two to three clock cycles for completion. therfore pressing speed is not a problem.
FACT: Neither of these CPU improvements approaches affects your video frames per second. It might seem to you that it does because, the items that affect your video are directly tied into the choice of CPU, those being MCH chipset & bus bandwidth...
Dont get caught up in the numbers PR game being played by intel and AMD.

Which tactic is of more merit from a gamer's prospective considering the maintaining of high framerates with ever more demanding games?
-or-
"Which do you think is a better approach for the achievement of higher framerates?"

Now you must understand game programming. Game programs are not cpu intensive applications (comparitively.)
When games run, there are 2 separate program threads or engines running on 2 different processors. There is the game engine which runs on your CPU, and the video engine running on your GPU. They run independely of each other totally, aside from some minimal information exchange. Unless there is a bog down, in your memory/bus bandwidth, and the information exchange is late, there is no effect on your FPS from the CPU.


How can you possibly question the validity of any part of such a simple question?
See above **.


Now in all fairness to your question...I would like to hear some of the ideas bounced around between yourself and you colleages to add to this discussion.
Point me in the direction you want me to speak, and Ill speak in it.