THG made the following comment, can anyone offer 'real' insight

[techiecool]

First of all, you have to ask yourself how much you are willing to spend per unit of computing power. Especially in the 3-GHz or 3000+ segment and beyond, processors can cost several hundred dollars. This is money that somehow needs to "pay off" within only a few months, considering the merciless speed with which prices drop. In the upper price segment, AMD and Intel are still equally expensive. However, if a processor of around 2.5 GHz or 2500+ meets your requirements, then the AMD processors are downright dirt-cheap. An Athlon XP 2600+ based on the Thoroughbred-B will only set you back about $100, whereas a Pentium 4 will easily cost you $200. To do it some justice, the latter will need a motherboard capable of withstanding an FSB clock rate of 800 MHz, and experience has shown that these are more expensive than models for 400 or 533 MHz.

In everyday use, differences in performance between two different CPUs will only become evident when the processors are pushed to their limits or if the output actually differs by at least 25%. In this respect, top-of-the-line CPUs are only a wise investment if they are run to capacity. And this is not the case with office applications or most common games, but can be for specific "tasks" such as the encryption of video streams in space-saving formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4) or extravagant graphics computations (rendering) etc.

How does this 'feel' in terms of his statement? and by feel i mean both the validity of the statement and the feel of the machine. don't mean to start a flame here but am curious.

 

[Duvie]

Well from the babble in the beginning I don't want to comment on cause I think he is possibly making an unrealistic comparison when we figure in AMD's faltering pr rating...

The 2nd half I agree with except the 25%...I think you feel performance increases well below that in the range of 10%....10% of a 2-3 hour encode is sizeable...10% in a 30 minute rendering is even very nice!!!

 

[techiecool]

i think THG was saying that the 25% in the difference of the cpu speed.

 

[Chumpman]

Originally posted by: Duvie
Well from the babble in the beginning I don't want to comment on cause I think he is possibly making an unrealistic comparison when we figure in AMD's faltering pr rating...

The 2nd half I agree with except the 25%...I think you feel performance increases well below that in the range of 10%....10% of a 2-3 hour encode is sizeable...10% in a 30 minute rendering is even very nice!!!

 

[Duvie]

If that is the case that may very well be true cause ramps in speed in terms of percentage does not constitute performance increase.....I usually like to only upgrade if I can assure myself of 500mhz minimum jumps so I can attest I see substantial improvements in the 20-25% range....


As for the 1st part the comparison THG is trying to make is a 2600+ is equvalent to a 2.6c (the price he quoted is the price listed on Pricewatch) 800fsb chip...many DCDDR boards that can unleash the power of this chip (800fsb) are as cheap as an nforce2 mobo you will need to unleash the power of the athlon chip. The 2.6c will hand the 2600+ if not the 2800+ barton its lunch.....Then ofcourse we get into importance of use of computer. In multimedia apps (like I run as my main use) only further show this growing gap... Gaming may make them look more equal but the p4 still wins majority at that speed.

 

[Jeff7181]

Even if you compare an XP2600 to a 2.4C, the XP2600 is still cheaper any way you slice it. Hell, you can get an XP2800 for the same price as a 2.4C. So I'd say in his comment about that, he's correct.