Conroe and X264 (64 bit)

[ndkamal]

I would like to show you one of the first benchmark of x264 (64 bit) with the new Intel processor.

http://www.hardware.info/nl-NL/articles/am5nZWppZA/Intel_Core_2_Duo__Core_2_Extreme_Test/6

As we can see the Core2Duo is better than Athlon64.

[GodofaGap]

Does x264 VFW support multithreading? I guess that is what they used?

[n3r0]

De huidige versie van deze H.264 encoder is helaas nog niet geoptimaliseerd voor dual-core processorsi think this means that "this h.264 encoder isn't optimized to take advantage of dual-core processors yet"
and the framerates are almost the same with my e6600

[GodofaGap]

Well that is wrong, because x264 cli supports multithreading for more than a year now I think.

[Sirber]

wep, x264 can use SMP with no problem (--threads 2/4/6/8/n)

can't wait to get my 3800+ X2 :D

[squid_80]

From what I gather they used the 64-bit version of the x264 vfw codec, which is just plain ridiculous for benchmarking.

[Sirber]

seems so, haven't seen the second graph at first.
Is it me or VFW ain't SMP?

[squid_80]

The last time I built 64-bit x264 vfw was in october last year. I think at the time I did accidentally leave the multi-threading disabled. They might be using a build from someone else or maybe celtic_druid's 64-bit ffdshow, but x264 hasn't had working win64 assembly since some time around february. So it would be a) a very old build, b) an unoptimized build or c) both.

[Sharktooth]

or they're on linux... but... dont think so.

[dragongodz]

and where are the E6400 and E6300 results ? since AMD's price cuts it would be interesting to see results of closer priced cpus aswell.

[bkman]

If anyone is doing benchmarks, please compare to 32-bit performance also.

[mezzanine]

Well i don't know how well AMD X2 perform with X264 but my c2d@3.20GHz (E6400) does around 8 fps for 720x576 second pass using HQ Insane Profile (using meGUI).

[dragongodz]

my c2d@3.20GHz (E6400)
not everybody is interested in overclocked results. also for it to be really relevant you have to use the same settings and source and x264 build etc etc etc.

[mezzanine]

Sorry, i am excited

[dragongodz]

Sorry, i am excited
hahaha no problem. it just would have been nice, and more accurate, if that review in the first post had actually covered all core2 cpus. :)

[DeathTheSheep]

Hmm... this (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=12) seems to be a pretty nifty comparison of the chip's performance, but x264 was *not* tested (instead, Craptime :D)...

Or you could go to the conclusion page, where it says frankly Compared to AMD's Athlon 64 X2 the situation gets a lot more competitive, but AMD still doesn't stand a chance. The Core 2 Extreme X6800, Core 2 Duo E6700 and E6600 were pretty consistently in the top 3 or 4 spots in each benchmark, with the E6600 offering better performance than AMD's FX-62 flagship in the vast majority of benchmarks. Another way of looking at it is that Intel's Core 2 Duo E6600 is effectively a $316 FX-62, which doesn't sound bad at all.empasis mine

... And Intel didn't lose a single benchmark (not by a long shot)...not in gaming, overclocking, etc...and the testing seems very, very complete.
So, the overall results seem to indicate...well...that AMD needs to do something quick :(

But who knows? Maybe x264 is the lone little program that acheives better benchmarks on an AMD! ... ...didn't think so.

PS: Speculation is always fun.

[woah!]

Well i don't know how well AMD X2 perform with X264 but my c2d@3.20GHz (E6400) does around 8 fps for 720x576 second pass using HQ Insane Profile (using meGUI).


if you upload a clip and a avs script i will run it with my amd x2 and let you know what i get. lets also remember that intel have been trailing amd for about 3yrs now without doing anything. now all of a sudden amd have to do something quick?

they will be releasing a quad-core K8L in the new year which is on 65nm silicon, which should be able to run with intels Kentfield quad-core. anyways if amd wasnt about you lot would be still running P3's and paying through the nose for them too.

[mezzanine]

if you upload a clip and a avs script i will run it with my amd x2 and let you know what i get. lets also remember that intel have been trailing amd for about 3yrs now without doing anything. now all of a sudden amd have to do something quick?

they will be releasing a quad-core K8L in the new year which is on 65nm silicon, which should be able to run with intels Kentfield quad-core. anyways if amd wasnt about you lot would be still running P3's and paying through the nose for them too.

My previous proc was an Athlon64 venice core, and i know that if it wasn't for amd we would still pay too much for P3's.
That has nothing to do with the fact that the conroe is an amazing proc and the X2's cannot keep up now.

I wanted a dual core system and at this time and for my budget this was the best solution, i don't care if it is intel or amd or whatever. Both are corporations, it's not a matter of being loyal or anything.

[Revgen]

Intel is using a new generation core while AMD is using an old generation core. AMD will catch up and possibly pass Intel sometime soon.

[Sharktooth]

K8L core has all the "upgrades" the "Core 2" had + some AMD re-touch (Level 3 shared cache, HT 3.0, DDR 3...) :)

[Kostarum Rex Persia]

Well, no, K8L will stick with DDR2. DDR3 for AMD will come in 2008.

[markrb]

The only new advance on the AMD road map is Quad Core, but based on the same X2 core.
Intel is also heading this way.

I don't see another leap like the Core 2 Duo for at least a few years.
I am a die hard AMD fan, but I am getting an E6600 as soon as the prices come down to earth. 20-30 percent over Suggested retial is a bit much for me.

Right now the AMD X2 can't even use all the bandwidth that DDR2 gives as it doesn't need it. The on chip memory controller is very good. At this point DDR3 would be useless until they ramp the speed up much more.

Intel gets a good boost from the DDR2 because it doesn't have an on chip memory controller, it's in the chipset instead.

Mark

[Sharktooth]

KRP: for the first time in history you're right :p well, DDR3 was moved forward in the roadmap.

However K8L core has dual SSE2 (per core) execution units, HyperTransport 3.0, a 2MB (maybe more) shared L3 cache, optional FBDRAM support and Dynamic Indipendent Core Engagement.
So it's a BIG step for AMD similar to what intel did from Core "1" to Core 2.

[Kostarum Rex Persia]

Yes, but K8L will be a server processor, not a desktop platform chip.

Socket AM3 will be desktop solution, probably without shared L3 cache .

[woah!]

Yes, but K8L will be a server processor, not a desktop platform chip.

Socket AM3 will be desktop solution, probably without shared L3 cache .


are you feeling ok?

2 posts i believe are correct!

i think amd will move am3 socket over to desktop pretty quick tho

[bkman]

Intel gets a good boost from the DDR2 because it doesn't have an on chip memory controller, it's in the chipset instead.

Core 2 Duo doesn't really (see some DDR2 benchmarks for it), probably in part due to the memory disambiguation technology.

All in all DDR2 was the most pointless and premature hardware advancement that has been forced upon is in recent history.

