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So how many cores are enough these days?

So if you needed performance for H.264 encoding, but wanted to play games too - an 8 core FX is probably a damn good option.

Again, I disagree.
The whole reason I wrote that blog is because of the multicore myth.
The 8-core FX isn't faster than Intels with 4 cores by default just because it has more cores.
Especially when you also throw HT into the mix. In most multithreaded tasks, the Intels still come out on top, even with less cores. Simply because those cores are that much faster.
And in a few cases the Intels may be a smidge slower than the 8-cores... but well, they are much faster in games and most other tasks, so it's all about your priorities.
I think in general it's pretty difficult to make a good case for AMD's CPUs in terms of performance. They're very similar to the Pentium 4 in many ways. The Pentium 4 was pretty much a one-trick-pony as well, with its SSE2. Optimized applications (mostly video encoders and 3d renderers in practice) were incredibly fast on the Pentium 4 (even outperforming the early Core2 Duos in some cases), but they were horrible in everything else... and very powerhungry to boot.
 
I really miss the glory days of the Athlon Thunderbird, back when an AMD chip could strangle the best Intel had to offer to death with one hand tied behind its back.

Yup, AMD's 15 minutes of fame, thanks to the technology they acquired from Digital/Compaq Alpha, and Intel's failure on the Pentium 4.
I still have a Thunderbird 1400 and an XP1800+ here. Use them from time to time to test my software for XP compatibility and such :)
 
The original Opterons were what caused Intel to worry and the shift to X64 which AMD started and Intel had to copy.
 
The original Opterons were what caused Intel to worry and the shift to X64 which AMD started and Intel had to copy.

I think Intel was pissed off more than worried. Intel had its Itanium for 64-bit servers, and wanted to move that to the desktop eventually.
x64 wasn't as good as a server platform, it was just a lot cheaper. And people always go for the short-term solution on the desktop, so x64 meant that the migration to Itanium was pre-empted.
Which is why we are stuck with crappy x86 for a few more decades... and by the looks of it, indefinitely, since Intel is already tearing into ARM, the last bastion of RISC.
 
As an example of more cores vs more speed, this is from a few years ago now.

Core 2 Duo - 2.8Ghz - overclocked it to 3.8Ghz - from an idiot end user perspective, this jump in processor performance (the feel) was very noticable (I later went to 4.4 over time, but you dont notice small increments)
Then I upgraded to a fancy Core i7 930 - 2.8Ghz - overclocked it up to 4Ghz - general use / games/ etc - damn thing felt exactly the same. The extra cores, they do nothing :(

Only time I get to enjoy having more than two cores, is video encoding :/

Let me give the counterexample.

I upgraded from a Dell Precision M4300 laptop with a Core 2 Duo T9300 (Penryn @ 2.5GHz) to a Dell Precision M6500 with a Core i7 740QM @ 1.73GHz.

The single core passmark scores for this i7 are lower than the C2D it replaced (not by much, though).

Yet, the M6500 (running CentOS 7, as I have used CentOS as my primary desktop for several years, and Linux as my primary desktop for 18 years this May) feels faster. Quite a bit faster. I run gkrellm on startup, and I see a graph of the four cores all sharing the load for the most part. Right now, I have a handbrake transcode going for a MPEG2 to MPEG4 going, and all four cores are sitting at 98% or so (and the machine is still nicely responsive).

Of course, I almost never have just one application running; I have four Firefox windows with an average of 20 tabs per windows open right now, along with a LibreOffice spreadsheet (the KBA's for our masterkey system here, incidentally), Thunderbird for e-mail, and a Windows 7 VM (in the native KVM hypervisor) all running (across three monitors: the built-in 7.1 1920x1200 and two 24-inch 1920x1200 Dells). Top shows a load average of 9.6 right now, and the machine is still responsive. But even right after startup, all four cores are sharing the load, at least according to gkrellm.
 
