What is the fastest single core CPU?

[Maximilian]

Yeah i know if you took an i7 and disabled 3 of the cores somehow that would be the fastest but im not asking for any practical reason im just curious. Would it have been one of the old AMD FX series?

 

[maniac5999]

Question: do you mean a native single core or a harvested chip? AMD makes (or recently made) a sempron out of a Phenom II where 3 cof the cores failed the binning process.

 

[mrcmtl]

Semprons aren't made out of Phenom II, but Athlon II.

 

[exar333]

Probably FX-57 @ 2.8ghz.

 

[MentalIlness]

AMD FX-74 ?

http://products.amd.com/en-us/Deskt...2=&f3=&f4=&f5=&f6=&f7=&f8=&f9=&f10=&f11=&f12=

That is a different socket though. Which socket are you referring to ?

 

[Bateluer]

I don't think there's such a thing as a single core CPU for the 1156 or 1366 Intel iX line. So that's a moot point of discussion.

The fastest single core CPU that you can actually buy and use? Probably the Sempron 145
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103888

 

[eric.kjellen]

AMD FX-74 ?

http://products.amd.com/en-us/Deskt...2=&f3=&f4=&f5=&f6=&f7=&f8=&f9=&f10=&f11=&f12=

That is a different socket though. Which socket are you referring to ?

Isn't the FX-74 a dual-core CPU?

 

[slag]

I don't think there's such a thing as a single core CPU for the 1156 or 1366 Intel iX line. So that's a moot point of discussion.

The fastest single core CPU that you can actually buy and use? Probably the Sempron 145
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103888

Mute point. It doesn't exist, so we wont talk about it, so we will remain silent.

 

[nyker96]

atom isn't bad for its size/power consumption/speed.

 

[Bateluer]

atom isn't bad for its size/power consumption/speed.

Right, so long as you don't want to browse the web, watch HD videos, or use Office, its great.

With Ion, you can do a good deal more. Not sure if the Crystal HD chip makes browsing any better though. Not sure if it works with Flash.

Atom without Ion behind it coughs up a lung on any websites with Flash, Java, pretty much anything more than basic HTML. Even shopping at Dell, Newegg, or Amazon can make it choke because of the scripts those sites run.

 

[ther00kie16]

That 145 was just recently released and edges out celeron 900 and fx-57 in
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
I'm guessing those P4s were Prescotts. Was Cedar Mill any faster clock for clock than Prescott? Also wonder if those benches are with HT.

 

[betasub]

Mute point. It doesn't exist, so we wont talk about it, so we will remain silent.

From wiktionary.org

moot (adjective)

1. (UK, or US dated) Subject to discussion (originally at a moot); arguable, debatable, unsolved or impossible to solve.
2. (North America) Having no practical impact or relevance.
That point may make for a good discussion, but it is moot.
3. (North America, chiefly law) Being an exercise of thought; academic.

 

[fffblackmage]

atom isn't bad for its size/power consumption/speed.

Atom is good for battery life, but even single core Pentium 4s and Celerons are faster than a dual core Atom.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

From wiktionary.org

moot (adjective)

1. (UK, or US dated) Subject to discussion (originally at a moot); arguable, debatable, unsolved or impossible to solve.
2. (North America) Having no practical impact or relevance.
That point may make for a good discussion, but it is moot.
3. (North America, chiefly law) Being an exercise of thought; academic.

This.

 

[nyker96]

Right, so long as you don't want to browse the web, watch HD videos, or use Office, its great.

With Ion, you can do a good deal more. Not sure if the Crystal HD chip makes browsing any better though. Not sure if it works with Flash.

Atom without Ion behind it coughs up a lung on any websites with Flash, Java, pretty much anything more than basic HTML. Even shopping at Dell, Newegg, or Amazon can make it choke because of the scripts those sites run.

for HD, you can wait for Ontario to come out next year, rumored to be HD capable with the integrated GPU.

On browsing, you are right about Flash based sites been slow, I have an Asus eee 900A 1,6 Atom, I used Chrome which is quite a bit faster than firefox. I think firefox isn't designed for low resource environment while Chrome is more at home. When you select apps more carefully for Atom netbook, that little machine performs quite well.

But I think you are complaining about a book on history for not having any info on chemistry. I don't think Atom was design to do HD etc. you are expecting too much from it. To be honest if Atom can indeed do HD with stride, no one will be buying Core 2s//quads.

 

[Cogman]

From wiktionary.org

moot (adjective)

1. (UK, or US dated) Subject to discussion (originally at a moot); arguable, debatable, unsolved or impossible to solve.
2. (North America) Having no practical impact or relevance.
That point may make for a good discussion, but it is moot.
3. (North America, chiefly law) Being an exercise of thought; academic.

lol, I was so tempted to post something like this.

 

[Maximilian]

Question: do you mean a native single core or a harvested chip? AMD makes (or recently made) a sempron out of a Phenom II where 3 cof the cores failed the binning process.

Hmm it would be interesting to know both the fastest native single core and harvested as well.