[Kostarum Rex Persia]

I think that AMD will support DDR2 1066 in their next generation core, because DDR2 have a lot potential. Don't be surprised if, around 2nd quarter 2007, DDR2 clocks on 1333 MHz.

[Sharktooth]

AM3 is a socket and K8L is a core tech.
AMD always used the same core tech for both opteron and athlons.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Using ffmpegX on a MacPro (dual 2.66 Woodcrest Core 2 Duo) and bvframes, 10mbit, 2pass etc I got ~7fps average for both passes to take a 1080p24 mjpeg video and go to x264....

not bad, and it lit up the cores about 60%

And yes, DDR2 and FBDIMM especially are bullshit that is totally unnecessary IMO...

~MiSfit

[jvrobert]

Just for kicks I just compiled X264 build 588 with ICL 9.1, all optimizations turned on for Conroe only. Quick testing shows it may be a frame or two per second faster on my simple test encodes. I know most of the real work is already in asm, just wanted to see what it could do.

I just grabbed first pthread library I could find, it's not static so just extract x264.exe and libpthreadVC2.dll (included) to same directory.

I dumped it at: http://www.sendmefile.com/00472114

Note this will only run on Core 2 Duo machines, it's 32-bit.

[Thunderbolt8]

atm the current intel processors are indeed faster than the amd ones. my budget advice would be to buy a core 2 duo 6300 for like ~170 € atm and then overlock it to like 2.8-3.0 ghz. youll get performance between a E6700 and X6800 which cost ~700-1000 € and you dont even need water cooling.

[rezard]

but intel's 975,965(for overclocking as you say) chipset mainboards are expensive.
and another cooling for board chipsets may be needed as well as cpu. (depending on the room temperature)

btw, any more benchmarks for x264?

[woah!]

i tried that version above on my E6600 and am seeing no real difference on my encodes. but thats not to say others wont with theirs tho.

[Sharktooth]

i would suggest core2 only if you have plenty of $$$ to spend.. coz only the 6700 and 6800 are really faster than AMD processors.

[bkman]

i would suggest core2 only if you have plenty of $$$ to spend.. coz only the 6700 and 6800 are really faster than AMD processors.

You mean faster than all AMD processors? Because E6600 is faster than all AMD processors, and E6300 and E6400 are certainly faster than some AMD processors (4600+ and 5000+ respectively), and can probably overclock to be faster than all (even overclocked) AMD processors.

[Sharktooth]

E6600 is not faster than ALL AMD processors (FX-62 is on par and there is always the x2 5200+...). however overclocking is always a risk.

[Romario]

E6600 IS faster then majority of AMD processors, perhaps only FX-62 is only on par.

E6700 and E6800 is way too fast for ALL AMD processors.

[Sharktooth]

5600+, 6000+, FX-70, FX-72 and FX-74 are scheduled for the next 2 months...
So dont think it will last forever :p
Also 6700 and 6800 are way to expensive... if i had to chose FX-62 and e6600 i would go for the first, so i can safely updgrade the CPU in the next 3 years without changing motherboard and RAM.

[bkman]

FX-62 is still slower than E6600 in most tasks. I would not call it "on par".

5600+, 6000+, FX-70, FX-72 and FX-74 are scheduled for the next 2 months...
So dont think it will last forever :P

E6800 at least will probably still beat all of of those.

Not to mention Kentsfield is coming out soon too, which will kill all of the above in tasks that can make even use of 4 cores.

if i had to chose FX-62 and e6600 i would go for the first, so i can safely updgrade the CPU in the next 3 years without changing motherboard and RAM.

Afaik no Intel socket changes are planned for a while. Meanwhile AMD is moving to AM3.

[Sharktooth]

FX-62 is still slower than E6600 in most tasks. I would not call it "on par".



E6800 at least will probably still beat all of of those.
it's your opinion... benchmarks on COMPETENT sites show different results. however you cant say E6800 will beat all of those until there are samples to benchmark...

Not to mention Kentsfield is coming out soon too, which will kill all of the above in tasks that can make even use of 4 cores.
kentsfield is not a quad core.. is a dual dual core. AMD will have 4x4 ready for that time... and let's see who's faster.


Afaik no Intel socket changes are planned for a while. Meanwhile AMD is moving to AM3.
intel will change socket the next year when it will be slaughtered by K8L performance.
FYI AM3 CPUs can run on AM2 and AM2+ sockets...

[bkman]

it's your opinion... benchmarks on COMPETENT sites show different results.

No, it's fact supported by many site's benchmarks. You don't get to pick which site is competent based on which shows the least difference between AMD and Intel.

kentsfield is not a quad core.. is a dual dual core. AMD will have 4x4 ready for that time... and let's see who's faster.

4-cores in a processor = quad-core. That it is two dual-cores in a single processor package is just a distinction that AMD fanboys like to make which may not mean much in terms of real-world performance. And FYI AMD 4x4 is a dual-processor platform initially for dual-cores, so it will naturally be slower than a 4-cores on one package.

intel will change socket the next year when it will be slaughtered by K8L performance.

I believe you Nostradamus :)

[Sharktooth]

No, it's fact supported by many site's benchmarks. You don't get to pick which site is competent based on which shows the least difference between AMD and Intel.No i pick the competent sites by looking at the system setups and benchmarking methods.

4-cores in a processor = quad-core. That it is two dual-cores in a single processor package is just a distinction that AMD fanboys like to make which may not mean much in terms of real-world performance. And FYI AMD 4x4 is a dual-processor platform initially for dual-cores, so it will naturally be slower than a 4-cores on one package.
No, dual dual core is 2 cores interconnected with other 2 cores by FSB without the help of the cache (same as core duo BS)... thats like having 2 separate dual core processors. AMD multi processor solutions are much better, more elegant , technologically advanced and alwyas faster than Intel solutions.
So, the more processors in a system, the more the advantage for AMD.
I believe you Nostradamus :)you will believe when the first engineering samples will be taped out... AMD added all the stuff that grants core 2 to be the performance king and even more performance stuff. You can read more about that on this thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=116127
However we'll see the first eng. samples before the end of the year... so...

[bkman]

No i pick the competent sites by looking at the system setups and benchmarking methods.

And the ones that show AMD more favourably of course... :p

AMD multi processor solutions are much better, more elegant , technologically advanced and alwyas faster than Intel solutions.

Even if that is the case, there will only be a difference in apps that work on the same dataset with 4-threads. There is not much efficiency to gain in apps like POV-ray for instance, where Kentsfield already hits 98.5%. And 4x4 is still stuck with K8 for a while, which tips the scales pretty heavily to Kentsfield's side until Barcelona comes out.

AMD added all the stuff that grants core 2 to be the performance king and even more performance stuff.

They implemented SOME of it, so the performance crown is not clear yet. There is a more detailed writeup over here: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-k8l.html

[foxyshadis]

No, dual dual core is 2 cores interconnected with other 2 cores by FSB without the help of the cache (same as core duo BS)...