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I still have a Thunderbird 1400 and an XP1800+ here. Use them from time to time to test my software for XP compatibility and such :)

Just for larfs I used to run the old flops.c floating point benchmark on pretty much any Unix-ish system I'd get my paws on, and for a while the gold standard that everyone had to beat was the score churned out by the 1.33ghz Tbird I bought thanks to being so blown away by that Duron. Compared to the dual-socket Xeon servers we were buying for the data centers for that one thing it was still competitive almost through the end of the NetBurst era. I'm sure on tests that more accurately measured total system performance it would have come off pretty badly against the 800mhz FSB and later P4 models but... darn was it a good chip for 2000.

Ironically/coincidentally(?), that Tbird was actually the last dedicated "Gaming" PC I ever bought. I played the snot out of a number of Half Life-engine games, gritted my teeth through a couple graphics card upgrades, and about the time Windows XP started becoming "mandatory" just sort of decided that I was done fudging around with Windows boxes for "pleasure". Whee.
 
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Scali:

This AMD/Intel thing has been a well travel road here on the forum. One of the reasons folks like me tend to hang with AMD is because it is more cost effective than the Intel high-end products. With every new major Intel processor release comes a new, must have, motherboard. AMD has made it possible, down through the years, for the 'average' enthusiast, to upgrade at a moderate expense to his/her gaming budget. Do you for one minute think the game people are going to shove a product on the market that won't run decently on the AMD platform? I can afford to build an Intel box, but I don't see the point in it. My benchmarks are in the ball park and I don't really care if the kid next door can claim a few extra FPS's on some game. I'm left wondering what you're playing on these days that has you so convinced that it's the Intel way or the highway. :p
 
I think Intel was pissed off more than worried. Intel had its Itanium for 64-bit servers, and wanted to move that to the desktop eventually.
x64 wasn't as good as a server platform...

Huh? I'm running two Dell PowerEdge 6950's here that have four dual-core Opterons each, and they scream. The PE6950 is from the 2007 timeframe.

Edit: And I'm quite familiar with IA64 hardware, as I rebuilt CentOS 5 from source on IA64 using a 30 CPU Altix 350 system here.
 
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Again, I disagree.
The whole reason I wrote that blog is because of the multicore myth.
The 8-core FX isn't faster than Intels with 4 cores by default just because it has more cores.
Sorry I should have stated "within it's price bracket".

Personally I'd rather fork out a few extra bucks to go with an Intel architecture over a higher core count, but AMD does have it's place in the market and I'm trying to throw them a bone here.
 
The massive upgrade costs for high end PC gaming is what forced many people to just play on consoles (that and so many PC games are bad ports of console first games anyway).

I really like the Opteron workstation boards that had either AGO Pro or PCIE slots for retro gaming/workstations. They are super reliable, vastly upgradable, and cheap as hell (boards, CPU , and even RAM). Having the memory controller built into the CPU and all that interleaved RAM on hypertransport is pretty fast.

For servers those quad Opteron series 2 boards are nice but they only have 4x or 8x PCIE slots.
 
With every new major Intel processor release comes a new, must have, motherboard. AMD has made it possible, down through the years, for the 'average' enthusiast, to upgrade at a moderate expense to his/her gaming budget.

No they didn't.
Just because the socket physically fits, doesn't mean that the CPU actually works. Chipsets may not be compatible, and then there's BIOSes that are not updated for new CPUs because the motherboards are EOL.
In fact, Bulldozer caused a lot of people a lot of problems because of that: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/amd-bulldozer-can-it-get-even-worse/
Because Bulldozer was delayed so much, a lot of boards that were originally marketed as "FX-compatible" were EOL by the time Bulldozer hit the market. And since Bulldozer shipped with broken microcode, it NEEDED a BIOS patch to avoid some race conditions, which caused the dreaded BSOD.

Do you for one minute think the game people are going to shove a product on the market that won't run decently on the AMD platform?