 

[Pantlegz]

From wiktionary.org

moot (adjective)

1. (UK, or US dated) Subject to discussion (originally at a moot); arguable, debatable, unsolved or impossible to solve.
2. (North America) Having no practical impact or relevance.
That point may make for a good discussion, but it is moot.
3. (North America, chiefly law) Being an exercise of thought; academic.

Thanks, that bothered me too.

 

[Nemesis 1]

I have a P4 I willing to run against AMD 64 anytime any day . Now that apps are more multi threaded. But to be fair half the apps would need to be single threaded. Half multi threaded. Think we would have a tie. P4 winning multi threads. the past is past . P4 was more future proof than AMD hammer.

 

[coolVariable]

atom isn't bad for its size/power consumption/speed.

Ugh ... my Pentium M from 6+ YEARS ago is faster than the Atom!?!?!

 

[jvroig]

Ugh ... my Pentium M from 6+ YEARS ago is faster than the Atom!?!?!

Is your Pentium M as small, and as low-power/power-efficient as a modern day Atom?

The idea behind Atom is "good enough for the average user" performance for exceedingly low power, something previous mobile chips could not scale down to.

So yes, both my 4 and 5 year-old laptops (cheap Pentium M laptops) are a smidge faster than my netbook, but my netbook gets much longer battery life, is much smaller and lighter, and still good enough for mobile needs while real work is mostly done on my desktop. If you want Atom to be a laptop replacement and you are disappointed, then it would be your fault as it was clearly not marketed as such, hence the invention of the "netbook" segment and name.

This doesn't mean I am satisfied with the performance of atom-powered netbooks. But for what they are, they deliver on their goal/promises. Still, I am excited about next year's netbooks, if Ontario and Zacate deliver on providing comparable size and power consumption but better than Atom performance.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

The idea behind Atom is "good enough for the average user" performance for exceedingly low power, something previous mobile chips could not scale down to.

Come on. It's not good enough. Nobody I've talked to reckons the Atom is 'good enough'. They deal with it because it's a necessary evil for the form factor and battery life they want.

 

[Martimus]

Is your Pentium M as small, and as low-power/power-efficient as a modern day Atom?

The idea behind Atom is "good enough for the average user" performance for exceedingly low power, something previous mobile chips could not scale down to.

So yes, both my 4 and 5 year-old laptops (cheap Pentium M laptops) are a smidge faster than my netbook, but my netbook gets much longer battery life, is much smaller and lighter, and still good enough for mobile needs while real work is mostly done on my desktop. If you want Atom to be a laptop replacement and you are disappointed, then it would be your fault as it was clearly not marketed as such, hence the invention of the "netbook" segment and name.

This doesn't mean I am satisfied with the performance of atom-powered netbooks. But for what they are, they deliver on their goal/promises. Still, I am excited about next year's netbooks, if Ontario and Zacate deliver on providing comparable size and power consumption but better than Atom performance.

I think his point was that this thread is about the fastest single core processor available, but some people were bringing up the Atom as a candidate. The Atom is not close to being the fastest single core CPU ever released, even if it is far more efficient than most other X86 processors.

 

[jvroig]

I think his point was that this thread is about the fastest single core processor available

Ah, if so then you are right. I may have completely missed the context. I thought it was an isolated response to the quote from nyker96, with not much bearing on the actual thread topic and just an atom-bashing. Apologies.

Come on. It's not good enough. Nobody I've talked to reckons the Atom is 'good enough'. They deal with it because it's a necessary evil for the form factor and battery life they want.

Of course, since it is actually a very subjective thing, it is easy to argue for it or against it. For example, one who says it is good enough can say "Word, Excel and IE work well enough", while another who says it is not good enough can counter with "Yeah, well, good luck with YouTube and opening multiple tabs with flash ads on most of them". It may also very depending on what you imagine an "average user" is. I (or any other random member) can also say "contrary to your experience, people I know with Atom netbooks don't really complain about it", and it would carry about the same weight (that is, zero), since they would all be anecdotal, while the non-anecdotal evidence may point that the hit in performance is justified to gain the battery life improvement, as evidenced by netbooks being sold by the truckload, so it may very well be "good enough for the average user" in the eyes of Intel and the manufacturers based on that evidence.

At any rate, I was not championing Atom as "good enough". I was merely stating the goal behind it. That is why I did also say that I was not necessarily satisfied with Atom-level of performance, and eagerly looking forward for faster netbooks with Ontario/Zacate.

 

[jvroig]

Apologies for the unwitting derail with the response to coolVariable.

On topic, my vote goes to the current Semprons. I only know of the Sempron 140, but since a fellow member has already pointed to a speedbump (Sempron 145), then that is probably the fastest single core CPU available today.

That, or a Celeron 450. I do not know if this Celeron at 2.2GHz is faster than a 2.8GHz Sempron due to Intel's IPC advantage, but I'd guess it's probably the Sempron.

EDIT: I checked AT Bench. A Celeron 440 @ 2.0 GHz is beaten by a Sempron LE-1300 @ 2.3GHz. At that rate, the 2.2GHz Celeron 450 will most certainly be beaten by a Sempron 145 @2.8GHz. Unless there is a faster Celeron than the 450 (I wouldn't know, just looked at a recent pricelist I had on hand), my vote definitely goes towards the Sempron 145.