The original core duo does not run cache coherency over the bus, nor does core 2. In fact the L2 is shared between cores in both designs. You're thinking of the pentium D.

[Sharktooth]

yeah sorry. however lot of speculation on xbitlabs...
AMD already unveiled the K8L architecture... i've already posted the article in that thread.

[bkman]

Xbitlabs analysis is older but based on official AMD slides, same as [H] but much less simplistic. The speculation is based on details that still haven't fully been revealed AFAIK.

[Romario]

x264 and K8L, I just can't wait the results.

What do you think, Sharktooth, can x264 obtain 70-85 fps on K8L?

[Sharktooth]

K8L has been "REVEALED"... there are not undisclosed details..

@Romario: Dunno, we have to wait to see.

[hajj_3]

the e6600 2.4ghz overclocks to around 3.3ghz on air upto 4ghz on water. the fx62 wont overclock too much.

quad core intel is out next month i think, will cost £220-350 for the 2.16ghz, the 2.66ghz will be about same price as the x6800 when it was first released, about £700.

[jvrobert]

Crikey, when did this turn into a misinformation fest and fanboy haven?

To clear some things up:

1. Overclocking boards for Conroe aren't that expensive, contrary to popular myth.

2. Overclocking modestly is not risky or dangerous. Taking an E6600 from 2.4 to 2.8-3.0GHz, for example, is a mild overclock and poses very very little risk even with stock cooling.

3. Kentsfield is quad core. End of statement. There is one physical CPU, and 4 cores, ergo "quad core". In Windows, 4 CPU's will show up. Fanboi distinctions about the number of dies etc... are irrelevent and silly.

4. Conroe is the better choice, performance-wise right now. AMD will have a much better product in K8L and it will be a close call at that point, K8L may be better, it may not be. To assert either that K8L will "destroy" Conroe, or that AMD is out for the count because Conroe beats it right now is ridiculous.

5. 4x4 is a riduclous idea. Seriously, you need to be pretty crazy to drink that kool-aid. Wait for real quad core from either AMD or Intel.

6. Your 975X or 965 motherboard will be able to use any new Intel CPU, more than likely, through most of 2007. No upgrades required. Sometimes AMD fanboys make it "reverse day" and claim Intel needs frequent MB changes. This is nonsensical and the reverse of true. 754/939/AM2 anyone? Now we have AM2+ (K8L), AM3, etc.. in the pipeline too.

[rezard]

1. Overclocking boards for Conroe aren't that expensive, contrary to popular myth.

far more expensive than amd's. for mid-high range overclocking (like overclocking e6300).


6. Your 975X or 965 motherboard will be able to use any new Intel CPU, more than likely, through most of 2007. No upgrades required. Sometimes AMD fanboys make it "reverse day" and claim Intel needs frequent MB changes. This is nonsensical and the reverse of true. 754/939/AM2 anyone? Now we have AM2+ (K8L), AM3, etc.. in the pipeline too.

again, it is likely that intel will support only new 'barelake' chipsets for new CPUs officially.
it is true that Intel needs frequent MB changes than amd.
although AM2 replaces 754 and 939, intel have plenty of board chipsets(and revisions).
AM2+ is almost useless(whether it's a rumor or not). and K8L may be used in any AMx boards.


And FYI AMD 4x4 is a dual-processor platform initially for dual-cores, so it will naturally be slower than a 4-cores on one package.

4x4 use more bandwidth and more HT links while kentsfield use same bandwidth as other dualcore conroes.

[Sharktooth]

1. Overclocking boards for Conroe aren't that expensive, contrary to popular myth.

2. Overclocking modestly is not risky or dangerous. Taking an E6600 from 2.4 to 2.8-3.0GHz, for example, is a mild overclock and poses very very little risk even with stock cooling.

3. Kentsfield is quad core. End of statement. There is one physical CPU, and 4 cores, ergo "quad core". In Windows, 4 CPU's will show up. Fanboi distinctions about the number of dies etc... are irrelevent and silly.

4. Conroe is the better choice, performance-wise right now. AMD will have a much better product in K8L and it will be a close call at that point, K8L may be better, it may not be. To assert either that K8L will "destroy" Conroe, or that AMD is out for the count because Conroe beats it right now is ridiculous.

5. 4x4 is a riduclous idea. Seriously, you need to be pretty crazy to drink that kool-aid. Wait for real quad core from either AMD or Intel.

6. Your 975X or 965 motherboard will be able to use any new Intel CPU, more than likely, through most of 2007. No upgrades required. Sometimes AMD fanboys make it "reverse day" and claim Intel needs frequent MB changes. This is nonsensical and the reverse of true. 754/939/AM2 anyone? Now we have AM2+ (K8L), AM3, etc.. in the pipeline too.
1. More expensive than AMD boards;
2. Overclocking may be EXTREMELY dangerous if done incorrectly and it also void the warranty. Almost all manufacturers discourage overclocking and many problems (expecially when CPU is stressed live in video encoding) are due to incorrect overclocking;
3. Kentsfield is an hybrid quad core as much as Pentium D was an hybrid dual core;
4. I agree with you, but not all core2duo models are really better than amd counterparts;
5. 4x4 is as ridicolous as kentsfield but more efficient (supposing math is not an opinion);
6. Are you sure? Where did you find official info about future intel CPUs compatibility with actual sockets and chipsets? AMD also has officially stated AM3 CPUs (including K8L) will run on both AM2+ and AM2 sockets just by updating the MB BIOS.

[Dreassica]

core 2 duo overclock motherboard more expensive? Not really.
Take the Biostar P965, best overclock board u can buy, 116 euro,
even with cheaper memory and boxed cooler u can easily overclock a conroe a few hundred mhz. My e6300 can overclcok without even increasing vcore to 2.66ghz, thats over 800mhz. Doubt u can say the same for any amd cpu's atm.

[dragongodz]

guys, this sort of discussion belongs more in the hardware section no ?

[bond]

guys, everybody cool down please ;)

[Sharktooth]

guys, this sort of discussion belongs more in the hardware section no ?
agreed.
guys, everybody cool down please ;)
well... im "cool" :D
core 2 duo overclock motherboard more expensive? Not really.
Take the Biostar P965, best overclock board u can buy, 116 euro,
even with cheaper memory and boxed cooler u can easily overclock a conroe a few hundred mhz. My e6300 can overclcok without even increasing vcore to 2.66ghz, thats over 800mhz. Doubt u can say the same for any amd cpu's atm.
Yes (first google results):
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/229/2/
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/373/5/

[Sagittaire]

it's your opinion... benchmarks on COMPETENT sites show different results. however you cant say E6800 will beat all of those until there are samples to benchmark...