I don't see why not, really.
If AMD's marketshare is too small (what are they currently at anyway, ~20%?), and the performance gap is too large, there is no incentive to support AMD any longer.
In fact, I doubt they pay any special attention to AMD as it is. It's just that they want games to run on PCs from a few years back as well, which will be mostly Intel. AMD just gets a free ride because they can still deliver that performance.

I'm left wondering what you're playing on these days that has you so convinced that it's the Intel way or the highway.

I'm not a gamer. But as others have said, I will gladly pay more for an Intel with lower power consumption (yay, quiet systems!), and more performance.
I already have a Core i7. Any AMD CPU is a downgrade for me at this point.
That's how large the gap is. I couldn't upgrade to AMD if I wanted to, because they don't make anything that performs as well as my own system of a few years old.
 
I have an AMD Athlon II X3 450 CPU and its got 3 cores and its 3.20 ghz. Runs windows 8 fine with 4 gb ram. And I even play skyrim on it.
 
No they didn't.
Just because the socket physically fits, doesn't mean that the CPU actually works. Chipsets may not be compatible, and then there's BIOSes that are not updated for new CPUs because the motherboards are EOL.
In fact, Bulldozer caused a lot of people a lot of problems because of that: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/amd-bulldozer-can-it-get-even-worse/
Because Bulldozer was delayed so much, a lot of boards that were originally marketed as "FX-compatible" were EOL by the time Bulldozer hit the market. And since Bulldozer shipped with broken microcode, it NEEDED a BIOS patch to avoid some race conditions, which caused the dreaded BSOD.




I don't see why not, really.
If AMD's marketshare is too small (what are they currently at anyway, ~20%?), and the performance gap is too large, there is no incentive to support AMD any longer.
In fact, I doubt they pay any special attention to AMD as it is. It's just that they want games to run on PCs from a few years back as well, which will be mostly Intel. AMD just gets a free ride because they can still deliver that performance.



I'm not a gamer. But as others have said, I will gladly pay more for an Intel with lower power consumption (yay, quiet systems!), and more performance.
I already have a Core i7. Any AMD CPU is a downgrade for me at this point.
That's how large the gap is. I couldn't upgrade to AMD if I wanted to, because they don't make anything that performs as well as my own system of a few years old.


If you don't already work for Intel you should drop them an app.
 
Sorry I should have stated "within it's price bracket".
Even then they're not delivering. AMD lost their edge when yonah dropped, and have been playing catch-up since Core 2 was introduced... even on single-threaded. Per clock they're not even on par with Atom, per core SMP has ridiculous overhead, and by price there usually is an Intel equivalent in the sub $200 price genre. Problem is most people looking for a sub $200 CPU don't even bother comparing and dive right for AMD; sadly that's NOT good for AMD's reputation.

.. and even when they have something cheaper, they're so close in spitting distance and ridiculously NOT worth the ten bucks in savings. For example compare the $48 USD Celeron G1840 Haswell to EVERY single sub $80 CPU AMD offers and they're blown so far out of the water they achieve orbit. On benches (which I know aren't the best indicators, but still) the bottom of the socket 1150 line delivers TWICE the computational power of what AMD want's $80 for.

It's not until you get into the A8's that AMD even has a chance, and by that point you're going toe to toe with things like the $85 Pentium G34xx which again DOUBLES the bar height and doesn't break even until you get to the hundred dollar mark for AMD with the FX-6300 -- so much for the low end.

Not a pretty picture when working down from the top either, since for the top fifty fastest CPU's AMD doesn't even come into play. Their BEST CPU in performance being the AMD FX-9590 at $260, which is pwned in single threaded performance by every i5 ever made, and it takes AMD 8 physical cores to do what Intel does with 4 physical and 4 HT on things that actually care about multithreading / multiprocessing.

... which is why instead of the octo-core 9590 you're better off getting a i5 4670k for normal work or ponying up the extra $50 for an i7.

