CPU Charts, An ATI Update, And Zotac's Mini-ITX Board

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csuwrx

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Altough love the idea of low idle consumption of 5800 series, I´ll stick with my HD4870X2, still kick ass in games, don't really need more power right now, I'll wait maybe six or eight more months until I go to 5800 series. apart from that congrats to all who can find a brand new HD5800 :D
 

tester24

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I was really hoping to see Toms have the i7 860 instead of the 870. Honestly who cares about a $500+ CPU!? Most people would get the 750, 860 or 920 because of their lower price points and their capabilities. 870 not that much better to warrant the higher price point.

Sure it's stock speed and turboboost is set higher but it's clock range is the same between the 860 and 870, 660Mhz and 670Mhz respectively.

Now I know a few people will say that if this is true then the performance numbers should be the same but viewing some of the numbers on other sites they are a little different but I would like to see Toms do it because they are a little more thorough.
 

one-shot

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I agree. With a lot of games being developed on console and ported to PC, there isn't too much of a reason to upgrade GPUs. I run 2 GTX 260 C216s in SLI and don't regret adding another two months before the launch of the 58XX series.
 

cangelini

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[citation][nom]tester24[/nom]I was really hoping to see Toms have the i7 860 instead of the 870. Honestly who cares about a $500+ CPU!? Most people would get the 750, 860 or 920 because of their lower price points and their capabilities. 870 not that much better to warrant the higher price point. Sure it's stock speed and turboboost is set higher but it's clock range is the same between the 860 and 870, 660Mhz and 670Mhz respectively.Now I know a few people will say that if this is true then the performance numbers should be the same but viewing some of the numbers on other sites they are a little different but I would like to see Toms do it because they are a little more thorough.[/citation]

I'll pass your feedback on to the team working on charts.
 

netsql2

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I'd love a good Mini-ITX build, how cheap can one make a hulu + 3d gaming box + skype w/ Ubuntu 64, blue tooth, wifi-n (no need for dvd/blue ray, just download).
 

netsql2

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I'd love a good Mini-ITX build, how cheap can one make a hulu + 3d gaming box + skype w/ Ubuntu 64, blue tooth, wifi-n (no need for dvd/blue ray, just download).
 
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I'm waiting for the low-profile 5650/5670 to stick into my HTPC for Dolby Digital TrueHD or DTS HD Master Audio.
 

bigght

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ATI/AMD You have dropped the ball again as far as availability issues with your HD5000 graphics and then to make matters worse, you are jacking up the prices on the cards. But without any competition from Nvidia, you can afford to do this, or can you? Long standing ATI supporters have waited for you to address the demand vs supply issue and "mums the word". Lets hope this ploy does not backfire. I am in need of an upgrade for my present ATI card, but hell if I am going to pay for HD5850 graphics card that increases by $$60 since it was released a few months ago.
 
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bigght you need to relax, ATI did not jack any of the prices up on their cards. The people who are responsible are the vendors who sell the cards, since the supply is low they jack the price up for the demand. Do not misdirect your anger for the price hike at ATI they did nothing but come out with a very competitive and fantastic card with great features.
 
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About Zotiac:
I think it's bull $hit saying that the Atom powered desktops don't perform!
For years we've been using 1,6Ghz processors and lower,and never even mentioned the system was in some respect slow!
In fact, today I still use an EeePc701, booting winXP, with a 630Mhz core, and it works pretty ok for most things...
It even displays 720p video on it's tiny 480p screen (when overclocked to 1Ghz)!
It does not have the more powerful graphics card the Zotiac system has, and it uses 400Mhz DDR2 RAM. In any way it is supposed to be slower than the zotiac system, yet with a few XP mods, it works like a charm!
Generally I leave it running @800Mhz, to not have lags with typing and other things, but, come on!
10 years ago, there where those still using windows 98 with a 166Mhz CPU!
Though old by the standards of then, if people could do most they needed to do with a 166Mhz processor, how much more with a 1,6Ghz processor?

Have we become spoiled?
Is an ION platform by any means lacking for the average user?
The average user does NOT compress video's!
He does seldom compress audio.
He sits behind his PC, to internet, chat, use Excel and Word, and perhaps some stock-market program; he listens to audio, and watches 720p video's, and HD youtube video's. All of which the ION platform is doing a great job, especially now that flash video has been hardware accelerated on the 9300/9400 series graphics card from NVidia.

OK, you can't game on it, and running Vista sucks. That's a Vista issue, not an Atom issue.
 

cangelini

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Spoiled is the wrong word, IMO. Rather, the types of applications enabled by more powerful hardware have evolved. The Atom's clock rate isn't the only specification on which to evaluate its performance, remember. It's a CPU that Intel *designed* to enable mobile Internet devices. Should we be surprised when it underwhelms on the desktop? I certainly don't think so. At any rate, why bother with an Atom-based mini-ITX box when you can get a more apropos desktop architecture in there with the Zotac board? =)
 

sstym

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Thank you for the updates, Chris.

