Core i5 vs 8-core FX, HT vs no HT - nice summary

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Well AMD did give it a larger L1 and L2 cache, which actually gives worse performance.
AMD also make a huge mistake of adding a lot of ALU cores, so instead of them been productivity they are actually starving them.
They did it because Intel only used just enough ALU cores.

Hyper-threading is also only useful for many different instructions. If it is all integer instructions, hyperthreading won't be for much use.(This is a rare).
But if it is instead alot of different instructions hyper-threading really shines.
 
I doubt AMD still sticks to that 'Gigahertz Myth' and manufactures these FX CPUs. Or is it that they're not having a better architecture like that of an Intel,which gives better performance at lower clock speed? It's funny the way people said AMD FX overclocked to some 8 GHz. I wonder what's the point. That's actually of not much use. The way they were pouring out the liquid nitrogen made me sick. Was that actually benchmarked? Or was it just for showing the FX could be overclocked to such speed,producing a huge amount of heat?
 
I don't find any USE in reaching that high speed,if it's just to log on to windows and look at the window saying it's 8 or 9 Gigahertz. Do you think it'll help in anything other than getting a name on the book of records? Coz I can't find an AMD CPU,overclocked or not,outperforming an i7(forget about the price).
If AMD had tried bettering in the IPC area and tried to produce BETTER CPUs rather than some 'waste of a time' high clocked,burning CPUs,then really I'd have been an AMD fanboy. But it seems AMD won't provide me with a chance. Eventhough,now that I'm beginning to hear that the Steamroller mainly focus on bettering the IPC,rather than boasting about some useless huge number of cores.Do you guys think it will make much of an improvement over the older architectures?
 
The reason Intel is so far ahead is basically the fact intel manufacturer their own products which is the reason intel is looking for 14nm CPU, where AMD just got to 28nm.

This is the same reason why AMD is cheaper and Intel is more expensive. It is extremely costly to manufacturer your own products.
AMD used to manufacturer their own product, at that time the cost of a AMD CPU was around the cost of a Intel CPU, but at that time AMD was actually competing with Intel.

AMD have made many mistake on their architecture which I personally think is the reason AMD won't continue with their FX line(for now).
 
Yeah,after the broadwell,heard Intel is planning the Skylake. Intel just goes on improving. I'm expecting to see a 5nm Intel CPU in the near future...LOL 😉
AMD made a big mistake with the FX,that's right. I wish AMD came up with something better,so that Intel would have something of a competition,and they'll drop down the prices of their CPUs...But I doubt that will happen. 😀
 
When I heard of AMD's 8 core and 16 core CPUs,I was really excited and said,oh my gosh,how would they perform with those 8 and 16 cores! But now I see how they do,and am very much disappointed. It was then I realised cores don't matter. But I hear some saying,AMD is going to come into the console gaming field,with better optimisations for...like the PlayStation, which would give them the upperhand in gaming. Is there anything true about that?
 
Console hardware and how the PC-game-developers are going to optimize their game has little to nothing in common.
Consoles games are of course going to be optimized for the 8 weak cores.
There is a reason why consoles can run PC games with decent graphic, that is because console-game-developers knows exactly what every consumer will have as developers will try to have as many as possible to be able to play the game.

Since consoles are made to play games and PC aren't there is a huge difference in many things, such as in general hardware and software.

Believe it or not, but there are so many people still sitting on a dual core.
It would also be idiotic to let a games use multiple threads across multiple cores, as that can actually worsen the performance.

Truly one day it will require a 8+ core to run even the simplest processes, but that is no near the future.
The CPU development is more or less stuck.
 
To be fair to AMD, the eight core FX is still competitive with the cheaper Core i5. Specially, if you get the 8320 for under $160 and overclock to 8350 speeds. So there is still some choice for AMD fans. However, the updatability of AM+ socket machines is quite worrying. If you start your build with Intel LGA1150 right now, there is a hope for future upgradability of the CPU.

The Piledriver FX architecture shows its 1.5 year age. In theory, AMD could update the FX CPUs with Steamroller architecture relatively inexpensively, but I guess they either gave up competing with Intel head on or perhaps the cost-benefit of updating the FX chips is still unfavorable.

 


Cores matter for massively multithreaded applications that spread their load uniformly among all threads. For example, in the link I posted the AMD FX 8350 is still faster than Haswell Core i5 by a good margin in video encoding. Another area where multicores shine is servers. On the desktop system where single thread performance still dominates, those extra cores don't do much good.
 


