A little online research can make you a much better consumer when it comes time to buy a new processor, or for that matter a new PC. Here’s how.
This week’s topic is based off a twitter conversation a friend of mine had this morning, but it’s solidly something I’ve seen pop up time and time again. People don’t really understand the capabilities of a given processor relative to another.
Whether you’re building your own gaming desktop beast or simply buying a new laptop for work, you’ll often find that manufacturers only give you the most basic of specifications for a given processor — typically the speed and not much else, especially when you’re buying a laptop. Hurrah! Your new laptop has a 1.6GHz processor.
But so does the one just down the vendor’s page. Somehow, it’s $300 more, despite appearing to have the same specifications otherwise.
What’s going on here is that there are differences beyond clock speed to take into consideration when buying a processor, desktop or laptop system. It’s here that you can save yourself some heartache, and potentially a few bucks as well by getting the exact specifications of the processor you’re looking at.
Intel’s comparison engine is here, and it’s quite comprehensive. Ever wanted to compare a cutting edge Sandy Bridge processor against an ancient original Pentium? It’s possible to do so, and in doing so, gain insight into the differences between even similar sounding processor families. AMD’s own comparison engine is at AMDCompare.com — although that appears to be inaccessible at the time of writing — or via its product pages. Same idea, same utility.
What if you’re stuck with comparison between the two processor families? If you’re looking at laptops it’s a little less cut and dried, as other specified parts such as graphics and hard drive specifications can make a much more significant impact on performance than just the processor alone. At a pure processor level, however, and especially if you’re building your own system, there are any number of online comparison sites; Passmark for example has some very pretty graphs of comparable performance.
Blake
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 2:35 PMIt sounded like you were going to explain some stuff, instead you just linked to some tables.
Ooo this processor has ‘Intel® InTru™ 3D Technology’, ‘Intel® Insider™’, ‘Instruction Set Extensions SSE4.1/4.2, AVX’, but no ‘Intel® vPro Technology’, so that’s…… a processor?
Seriously I was actually hoping for some info what might be good these days, I’m planning on building a new machine (current one is > 5 years old) but instead of information you just fed us a bunch more data.
What’s the difference between a Core i7 960 and a Core i5 2500K? Is it anything I’d care about?
Should I get socket 1155 or 1366? Or should I go an AMD this time around?
I can look at some ‘very pretty graphs of comparable performance’, but it doesn’t actually give me any context as to what’s relevant to my interests..
Lillee
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 2:44 PMYou’re reading the wrong tech blog for that type of advice… just sayin
Greg
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 4:19 PMthe 2500k does not have hyper threading but is a quad core processor.
The I7 is quad core with hyper threading and shows up as 8 processors in task manager.
If you want an I5 2500k, then get a 1155 mobo… If you want it to work that is …
Blake
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:07 PMI was mostly pointing out the article says it’s going to be about comparing processors, says there’s more to it than clock speed, but doesn’t go on to actually explain what anything else is.
My questions were meant to be rhetorical to highlight my point but once again I fell pray to forgetting tone doesn’t come across well online.
Michael
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 12:17 AMYeah, gizmodo is the news.com.au of the tech blog world.
Matt
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 2:49 PM^
This is Gizmodo, go to a forum if you want build advice.
Daemos
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 7:03 PMIt depends what you need it for. For the most part it seeing you haven’t needed an upgrade for 5 years a i5 2500k and i7 960 would be overkill for your needs and will cause you to spend more money than needed.
As it stands, dollar for dollar, intel in every price category except for the atom beats AMD in basically everything. AMD’s recently released “8 Core” bulldozer was supposed to be a new start…but in many real world examples it’s slower than AMD’s previous gen 6 core CPUs and slower than Intel’s 4 Core CPUs, even in most highly multithreaded applications. not to mention it uses up more power.
If all you are doing is surfing the web, youtube, facebook, and playing flash or facebook games with email and MS office…a core i3 2100T would be more than overkill for your needs. Just make sure to get an SSD as a primary drive, makes the biggest difference, even with the fastest CPUs.
Daemos
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 7:05 PMI’d also suggest hardforums or anandtech on their forums for asking on build advice. Be sure to give a budget, and the most intensive thing you would be doing on the computer on a common basis, and if you play games, which games and what resolution you want to play them at.
Blake
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:23 PMI was actually trying to highlight a problem with the article but got sidetracked, my apologies.
And thanks for the reply, just hearing AMDs are again far behind Intel CPUs is a big help.
While we’re here though I thought I’d gather thoughts on what I came up with.
My current old Athlon64 4000+ machine I built back in Jan 06, since it became obsolete I’ve stuck to gaming on console. I am however a game programmer by trade so it’s time I got my home pc up to snuff again.
After spending an hour this arvo looking things up I reckon I’ll go with
Motherboard: Gigabyte – GA-Z68A-D3HB3
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K
Video: ASUS ENGTX560-TI-DC2-1GD5
RAM: 8GB (2×4) DDR3 1600Mhz
HDD: 1TB Samsung SATA II 7200rpm
SSD: OCZ 60GB Agility 3 (SATA III)
Case: Thermaltake – VN65021W2A
Plus DVD drive and Win7 Home for a total of $1,259 from Scorptec.
Thoughts?
Daemos
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:49 PMPersonally I’d go with a larger SSD from Intel or Crucial (I personally have a 128GB Crucial M4) OCZ and the sort all use sandforce controllers, where they are not bad, they all use generic sandforce firmware, where Intel and Crucial use Micron chips and they make their own firmware. I guess it is preference though.
Are you planning on overclocking? If not the Xeon E3 1230 might be a better choice…it’s not unlocked, but it’s around the same price as the 2500K only 100 mhz slower, throws in hyperthreading and uses less power.
If you are planning on overclocking, get a nice HSF and you can get the 2500k to 4.5 ghz without much trouble (just up the multipliers and volts)
Again I’d ask on hardforum or anandtech, so you can get more opinions and people will actually find better prices for you on those forums if you ask :)
Ash
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 11:57 AMI’d say first establish what you intend to do with the machine once you build it based on how long you intend to keep it before upgrading again.
olearymo
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 9:51 PMWhat’s a hood
Jack
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 11:14 PMWhen I was a kid I scanned the catologue and was also confused of the massive differences in price between pcs with almost 1:1 specs.
Then I learnt.. Everything.
I remember ranking graphics cards by the amount of VRAM (only thing catologue shows) hehe, being a kid was fun. :D
Daniel
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 11:13 AMI use the GFLOP scores as a comparison of how powerful the processors are. Which isn’t on their ARK site but is at this page:
http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-017346.htm