Linux Hardware Looks at Core 2 192
Penguin Lover writes "Linux Hardware has just posted a new story on how Intel's new Conroe performs under Linux. From the article: 'Now is a great time to be CPU shopping because no matter which side of the isle you look on, you have great choice for both CPUs and motherboards. Along with Intel's chipset offerings, keep in mind that NVIDIA has the nForce series for Intel CPUs which would give you SLI support for all your Quake Wars and UT2007 gaming needs.'"
which side of the what? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:which side of the what? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:which side of the what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:which side of the what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Internal Server Error
so... not so well?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:which side of the what? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe they're writing from the UK...
Re: (Score:2)
Bang for the buck (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bang for the buck (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover, there is nothing like using an SMP system: either two processors or a single dual-core (hyperthreading is exempt from this comment). Having all those piddly little background tasks on one core means that the second core is available just to obey your whims. The latency in executing business and web apps with a dual-core is unparalleled.
Clearly you're cheap, and I can respect that (heaven knows I'm almost as poor as they get). Perhaps you have a point that the $350 processor that the grandparent spoke of is not in the optimal point of the price/performance curve, but even for people that just use Word and Firefox, you can't claim that a new $150 dual-core won't run stuff significantly faster than Duron; and you don't even have to blow that extra imaginary money on an octa-core[sic] processor to get the extra horsepower.
In either case, I consider your minimalist elitism offtopic.
Re: (Score:2)
--I've ben running Vmware Workstation 5.x for a couple of years now on a 900MHz Amd Duron with 512MB RAM, Linux host (mostly Knoppix/Debian, but also Ubuntu.) Just upgraded to a Pentium-D 2.66Ghz dual-core with 2GB RAM, and it's night and day. Even with Gig Ethernet, the thing just flies.
--Trying out XUbuntu 64-bit ATM; seems pretty nice so far, altho I've o
Re: (Score:2)
Looks like soon would be a good time to replace that machine...
The Core 2 is a better performing CPU than the X2, but I'm not too confident about the chipset or the first release yet...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually if you include the motherboard price AMD X2 chips are more competetive since my looking around show Intel Core2 compatible MB cost
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well unless you bought a brand new socket 775 MB less than three months ago, your odds are not good that you will be able to put a Core 2 in it even with a bios flash. If your like me with an Pre Socket 939/AM2 or Socket 478/early 77
It would be even nicer (Score:3, Interesting)
'fraid that rules it out for me.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Based on prices here in Australia, I assume you're talking about AMD FX or Opteron processors. The Core2 E6600 is listed at around A$500; the Athlon64 X2 5000+ lists for around A$50 less.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If I was buying a system today, I'd probably lean towards the Core 2 Duo. A few weeks ago, I'd probably have gone with an Athlon64 X2
the isle (Score:5, Funny)
Penguin Isle?
Isle be going now...
Re: (Score:2)
Isle of View, man.
Dontcha just love... (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the "NOW is a great time to buy..." argument for anything that improves steadily over time. Can you point to a time in recent computer history where "NOW" wasn't the best time to purchase a new rig? It can't possibly be news to readers here that the processor-power-to-dollar-ratio is at its best point ever, can it? It would be like saying "NOW is the best time to buy a new car", as if there has been a point in the last 20 years where the general trend of car quality has dropped, but even more ridiculous because of Moore's Law.
Re:Dontcha just love... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, I'm currently living that. I got stuck with no real upgrade path that didn't involve ripping out pretty much everything in order to upgrade my cpu and vid card. So now, on top of the cpu and vid card, I also have to buy a new motherboard, RAM, a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess I wasn't calling 1993 "recent". I had a similar experience, buying a $3000 Macintosh 68040 just before the PowerPC came out.
There is always bad hardware out there, but the prices for existing stuff have consistently trended down. When the P60 came out, it was expensive as all hell, but that was a great time to buy a 486 machine - there was serious competition between Intel, AMD, and Cyrix. The prices were at historic lows. Yeah the Prescott with 64-bit extensions was crap, but that didn't make it a
Yes, I can. (Score:5, Funny)
Say it with me now: Itanium.
Re: (Score:2)
Say it with me now: "Nobody bought those."
Seriously, what was it about the introduction of the Itanium that made it a bad time to buy a PC? I mean, I don't even think it was even marketed as a consumer product.
Re: (Score:2)
But yes, unless you lived in Duluth, Minnesota and were too cheap to pay for oil or gas heat, then there was no reason to buy an Itanium.
Re:Dontcha just love... (Score:5, Informative)
Now it's $99.
NOW seems to be a pretty good time to pick up on decent processing power. NOW I can get a decent CPU for $99, a 320 GB drive for $95.
I just built that system for less than $600 and it uttlerly vaporizes the box I built last year at double the price.
But you are still on a 486 waiting for the right NOW time to upgrade.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Now is also not as good a time as the Now that will be in just another month or two when Core 2 motherboard prices drop. That Now is close enough to Now that it's probably worth waiting until then, ehr, the Now then.