3d Studio Max 7
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-12/intel-core-2-duo-dossier.html
c2d 6400 on par with Athlon FX-62
223€ vs 770€

Maya 6
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-12/intel-core-2-duo-dossier.html
c2d 6700 better than Athlon FX-62
519€ vs 770€

Mathematica 5.2
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-13/intel-core-2-duo-dossier.html
c2d 6400 on par with Athlon FX-62
224€ vs 770€

WinRAR 3.51
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-13/intel-core-2-duo-dossier.html
c2d 6400 on par with Athlon FX-62
224€ vs 770€

TMPGEnc 3.3 Xpress
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-14/intel-core-2-duo-dossier.html
c2d 6400 on par with Athlon FX-62
224€ vs 770€

VirtualDub 6.11 + DiVX 6
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-14/intel-core-2-duo-dossier.html
c2d 6400 on par with Athlon FX-62
224€ vs 770€

Far Cry
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-15/intel-core-2-duo-dossier.html
c2d 6400 on par with Athlon FX-62
224€ vs 770€

Pacific Fighters
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/623-15/intel-core-2-duo-dossier.html
c2d 6400 on par with Athlon FX-62
224€ vs 770€

1) Actually the best intel CPU without o/c is by far better than the best possible AMD CPU without o/c in the all possible application.
c2d 6300 on par with Athlon 64 5000+
c2d 6400 on par with Athlon FX-62
c2d 6600 on par with ...
c2d 6700 on par with ...
c2d 6800 on par with ...

2) For the same frequency intel CPU is by far better than AMD cpu in the all possible application.

3) For the same price intel CPU is by far better than AMD cpu in the all possible application.
c2d 6300 (180€) on par with Athlon 64 4200+ (190€)
c2d 6400 (223€) on par with Athlon 64 4600+ (238€)
c2d 6600 (314€) on par with Athlon 64 4800+ (290€)
c2d 6700 (519€) on par with ...
c2d 6800 (979€) on par with ...

4) And here if you want compare some o/c possibility
http://www.hardware.fr/myocdb.com/categorie53.html
http://www.hardware.fr/myocdb.com/categorie48.html

FSB 266@333 and 1.866@2.333 Ghz seem really easy for c2d 6300 in aircooling
FSB 266@400 and 1.866@2.800 Ghz seem easy for c2d 6300 in aircooling
FSB 266@333 and 2.133@2.666 Ghz seem really easy for c2d 6400 in aircooling
FSB 266@400 and 2.133@3.200 Ghz seem possible for c2d 6400 in aircooling
FSB 266@333 and 2.400@3.000 Ghz seem really easy for c2d 6600 in aircooling
FSB 266@400 and 2.400@3.600 Ghz seem hard for c2d 6600 in aircooling


Conclusion: Intel is by far better than AMD. c2d 6400 with o/c FSB 266@400 and 2.133@3.200 Ghz in air cooling seem really good solution and will done incredible performance for only 223€.

[Sharktooth]

FX-62 doesnt cost 770 euros... where did you get that prices?
it was HALVED...

[Sagittaire]

FX-62 doesnt cost 770 euros... where did you get that prices?
it was HALVED...

Average price in France on the most popular shop ...

http://www.ldlc.com/navigation/cat.html?sscat=140025&constructeur=&filtre_579_5_val=1739&filtre_160_6_val=&filtre_19_3_op=5&filtre_19_3_val=&filtre_291_1_val=&filtre_292_5_val=&submit=Ok

http://www.grosbill.com/fr/informatique/processeur/1-amd-dual-core/liste.html


Or make yourself comparison ...

http://www.pricegrabber.com/p__Intel_Core_2_Duo_E6400_Dual_Core_Processor,__22879558

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=20167467/


For the same price intel CPU is by far better than AMD cpu in the all possible application.
c2d 6300 (180$) on par with Athlon 64 4200+ (183$)
c2d 6400 (220$) on par with Athlon 64 4400+ (225$)
c2d 6600 (312$) on par with Athlon 64 4800+ (320$)
c2d 6700 (499$) on par with Athlon 64 5000+ (499$)
c2d 6800 (959$) on par with ....

[Dreassica]

Actually u can overclcok a 6300 to 3ghz easy, as long as u have memory that can cope with the overclock as well, and on air at that.

[rezard]

@Sagittaire

how can several applications be 'all possible applications'?
there are many other benchmarks
and cases of not only 'far better' but also 'a bit better' or 'almost par' at similar price level.

btw for price,
it is also important that mainboards for amd are quite cheaper without performance loss.

@Dreassica

only if your PC is under cool air(almost impossible in summer). otherwise, probably you need additional cost and effort for cooling.

winsor3800 can be overclocked easily to 2.5 or 2.6GHz with cheap mainboard of which price is half of Biostar P965 you said. and doesn't need any fan except the stock cooler.

[Dreassica]

FX-62 doesnt cost 770 euros... where did you get that prices?
it was HALVED...

Checked here on a Dutch pricewatch site.
FX-62 costs 712 euro cheapest. Not 770 granted, but close to.

[Sagittaire]

how can several applications be 'all possible applications'?
there are many other benchmarks

Well if you want but in overall case c2d 6400 is on par with fx-62 and particulary for video encoding


and cases of not only 'far better' but also 'a bit better' or 'almost par' at similar price level.

No ... it's false

1) for the same price (CPU only) is by far better than AMD
2) for the same frequencies c2d is by far better than AMD

here some possible price

c2d 6300 (180€) on par for price with Athlon 64 4200+ (190€) but c2d 6300 is by far better than 4200+ for performance
c2d 6400 (223€) ........................... Athlon 64 4600+ (238€) ............................................................................
c2d 6600 (314€) ........................... Athlon 64 4800+ (290€) ............................................................................
c2d 6700 (519€) have no comparison for performance
c2d 6800 (979€) have no comparison for performance

try to find better price if you want but ranking will be always the same ... lol


btw for price,
it is also important that mainboards for amd are quite cheaper without performance loss.

Well it's really easy to find mainboard at 50$ for c2d


only if your PC is under cool air(almost impossible in summer). otherwise, probably you need additional cost and effort for cooling.

no ... it's false

really easy to make o/c fsb at 266@333 (25% gain) with original air cooling (in summer if you want) without vcore modification

[celtic_druid]

$1080 AUD here which would make it 649.832 EUR and I wouldn't have thought that here was cheaper than Europe.

X6800 is $1300, so more and the E6700 is $780, so less. Still if I were going Intel I think I would go for the E6600 @ $470.

[Dreassica]

@Sagittaire

how can several applications be 'all possible applications'?
there are many other benchmarks
and cases of not only 'far better' but also 'a bit better' or 'almost par' at similar price level.

btw for price,
it is also important that mainboards for amd are quite cheaper without performance loss.

@Dreassica

only if your PC is under cool air(almost impossible in summer). otherwise, probably you need additional cost and effort for cooling.

winsor3800 can be overclocked easily to 2.5 or 2.6GHz with cheap mainboard of which price is half of Biostar P965 you said. and doesn't need any fan except the stock cooler.