Of course you can tell AMD is still playing catch-up when their best quad core offerings of the past year JUST caught up to six year old socket 1366 offerings; with most everything they offer below $150 being outperformed by socket 775 core 2 duo's like Wolfdale.
 
Are AMD motherboards still cheaper?

There are cheap AMD motherboards and equally cheap Intel motherboards with similarly limited features. Up to about $200, the motherboards at list price are fairly competitive. Very expensive motherboards seem to be for Intel only.
 
If you don't already work for Intel you should drop them an app.

Oh please, I would have thought people on a vintage computer forum would be a BIT less one-dimensional in their thinking than the average pathetic tech forum...
If you read my comments elsewhere, you'd see that I think all x86 is shit. Yes Intel's as well.
And you'd see that in my multithreading blog, I actually use the Amiga as an example of a decent multitasking system. You might have concluded that I am not exactly a fan of Intel, x86 or PCs in the first place, and that my personal preference was with Motorola.

However, being a realist and a pragmatist, there's no point in denying that Motorola was killed off by Intel many years ago, as have most other alternative architectures I have enjoyed over the years. And that while AMD also makes x86 CPUs, Intel has developed quite a lead over AMD since they started with the Core2 series and their tick-tock strategy.
So, in today's world, I can't really escape x86... and given my financial situation, I'd be foolish to settle for AMD "because it's cheaper". I did however buy AMD back in the days of the Athlon. I would buy AMD again if they offer better value for money in the price/performance range I'm interested in. But it seems unlikely that this will happen again on short term.

There's a name for the kind of people who think you work for Intel because of this... but let's not go there.
Let's just say I have grown a strong dislike of these AMD cheerleaders over the years. Yes, Athlon was a good CPU. Now get over it. That was many years ago, and AMD hasn't produced anything competitive since 2006 (which was when I moved from Athlons to a Core2 Duo E6600, which at the time cost 1/3rd of AMD's fastest offering, while delivering slightly better performance... quite the shockwave C2D was at the time. AMD having to go from competing with Pentium 4/D to Core2, with completely different price/performance ratios).
 
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There are cheap AMD motherboards and equally cheap Intel motherboards with similarly limited features. Up to about $200, the motherboards at list price are fairly competitive. Very expensive motherboards seem to be for Intel only.

Yes, Intel started integrating not only the memory controller, but also the PCI-e controller in the CPU a few years ago. As a result, there's not a lot of components left on a simple motherboard, so costs are very low.
 
Even then they're not delivering. AMD lost their edge when yonah dropped, and have been playing catch-up since Core 2 was introduced...

The Israelis pulled Intel out of the netburst death spiral, for sure.
...Their BEST CPU in performance being the AMD FX-9590 at $260, which is pwned in single threaded performance by every i5 ever made.

Hmm, might want to do a bit of fact-checking here. See https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html for a list of the Passmark single-thread benchmarks. The FX-9590 takes in a 1,711 score (single-threaded), and there are a number of i5's (and i7's) that score below this (including my i7-740QM, which rakes in a 921, or even my T9300 C2D which gathers a 980). But it's a long way short of the i7-4790K's 2534 score.

Of course, the multithread benchmarks show a larger gap from the top down to the FX-9590, but the FX-9590 takes a respectable 10,223, edging out by a nose the i7-4790K which takes a 10,108. Neither can hold a candle to the Xeon E5-2699 v3, which tops the chart at 25,192. See https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html FWIW, my i7-740QM is rated at 3,251 on the mobile multithreaded benchmarks, with the T9300 at 1,685, and this is about the difference I see in real-world performance between my old M4300 with the T9300 and my newer M6500 with the i7-740QM, as it does indeed feel almost twice as fast.

So the FX-9590 is not "pwned in single threaded performance by every i5 ever made" sorry.

No, I'm not an AMD fanboy; it's just that facts are facts. (Edit: I'm actually a Zilog fanboy......... but that battle is ancient history.....)
 
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