Hmm, sounds familiar...
Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
Colonel Sandurz: Now. You're looking at now sir. Everything that happens now, is hap
Re: (Score:2)
For another eg. the X2 3800 939 was 280$ for many months, I bought it some days ago for 147 after the price drop. I bought AMD as I didnt want to upgrade my MBoard and RAM. For someone who wanted to go Intel, the past few months were an even worse time to buy, as the new Intel chips overperform and are reasona
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and before that they had probably dropping really, really slowly down to $200 for quite some time as processor prices has been stagnant for the last 1-2 years. People who bought these processors just when prices stagnated have had them almost "for free" until a few weeks ago. People who bought them a few weeks ago have already seen the price of their new processor cut to half.
Which of those
Re: (Score:2)
You can also pull data like that off of pricescan.com [pricescan.com] for individual parts (but not overall). For example, the Athlon64 X2 3
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't need that new hard drive right now? Wait a little and you might get a 500GB drive for what you would've paid for that new 200GB one. Ditto on CPUs, etc. If you think you might like it later, buy it later. It'll be better or at least cheaper by the time you get it.
Re: (Score:2)
Plenty of times. Usually when new architectures are coming out, Socket 754, 939, 775, AM2 and whatnot. During these times the generation of sockets before the "new" one is pretty cheap. Also the new socket might be a transitional socket like 754 that won't last for long time.
Now is NOT always the best tim
Re: (Score:2)
It's a great time to buy when: at least one competitor is under scrutiny for investors to show performance (incentive to do anything to boost sales), when product quality and features reach a level of parity (price becomes dominant deciding factor in purchase), when volume sales approach parity (more price pressure plus looking for new market angles), and as a
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course i can !
For example do you think buying an AMD X2 just before Jully 24th of this year was a good idea ??
Their price was announced to be cut by half at this date so clearly buying one the jully 23th, or even one or two months before would have been a very bad move, don't you think ? We're talking about a $200 price cut for a X2 3800+ (very approx converted from euros).
Also that's the d
Re: (Score:2)
And what was it about the day before AMD slashed it's prices that made it worse than any time in history before that?
NOW will always be worse than LATER (that was my original point), but you have to buy sometime.
Re: (Score:2)
Constant Battle (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand your argument that only a couple games are multithreaded. If this is your argument against multicore, wh
Re: (Score:2)
Back in the single core days it was fairly silly to do multithreading right? Now that there's dual core, it makes a little more sense? the Xbox360 and the PS3 both have multi core architectures and they will both be available around christmas and it is necessary for developers to write multithreads in thsoe games right? The 4x4 will be
Re: (Score:2)
I've known about Core 2 for at least the better part of this year now. I suspect [*] that AMD mgmt knew about it as well, just a hunch.
I have to object to the "no product to counter it". Aside from the shared L2,
Re: (Score:2)
Any significant new architecture lined up for AMD cpus in the near future? I don't see signs of any. Going quad core would be reducing the X2 advantage of higher memory performance per core. I don't think the volume market is going to snap up quad cores at prices that will make AMD happy.
Unless the X2 can clock WAY higher than the Core 2 Duo, it's going to be a slower CPU i
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But also keep in mind benchmarks can say anything. You think Core 2 is the better processor? Ok, drop 8 of them in a HPC system and run 50 independent tasks on them from researchers all over the world. You think your 4MB cache helps when you have so much pollution? There are applications where K8 is STILL the better choice by far.
Most benchmarks Intel pic
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Tom
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Back and forth (Score:5, Insightful)
Also keep in mind that AMD has yet to go to a 65nm manufacturing process.
AMD remains competitive with Intel, even though they are still at 90nm. Speed goes up and power goes down with die scaling! Now, clearly the Core2 is the fastest processor you can buy today, and Intel is (smartly) offering speed grades in the mid-price range in order to try and "buy back" the enthusiasts. But AMD will get a nice speed bump when they bring 65nm on line. Of course Intel is not standing still either, as they are aggressively moving towards 45nm.
I love capitalism.
Re:Back and forth (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps the AMD/IBM SOI process will do better at 65nm in controlling leakage current and provide the needed performance boost. Intel plans to release the 45nm Penryn in 2H07, and claims to have greatly improved the leakage current situation. AMD needs to leapfrom Conroe's performance with their 65nm part to remain competitive. Schedule is critical here: if Intel is late, AMD will regain momemtum; if AMD is late, Penryn will make the 65nm AMD part unattractive.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't automatic. Intel basically changed their whole architecture and that IS a big reason why the power went down. They used Pentium-M's core low voltage design, and since power is the square of voltage (P=V^2/R) reducing voltage a little bit will tremendously reduce power dissipated. If anything, keeping power a constant and reducing area will decrease heat dissipated, and you can now cook 2 eggs instead of 1. Anyway, changing manufacturing process
But what compiler flags to use? (Score:5, Interesting)
I just rebuilt my Core (1) Duo laptop with the aforementioned options and it seems to get me the most bang for my buck.