The in summer argument could be levelled at the AMD too, if your environment is 30 degrees, tehj AMD prolly couldnt be cooled with stoick cooler at 2.6ghz as well.
With c2d e6300 u can overclock to 3ghz without a vcore increase. Of course that depends on memory used, certainly my cheapass ddr2 doesn't want to go further when i increase fsb to 380. with air cooling my 6300 stays at 45 degress ojn full load, and that's in a rather warm environment, ie. 27 degrees celcius.

[Sharktooth]

Athlons run pretty "cool" too. An overclocked 3800+ @ 2.8Ghz (on air) runs at about 41-45C.

[Sagittaire]

Athlons run pretty "cool" too. An overclocked 3800+ @ 2.8Ghz (on air) runs at about 41-45C.

certainely but ...

FSB 266@333 and 1.866@2.333 Ghz seem really easy for c2d 6300 in aircooling
FSB 266@400 and 1.866@2.800 Ghz seem easy for c2d 6300 in aircooling

and c3d at 2.8 Mhz is actually by far better than X2 at 2.8 Mhz ... and it's relatively easy to make o/c at 2.8 Mhz for c2d but not for X2 ...
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/10/10/cheap_thrills/

Moreover if you very little price actually the best CPU for o/c is Pentium 4 D805 dual core at 2.666 Ghz. You can make really easy o/c at 2.666@3.333 Ghz and 2.666@4.000 Ghz for only 150$ (mainboard + CPU + good air cooling).
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/10/dual_41_ghz_cores/

but read that and see conclusion if you want
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/index.html

[Sharktooth]

but c2d 6300 is more expensive than x2 3800... :p
and however is pretty easy to overclock it to 2.8GHz.
There were some models that would overclock badly, but it could be "fixed" by replacing the stock cooler with a more powerfull one.

[Sagittaire]

but c2d 6300 is more expensive than x2 3800... :p
and however is pretty easy to overclock it to 2.8GHz.
There were some models that would overclock badly, but it could be "fixed" by replacing the stock cooler with a more powerfull one.

and x2 3800 is more expensive than PIV D805 ... for me actually D805 is an incredible dual core solution ...

I'am AMD fan but c2d is really good product and AMD can't fight actually ... :eek:

[Sharktooth]

c2d is a good CPU but i dont like how intel made it perform better.
Everything in c2d is an hybrid or half-ass/cheap solution starting from the cores interconnection thru a huge L2 cache instead of a dedicated channel, then they just slapped in some faster SSE execution units and voila.
Kentsfield is a frankenstein solution... they took 2 core 2 due cores and glued them in one package the pentium D way... thats even more UGLY.
The only real C2D innovative tech over older intel cores is the power efficiency but that's also due to die shrink (the new .65 construction).
I feel confident AMD will do much better with K8L...

[Dreassica]

Then why didn't AMD's .65 solution give them much more power efficiency?

[Sharktooth]

it does. AMD will introduce .65 with "barcelona" K8L quad core and it will, at full load, barely draw the same power than the actual low-mid end AMD dual cores... that's already pretty low.

[Sagittaire]

it does. AMD will introduce .65 with "barcelona" K8L quad core and it will, at full load, barely draw the same power than the actual low-mid end AMD dual cores... that's already pretty low.

perhaps ... I don't know ... ???

But actualy Intel solution is by far better than AMD solution (price and performance) and particulary for video encoding/decoding.

[bkman]

c2d is a good CPU but i dont like how intel made it perform better.
Everything in c2d is an hybrid or half-ass/cheap solution starting from the cores interconnection thru a huge L2 cache instead of a dedicated channel, then they just slapped in some faster SSE execution units and voila.
...
The only real C2D innovative tech over older intel cores is the power efficiency but that's also due to die shrink (the new .65 construction).
I feel confident AMD will do much better with K8L...

You are so full of it. Do you own stock in AMD or something?

[Sharktooth]

No, i like doing things as they should be done and dont like "cheap" compromises.
By consequence i like ppl that do things as they should be done and dont like ppl which chose to go for a "cheap" compromise.

perhaps ... I don't know ... ???

But actualy Intel solution is by far better than AMD solution (price and performance) and particulary for video encoding/decoding.
10% is not much "far"... hower K8L TDP has been already announced.

[Inventive Software]

but c2d 6300 is more expensive than x2 3800...
Some proof would be nice, as I can't find an X2 3800+ cheaper than £130 in the UK (which is what the E6300 costs)

[bkman]

No, i like doing things as they should be done and dont like "cheap" compromises.
By consequence i like ppl that do things as they should be done and dont like ppl which chose to go for a "cheap" compromise.

Then your idea of a "cheap compromise" is heavily skewed by your AMD bias. To play off the huge architectural advances of the Core 2 architecture over Pentium's Netburst as a few cheap compromises is totally ridiculous. There is a reason C2D's are whooping K8's all over the place, at about 20% higher efficiency per clock. It's more than just "voila".

In fact, apart from the new L3 cache hierarchy, K8L is quite close to what you have described; just some faster SSE execution units.

[Sharktooth]

Penitum 3 -> Pentium M is cheap
Pentium M/D -> Core is cheap
Core -> Core 2 is cheap
...
Penitum 4 was only a MISTAKE.
Intel started to admint P4 was BS when people preferred overclocked Pentium Ms to P4s...

[bkman]

I misunderstood what older Pentium chips you were talking about.

Still, if you say that Core -> Core 2 is cheap (despite wider SSE datapaths and Macro-Op Fusion + some other things), then by the same token you have to say K8 -> K8L is cheap.

[Mutant_Fruit]

Well, as a proud owner of 4 AMD chips starting with an Athlon 800mhz and ending at an AMD Xp 2500+ i'm happy to say that i bought a Core 2 Duo 2 months ago when i upgraded.

Why did i jump ship? Well, the Core2Duo was faster than an equivelantly priced AMD machine. You call the c2d a cheap compromise, but compromise or not it's faster (ignoring all overclocking) than anything AMD have at similar price ranges (and will be for another 2+ months or so).

As for overclocking, i've *never* gotten a chip which approached the speed i've heard other people claiming to get when overclocking.

So if you say to buy a 3800+ and overclock it to 4600+ speeds thus saving a bundle of cash, i'd say no. Can you *guarantee* me that my 3800+ will go that fast? No. You can't. My core2duo tops out at 315mhz fsb with core voltage at 1.45. It's just about stable. Without touching core voltage i can overclock to 300mhz fsb stable, which i've done and i'm quite happy with that. But claims that you can easily get to 2.6ghz are grossly exaggerated. I'm sure the same is true for the AMD X2 3800+ models.

All in all, fanboi or not, i firmly believe (and all the benchmarks i've seen agree) that the Core2Duo is by far the best bang for your buck (at least the 6300 model anyway).