Eight weak cores does mean that massively multithreaded game engine is the way to go to squeeze the best performance. The console developers probably do use some additional optimizations, since the hardware is so uniform, such as using assembly closer to metal APIs, and those will be console specific.



Switching threads on a single core has some performance hit, but is still relatively inexpensive (compared to switching between separate processes) when done by the OS. Thread switching is even faster when done in hardware (as in hyperthreading). A lot of folks are sitting on dual-core machines, but they're not seriously about gaming IMHO. These days, the developers can assume you have hardware support for at least four threads even on PCs because a quad-core APU or dual-core i3 with hyperthreading (so four logical cores) is basically the entry level for gaming.



 

No the point is, that if everyone had the exact same build even so if it was 8 weak cores or 4 strong cores, developers would have a much easier to optimized it for that exact CPU architecture.
 

Just to point out, Intel's upcoming CPUs may have the same LGA 1150 socket,but they're 14nm and would still demand a Motherboard change.



AMD has told they got no competition with Intel. I guess that's because they know the fact that they won't win even if they compete.


Well,yes AMD has a little advantage in multithreaded applications because of those extra threads. But look at the other numbers and you'll see why Intel's better. Of course AMD will be better for people on a budget. With overclocking,AMD may match the i5s. But remember the aftereffects of Overclocking too. The FX CPUs run hot even in stock. Inorder to overclock,they'd need some good cooling solution,just to keep the temperatures in the safe region. All these,with the extra power consumption. Considering all these facts,I'd definitely say Intel is the better choice.
And the server right? Well,Intel has Xeon processors made for servers. Desktop CPUs are for desktops. Try putting them on servers and you'll benefit nothing. Only if I could see AMD bettering in that area at least....
 


I beg to differ. Quite often the distinction between "server" and "desktop" CPU is almost purely a marketing distinction. Take 8-core Opteron and 8-core FX. What's the difference? Not much. Same micro-architecture. The server parts may be tweaked with respect to the TDPs, clock speed, sockets, caches, and so on, but the micro-architecture is identical. You can install the server OS, server applications, etc, and go. So, when I am talking about the suitability for server application, I am not saying to put FX CPU into a server (although you could, without much loss). What I am discussing is the microarchitecture (the Piledriver, Bulldozer, etc). Even though AMD has desktop and server chips using it, it does seem to me that AMD's microarchitecture is more suited for server or high-performance computing, whether AMD intended this or not. Servers can easily take advantage of many cores, even if the single-core performance may be slower than Intel. Server applications, such as web servers or database servers, are heavily multi-threaded since they are expected to work with many concurrent requests. At the same time, the CPU demands of individual requests are normally low, so single core performance doesn't really slow you down.

 
In the architecture it self, server CPU's are almost identical to desktop CPU's.
The major difference is what extensions they support.
Server CPU's can normally work with more PCI lanes, ECC memory and such.
Server CPU's normally also have more security features.


AMD fx 8xxx was actually meant to be a server CPU, they change the architecture to piledriver because they would be the first with a 8 core consumer CPU.
AMD architecture aren't more suited for server or high-performance computing, they have been outcompeted completely on those areas.

But yes, you can install whatever server OS you want anything from windows server to a linux distribution and I so far haven't seen any hardware limitation.
 


Did I even utter a word about the architecture? What I was saying was Intel and AMD made server processors for server tasks and desktop CPUs for consumer needs. Would you benefit anything in gaming if you put a Xeon or Opteron in your system? The same way,would you benefit anything if you put some FX chip or the i7 chip in Servers instead of Opteron or Xeon? Actually,that's not practical. That was what I said. I didn't say they had entirely different architectures. You said,quote "Another area where multicores shine is servers. On the desktop system where single thread performance still dominates, those extra cores don't do much good." and as a reply for that,I said that's what Xeons were made for,to be a server CPU. I didn't say anything about the architecture,did I? I'm aware of the fact that what differs in server and desktop CPUs are, some TDP,cache,clock speed,no: of threads etc..and like vmN said,extensions they support,whatever. What I meant was,it's not a good idea putting a desktop CPU in a server PC,since they are heavily multithreaded and so...And it wasn't a good idea putting a Server CPU on a consumer PC,since what people do,mostly gaming and so,doesn't benefit much from the extra features a server CPU has.
And you say AMD's architecture is better suited for servers? I seriously doubt that since I'm seeing some numbers where Intel shines really.
 
If you're video editing / multi tasking and stuff like that then the Amd fx 8350 might come handy for the 8 cores it has, but for gaming the i5 3570k / 4670k is much better because Intel uses digital cores and has much stronger single threaded performance
 


Intel use digital cores? on their i5s? What is this?
 
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