From what I've read, compiling and running in 32-bit mode is still the best choice for now, the Core 2 is a lot better than the EM64T pentium 4 at running 64-bit code, but still not as fast as just using the 32-bit code (stuff like video encoding is happening in the 128-bit vector unit anyway, and I don't need more than 4GB addressable space).
Re: (Score:2)
Then, if you want to do 32-bit, just do -m32, and -m64 for 64-bit
Re: (Score:2)
At least, that's been my experience. (Running core 2 extreme on gentoo)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:But what compiler flags to use? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, for me, 64-bit is entirely convenient. I just type "emerge mozilla" and it works
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But have you actually tried to buy one? (Score:4, Informative)
Umm nope. Iv'e been trying to buy the bits to make a no-compromises gaming PC and can't get anywhere at all.
Products that have been actually reviewed, benchmarked and advertised for weeks but are still not available to actually buy include:
* a retail core2 X6800 CPU (I want the official fan too)
* any motherboard with Nvidia 590 sli intel ed. chipset
* the fastest memory (corsair 6400c3)
and finally not yet reviewed but:
* the new Nvidia GPU that will do directX 10 (for vista comaptability)
If you were to buy a non-directx 10 top-end GPU now you'd be crazy.
The worst offender is Intel. I don't know why even now about a month after the core2 launch you still can't find a retail x6800 extreme anywhere. I'm guessing intel are just letting the big builders like Dell grab the entire supply still. Intel shouldn't just feed those guys without putting some out on the street too.
Re: (Score:2)
I personally bought a OEM E6600 on August 7th. The store, MicroCenter, only had four of them.
Re: (Score:2)
For the last month of I've been searching all the online stores, froogle, and anantech RTPE every day.
Ironically, right after writing the comment above I did my usual daily search and found newegg now have actually got some in stock (at least according to their website).
woo hoo! order placed.
Now all I have to do is find the rest of the stuff
povray & oggenc single threaded? what? (Score:2)
What I found to be the most interesting finding is the performance of athlon64 and core2duo in 32 vs 64bit mode. Athlon64 have better 64bit performance/price even if they have slightly slower benchmarks. Also I think we need more benchmarks for low cost processors, you know the ones that average users purchase. I'm sick of benchmarks of ferrari's vs lamborghini's
Linux takes hardware advantage (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm impressed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Intel's ahead... until September (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/1757/2/ [fabtech.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A card two or three generations before that(tnt1 or tnt2) wouldn't have a problem running at a 1600x1200
His Gforce2 probably has 32 or 64 megs of ram, plenty for even a large LCD panel.
I'd probably be interested in upgrading that CPU before the video card, but likely have to do both as newer boards are using pcix over agp.
Re:Apart from gaming (Score:4, Informative)
Compiling anything, encoding video, ripping CDs to MP3, large relational database queries, scientific computing, etc.
Oh, you meant for reading email and surfing the net? Yes, your hardware is fine.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
> ripping CDs to MP3
Might be true, LAME isn't exactly a speed monster in high quality mode. On the other hand, oggenc/lancer [nifty.com] is so fast it's almost silly. Upgrade to Vorbis, save money on hardware :-)
Re:Apart from gaming (Score:5, Funny)
"save money on hardware"
Especially iPods!
Vorbis-players für alles. (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah definitely save the money on the iPods, the iAudios [cowonamerica.com] are much better anyway. I suggest the U3 if you want a good flash-based Vorbis-player.
There's no good reason to use Vorbis (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, right. Voluntarily limit how and where you can listen to your music. Really smart.
I regret the day when I decided, in a silly stroke of idealism, to encode all my CDs with oggenc. Later, after getting frustrated by the lack of support for the format, I had to encode them all over again.
Face it. MP3 is a de facto standard and even though it's patented, what difference does it make? Does it stop you from listening to mp3 encoded music at home? No. Does it
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You'd buy generation-old hardware to avoid spending an extra $20?
We live in different universes. I think that I've been working too long or something and forget what it's like being poor.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I have a gigabyte ds3 mobo with core 2 duo 6600, using kernel 2.6.17-gentoo-r4 and patch from http://lkml.org/lkml/diff/2006/7/11/493/1 [lkml.org] both the 4 x sata piix 2 x sata jmicron work fine, pata does not work at all, it is a known issue and should be fixed in 2.6.18, see lkml and mm trees for more info.
And a damn fine machine it is too.
AC
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, my D975XBX works absolutely beautifully. I have the E6400 running at 2346Mhz with no issues. Onboard sound works suprisingly well though I'll be dropping an Audigy back into the box. One thing I can ass
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The onboard high-def sounds is respectable, the Gigabit ethernet is Intel so of course it works, the 250GB SATA II drive is flawless, and my DVDRW works just fine with cdrecord and Nerolinux.