EDIT: So every "minor" advance by intel is cheap? How so?#

EDIT 2: Prices for the E6300+ and the AMD X2 4600+ (which has slightly faster performance in some tests, slightly slower in others):

E6300: £100 (ex vat)
X2 4600+: £140 (ex vat)

Thats a big difference

[Sharktooth]

I misunderstood what older Pentium chips you were talking about.

Still, if you say that Core -> Core 2 is cheap (despite wider SSE datapaths and Macro-Op Fusion + some other things), then by the same token you have to say K8 -> K8L is cheap.
Yes, otherwise it would have been K9...
AMD was forced to do that move or they will loose ground. But as you can see AMD is not much concerned in a fast launch of those chips coz they know a 10% difference is not "the end of the world".

[Sharktooth]

Well, as a proud owner of 4 AMD chips starting with an Athlon 800mhz and ending at an AMD Xp 2500+ i'm happy to say that i bought a Core 2 Duo 2 months ago when i upgraded.

Why did i jump ship? Well, the Core2Duo was faster than an equivelantly priced AMD machine. You call the c2d a cheap compromise, but compromise or not it's faster (ignoring all overclocking) than anything AMD have at similar price ranges (and will be for another 2+ months or so).

As for overclocking, i've *never* gotten a chip which approached the speed i've heard other people claiming to get when overclocking.

So if you say to buy a 3800+ and overclock it to 4600+ speeds thus saving a bundle of cash, i'd say no. Can you *guarantee* me that my 3800+ will go that fast? No. You can't. My core2duo tops out at 315mhz fsb with core voltage at 1.45. It's just about stable. Without touching core voltage i can overclock to 300mhz fsb stable, which i've done and i'm quite happy with that. But claims that you can easily get to 2.6ghz are grossly exaggerated. I'm sure the same is true for the AMD X2 3800+ models.

All in all, fanboi or not, i firmly believe (and all the benchmarks i've seen agree) that the Core2Duo is by far the best bang for your buck (at least the 6300 model anyway).

EDIT: So every "minor" advance by intel is cheap? How so?#

EDIT 2: Prices for the E6300+ and the AMD X2 4600+ (which has slightly faster performance in some tests, slightly slower in others):

E6300: £100 (ex vat)
X2 4600+: £140 (ex vat)

Thats a big difference
I've posted an article on how is easy overclock the x2 3800 and how they get 2.8Ghz with stock cooler...
Oh and 2.8Ghz is faster than 4800+ and 5000+...
Also maybe you want to look into the Opteron 165 and 170 Overclockability and price (since it runs on the same athlon socket, is cheaper than the 3800+ and has 2x1MB L2 cache...): http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/opteron-165_8.html and http://forums.amd.com/lofiversion/index.php/t61517.html

[Mutant_Fruit]

Do you have any benchmarks or performance charts of an opty clocked to 2.8ghz so i could compare to a c2d at standard clock?

[Sharktooth]

http://www.overclocking-masters.com/Test-Overclocking-Opteron-165-Socket-939,ns75.htm
http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/opteron-165-180/index.x?pg=15

also check this:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=430&model2=464&chart=182
as you can see FX-62 is sometimes faster than e6600, sometimes on par and sometimes slower. So i would place it on comparison with e6600.

and here: http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=430&model2=464&chart=195
there is a price/performance comparison... draw your own conclusions.

[bkman]

Don't forget to look at this: http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/cpu/intel-core2-duo-e6600.html
which actually factors x264 in the encoding benchmark, and draw some more conclusions... :-)

[Sharktooth]

no info on builds, optimizations, VFW or CLI... etc...
it is also an average score between DivX, Xvid, x264 and WMV.... so if one of them is optimized for a CPU model and brand (WME for example) then the test becomes useless.

[bkman]

Individual results are available. (http://www.ixbt.com/cpu/images/intel-core2-duo-e6600/results.xls)

And certainly the tests are no less telling than Tom's Hardware's. Or the many other tests that show the the FX-62 being spanked. Btw, I don't think any software was optimised for C2D at that stage.

[Sharktooth]

Well, now we know with that build of x264 and xvid, the fx-62 performs similarly to the e6400. But we dont know how those codec binaries were built..if they were compiled with MSVC, ICL (intel compiler - hence optimized for intel CPUs) or GCC, or if it was optimized for MMX or SSE...etc... so x264 and xvid tests are useless...
For example, Canopus Procoder, in the same test, performs equally on e6600 and FX-62... wile WME is faster on FX-62 than on e6600... while DivX is in favour of intel CPUs.
So, we have 2 video encoding test that shows FX-62 on par or faster than e6600 and 1 where FX-62 is comparable to e6400.
At the end, as i said, FX-62 is much more comparable to e6600 than e6400, at least for video encoding.

[Mutant_Fruit]

Well, as it seems to be difficult you find benchmarks that match a highly overclocked opty to a core2duo anywhere all i can say is the following.

You can say how easy it is to overclock all you want, but i'm not a believer that the average joe buying the average chip is not going to be guaranteed to get much more than 15% extra free until you either need better cooling or encounter stability problems. I do admit that you can get chips (such as the opty) which are good overclockers, but not everyone can reach the speeds people claim that you can.

Also, fair enough saying that you can pick up an opty 165 and overclock it a bunch, but it's base price is 30% higher than an e6300. For 20% more than the price of an opty 165, you can get an e6600, which is also a goodish overclocker (so i'm told). Also, factor in the cost of good cooling as opposed to stock cooling. My cooler cost me £3. And it keeps temps below 53C at peak load, while overclocked. I could have splashed out on a £30 cooler and overclocked more, but the price/performance didn't warrent the extra money.

If you want an apples-apples comparison, compare a stably overclocked opty to a stably overclocked core 2 duo. I'll leave it to ye to decide which'd win.

Anyone who claims that AMD are winning *right now* are (imo) seriously misinformed. As things stand *right now*, Intel are head and shoulders above AMD. Of course, things change and AMD's new offerings could easily start whooping the core 2 duo in every field just like core 2 duo is doing to the X2's right now.

[Sharktooth]

blind? i've posted links that show x2 3800+ and opteron 165 1.5 times overclocking on stock aircooling... 170 overclocks as well...
How much does the 6300 costs?
I didnt claim AMD is winning though... but i will say it's still competitive.

[bkman]

blind? i've posted links that show x2 3800+ and opteron 165 1.5 times overclocking on stock aircooling... 170 overclocks as well...

I don't get your point with this. If you are comparing overclocked CPU's then you have to compare the overclocked E6300 and E6400 which by many reports overclock just as well or better on air as the 3800.

And about compiler optimisations, from what I have seen apps optimised for K8 perform better on C2D than apps optimised for past Intel processors (netbursts). ICL wouldn't have a Conroe profile at the time those benchmarks were made. Likely Digit-Life used one of your own compiles....

[Mutant_Fruit]

E6300 costs £100 ex vat.
Opty 165 costs £133 ex vat.
E6600 costs £169 ex vat

http://www.overclocking-masters.com/Test-Overclocking-Opteron-165-Socket-939,ns75.htm
That benchmark is outdated and can't be compared to more modern benchmarks due to the fact that the apps used there are ancient versions and are no longer used. The only comparable item would be 3dmark 2005, but due to GFX differences, it's not really comparable.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/opteron-165-180/index.x?pg=15
Not really useful as very few tests are completed with the overclocked opty. You're looking at 1 HL2 benchmark (non-comparable) and the cinebench version used is old. From a quick eye-guess based on newer charts a stock E6600 would be at least as fast as the highly overclocked opty as in http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=11 that test the E6600 is right below an FX62. But thats one graph, it's useless by itself.

As for the charts for toms hardware for price/performance. Well, they're useless as i can't select a highly overclocked opty versus a standard core 2 duo. Taking a look at the benchmarks from what you linked, an AMD FX-60 is approximately the same as a highly overclocked opty and that performs approximately the same or worse as compared to an E6400.

Of course, those aren't direct comparisons between a core2duo and an opty 165 overclocked which is what i was looking for.

EDIT: I believe mobo's might still cost more for core 2 duo's than for opty 165's, but the last time i was pricing was 2 months ago. That's probably changed now. At the time i had a choice between 2 boards :p I;m sure there's more now.

EDIT 2: Just to make the point i'm trying to make clear. What i'm saying is that you can buy an e6300 for a fair bit less than an opty 165, stick with bog standard cooling, get a moderate overclock (i'm saying 2.1ghz is an achieveable figure, i wont say 2.6ghz like some say), and still get a chip that will perform bloody fast even if you can't/don't want to overclock it.

[Dreassica]

Well, my 6300 overclocks to 2.66ghz on stock aircooler and cheap memory on a p5b deluxe, that's with memory not in dual channel though. Then it overclocks to just 2.3ghz, so Meory in my case limits the overclock. I ran Orthos stable for 24 hrs, no errors reported. If i stuck in better memory, i'm sure i could go for 3ghz.

[Mutant_Fruit]

Well, my 6300 overclocks to 2.66ghz on stock aircooler and cheap memory on a p5b deluxe, that's with memory not in dual channel though. Then it overclocks to just 2.3ghz, so Meory in my case limits the overclock. I ran Orthos stable for 24 hrs, no errors reported. If i stuck in better memory, i'm sure i could go for 3ghz.

I also have cheap memory, ddr 4300 but it's stabke at a whopping 670/680mhz or thereabouts. I'm unfortunately limited by my CPU though. I wonder if i took it out of dual channel would i overclock more.. i somehow doubt it though, but i'll give it a shot ;) I'm quite happy with my 266->300mhz overclock at stock voltage with my £3 cooler :p

EDIT: Switched the ram sticks out of dual channel mode and i'm currently running at 320mhz FSB and stable for 30 mins in prime95. Previously if i went to 305mhz fsb i'd get a prime95 crash within 5 minutes. What a good idea it was to take the memory out of dual channel, i had forgotten that affects overclockability :p

[slavickas]

in short: C2D are better, but 3800+ is to go on budget

[Mutant_Fruit]

in short: C2D are better, but 3800+ is to go on budget
Nope, unless you can recommend a £102 AMD X2 3800+ over a £106 core 2 duo e6300 (and i definately can't) why not pick up the duo? A quick look shows core2duo motherboards coming from £40 ex vat. So motherboards are comparatively priced aswell nowadays. I wouldn't recommend the AMD route to anyone.

(yes, i do realise i quoted 100 ex vat yesterday, but the price has changed. Thats online pricing for ya, my friend bought one from the same shop at £98.99 ex vat about a week ago).

[Sagittaire]

Yes, otherwise it would have been K9...
AMD was forced to do that move or they will loose ground. But as you can see AMD is not much concerned in a fast launch of those chips coz they know a 10% difference is not "the end of the world".

No ...

1) For same frequencies
in overall c2d is ~25% better than AMD
- Actual intel core is simply 25% more efficient than actual AMD core
- Potential speed increase for intel seem better than AMD potential

2) For same price
c2d is always better AMD
c2d 6300 (180€) on par for price with Athlon 64 4200+ (190€) but c2d 6300 is by far better than 4200+ for performance
c2d 6400 (223€) ........................... Athlon 64 4600+ (238€) ............................................................................
c2d 6600 (314€) ........................... Athlon 64 4800+ (290€) ............................................................................
c2d 6700 (519€) have no comparison for performance
c2d 6800 (979€) have no comparison for performance


and actually the best ratio performance/price for video encoding is o/c PIV D805 and by far

[foxyshadis]

The only people who honestly care about microchip architectures are nerds or fanboys, come on. (I care, I know what that makes me...) For most people, price/performance of a system is all that matters, and for some noise levels, power draw, and upgradability are also important. In that sense, you can get a P-D 805 and throw it out when you upgrade to a more expensive Core, since everything else is compatible. On the tightest budget it's a good choice. Same for 3800+ to a 5000+, as long as both are AM2.

If you're talking about what's best now and how upgradable the future will be, well, no one can predict that without insider information. Intel and AMD like to spring socket changes on us, they never give out involiable roadmaps for years ahead of time. (Vague powerpoint slides with future wish lists don't count.) For all we know AM4 will come out next year, or some new desktop chipset will come out with santa rosa, instead of the expected wait until the end of the year or beginning of next.

[rezard]

@ Mutant_Fruit

unlike AMD,
cheaper mainboard(chipset) for Intel PC means less performance and less OC ability(almost limit fsb around 300Mhz ->E6300: 2.1GHz).
are you sure your applications will not be affected by the performance of old board chipset( like memory latency, bandwidth...)?

@ Sagittaire

for mainboard cost,
I said 'cheap mainboards without performance loss'
you said 50$ one for conroe but it may not support even dual memory channel or 1066 fsb speed.

for performance,
conroes are considerably better, but I dont agree 'far better in all applications'
though conroes seem far better in sse-related performance and sequential or small-amount memory access due to their cache and prefetcher.
I think the term 'far better in all applications' is more adequate between X2s and 805d you said.


no ... it's false

really easy to make o/c fsb at 266@333 (25% gain) with original air cooling (in summer if you want) without vcore modification

of course I know
but I had replied to Dreassica, said 'easy 3GHz OC'.

@ Dreassica

with E6300 and stock cooler it is difficult to do stable overclocking around fsb400(2.8Ghz) in summer(above 30 degree).
usually conroe OCers attach additional cooler at NorthBridge as well as cpu (+ etc).
unlike AMD(with LDT multiplier), more fsb also overclock NorthBridge more.

on the other side, people who wants relativly cheap PC can easily overclock windsor3800 to around 2.5GHz independently of whether it's summer or not,
with only stock cooler and far cheaper mainboard
though cpu's overclocking rate is far lower than E6300.

[celtic_druid]

Any decent SLI or CrossFire boards that support c2d yet?

[Dreassica]

It's been 30+ degrees here not a long while ago and my c6300 didn't have too much problems with that at 2.66ghz, maybe due to fact my house is properly isolated ( double glass windows etc.) Obviosuly, when u live more south an temsp can reach 40, then u could get issues, but that would affect any system regardless of cpu.

[Sagittaire]

@ Mutant_Fruit

for mainboard cost,
I said 'cheap mainboards without performance loss'
you said 50$ one for conroe but it may not support even dual memory channel or 1066 fsb speed.


http://www.asrock.com/product/index.htm#775
http://www.asrock.com/product/775Dual-VSTA.htm
http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=206&model=1126&modelmenu=1
http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=346&model=1362&modelmenu=1
Mainboard at 50$

[Dreassica]

To be quite honest, although it's cheap, it isn't really that good of a overclockingboard.

[Sharktooth]

maybe it's really time to move this to HW forum...

[Mutant_Fruit]

maybe it's really time to move this to HW forum...

Aye, it probably i alright. I don't think either side is going to accept the other side's argument and thats it.

From a non-overclocking point of view: The core 2 duo wins the price/performance hands down across all brackets. You *cannot* dispute that. In all applications i've seen reviewed the core 2 duo has a large margin over more expensively priced AMD X2's.

From an overclocking point of view: You are probably still better off with a core 2 duo, but only probably. Unfortunately what most people want to compare here is a hugely overclocked opty 165 to a bog standard clock core duo and saying the opty wins the price/peformance ratio.

As arguments they say that you cant overclock on cheap c2d motherboards and that performance would be decreased due to cheaper/slower motherboard componants. But so what, anyone buying to overclock will buy a good motherboard, whether it's am2 or 775. Anyone buying a budget board, be it am2 or otherwise will not get as good performance as if they buy a more expensive board.
[Note: that is a generalisation and won't hold true for 100% of cases, but it's true in general).

Also they say it's hard to do 400mhz fsb in hot weather with a c2d, but you can with an opty. Well, if you DID clock an e6300 to 400mhz fsb, you're talking about a chip that will leave ANY amd processor eating a dirt trail a mile long, so i don't really see it as a bad thing that you might only be able to get a stable clock to 350mhz.

[Inventive Software]

Keeping this on-topic (sort of), how does x264 scale with more cores?

[708145]

Keeping this on-topic (sort of), how does x264 scale with more cores?

I'm interested in the same thing.
And as I released a new build of ELDER4x264 today I'm particularly interested in scaling of the new beta4d.
Any results you wanna share?

hint: use a sufficiently large sample (>10K frames) and at least 8 chunks (-c 8).

edit: the ELDER4X264 release thread is here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=731434#post731434

bis besser,
T0B1A5

[Sharktooth]

AFAIK x264CLI can scale up to 4 cores/processors but elder performs better.

[Caroliano]

I've posted an article on how is easy overclock the x2 3800 and how they get 2.8Ghz with stock cooler...
Dreassica asked you for an over 800mhz overclock without incrasing vcore. You only showed an link of an 520mhz overclock with an slight increased vcore, and an 720mhz (still under 800mhz) with an considerably higher vcore.

I've see 3.4~3.5 GHz overclockings of E6300 in water with defaut volts. Any AMD cpu capable of doing this? Remember also that C2D have an 25% higher efficience per clock than X2.

Few people got 100% overclock in their E6300. You can show any 100% overclock with air cooling (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=115497) in X2 processors? Isn't nice an 1.86GHz processor runing at 3.73GHz (http://www.3dgameman.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43856)? ^^

Of course you don't have to go that high. You can undervolt to slight less than 1v the E6300 on stock speeds. Or overclock it to 2.4GHz while undervolting it a little.

But for all this you will need an good motherboard. Good OC motherboards for conroe starts at $140~150 with Gigabyte's DS3, while $80~90 boards can OC nicely an X2 3800. Core 2 Duo is too powerful :P

@Sagitaire: X2 3800 did won a benchmark over E6300 in scientific tests. In this same test, the FX62 also won over X6800. Maybe because it is very afected by the higher transfering rates in AM2 plataform? Or the 64kb L1 cache? Or another architeture detail? But in general, C2D perform better than AMD cpus, that fail to mid-range.

[foxyshadis]

Scientific comes down to K8's significantly better floating point unit. That's why it's making inroads into the huge number-crunching mainframe market (primarily through sun), because it runs rings around Power5 and Itanium at the same cost/wattage, even though you need more chips to get the same raw power. Once 8-core Opteron is out even that won't be an issue.

But little of the hardcore number crunching in media encoding and decoding is floating point, so we don't see as much of that benefit. (Unless you're also into 3d rendering.)

[saratoga]

Scientific comes down to K8's significantly better floating point unit.

No Conroe definiately has the advanatge here. SSEn is the future, and Conroe is definately better here, at least until the K8L.

BTW, my lab just got in our first Woodcrest cluster. Previously we were all K8. So far, it totally dominates for FP intensive code, but doesn't do so well for our large dataset stuff. DDR1 on the K8 seems to hold up well against FB-DIMM. Overall Woodcrest is quite a bit faster though for our stuff (mostly finite element simulations as well as some DSP type stuff).

That's why it's making inroads into the huge number-crunching mainframe market (primarily through sun), because it runs rings around Power5 and Itanium at the same cost/wattage, even though you need more chips to get the same raw power. Once 8-core Opteron is out even that won't be an issue.

Memory was the bigger deal for most people in research I think. Good FP performance isn't that hard to find these days. Memory bandwidth and FP performance is another issue. The P4 could keep up with the Opteron for a lot of stuff, provided you stayed in its (larger) cache. But for modeling, you often have 100s of GB worth of data, so a 2MB cache doesn't make much difference and you buy an Opteron instead :)

[Mutant_Fruit]

Just to respond to the highly overclocked opty versus highly overclocked E6300 (bear in mind the opty costs 33% more roughly):

It's a 43-44% overclock. I think my budget ram is limiting further overclocking. Also, i'm using this cooler: http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?QuickLinx=40XS so temps are ~65-66C under full load.

[rezard]

Anyone buying a budget board, be it am2 or otherwise will not get as good performance as if they buy a more expensive board.
[Note: that is a generalisation and won't hold true for 100% of cases, but it's true in general).


In general, it is different between AMD and Intel.

unlike Intel, all NorthBridge chipsets for AMD is basically tunnels which conform to the HyperTransport,
those have no influence to PC performance or cpu OC at all.

of course, other components belong to mainboard influence performance or OC.
but far lesser than NorthBridge chipset of Intel mainboards.

of course, No cheapest boards and Not all cheap boards(or their bioses) for AMD are good for OC( as there are 965,975 boards which are not good for OC),
and more expensive one usually has more accessories.