Are you guys planning on adding CPU/GPU charts for laptops in the future?
It is currently kind of hard to find decent information about how laptop GPUs and CPUs stack against each other. I, for one, would love to see how ULV cpus (mainly SU4100, SU2300, SU7300) fare against regular Cpus and maybe the lowly Atom.
I would also love to see a comparison between mobile GPUs (9400M, GT2X0M, Radeon HD 4XX0, and even Intel 4500MHD)

A lot of people are looking to buy a netbook or an ultra-portable, and relevant charts would be very helpful.
 

cangelini

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I'd certainly be interested in hearing some feedback on this sstym. The main challenge, I suspect, is the number of different hardware configurations that can't be matched. So, if you were to review x GPU from one vendor, it'd be almost impossible to find an identical hardware platform with y GPU to compare it against. This is the reason our mobile CPU charts are out of date--while it used to be possible to build desktop versions of mobile architectures, we've seen fewer vendors doing these. Any suggestions would be awesome! =)
 

agnickolov

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Core i7 950 is 3.06 GHz, not 3.2 GHz - that would be Core i7 960, which is sadly still missing. Considering the negligible difference with Core i7 965 EE (also at 3.2 GHz) this is not a big loss, however.
 

sstym

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[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom] Any suggestions would be awesome! =)[/citation]

I certainly see your point. The SU4100 is almost always paired with either an intel 4500M or an intel 4500MHD
The SU7300 is almost always paired with a 4500MHD or (in the case of an ASUS UL50) an nVidia GT210M.
How about cross charts with CPU/GPU combos?
You would run benchmarks on different machines and come up with an average on, say, a specific game or benchmark (I'm thinking video playback tests) for a specific CPU/GPU combo, and then you'd build a chart for that game or benchmark with the CPUs on the X-axis and the GPUs on the Y-axis, with the understanding that some of the cells would be empty.
While the result would not be as unbiased and accurate as a benchmark run on a custom built desktop, it would provide some helpful hints for the potential buyer.



 

cangelini

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[citation][nom]agnickolov[/nom]Core i7 950 is 3.06 GHz, not 3.2 GHz - that would be Core i7 960, which is sadly still missing. Considering the negligible difference with Core i7 965 EE (also at 3.2 GHz) this is not a big loss, however.[/citation]

Good catch, fixed!
 

decembermouse

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sstym is right.

However, instead of a mobile GPU evaluation (which I would love) how about a chipset evaluation? As in, we see:

-Pentium Dual Core, with 4500
-Core 2 Duo with 4500
-Celeron with 4500
-Turion II with Radeon 4200
-Sempron(and other single cores) with Radeon 4200

as integrated chipsets. In each of these, ONLY the processor varies (RAM, HDD, Windows config could be done by you guys to equalize these variables). You could run some benchmark programs or games on these, and for each platform use a variety of CPU's... for instance, Turion II M300, M500, M6X0, etc... all have the Radeon 4200, so which CPU should you get; at which point is upgrading the CPU pointless due to the igp? And the same with the Pentium Dual Core with their little 4500's. Does a faster PDC enable better gaming/media with the same igp?

I think integrated video is an entirely different matter than a GTX260M (or other dedicated mobile GPU), as it can be paired with a huge variety of mobile CPU's and chipsets. Systems with actual video cards should probably be evaluated on a system level, because there is so much going on. Although you know, if you really wanted to, there are tools that will evaluate just a GPU. There's a portion of 3DMark, I believe, that measures its capacity, and that of the the CPU separately.

I personally would love to see what's going on in the mobile realm with performance, and not just have to rely on going to Best Buy to see what score Windows 7 gives the components of random laptops, because that is nowhere near exacting enough for me. There are NO articles about how these new platforms perform. Just individual laptops, which all have different crapware on them. Remove the junk, benchark the hardware. It's crazy... we know SO much about how every single desktop CPU, even the ones that your readers probably aren't at all interested in, perform- but nobody bothers to analyze laptop hardware these days. Laptops are becoming more and more popular and some say desktops are dying out. Please, analyze these mobile platforms for us! Nobody else is doing it, and I know you have the capacity. Back in '04 when the Mobility Radeon 9700 hit us, everyone went crazy. We're leagues ahead of that now, and laptops are more popular as well as being used for a much wider variety of tasks, and yet we fail to pay any attention to them.

Try and find any information about the Mobility Radeon 4200, I dare you. You'll find forum posts speculating on what the core actually is, how many sp's it has, how they enabled DX10.1 or if it was there in the 3200 as well but disabled... but no good info. Nothing solid. And NO performance figures. The mobile version is different than the 785G, obviously- they're related, but that's a desktop platform. Like mobile graphics/chipsets, there is no information on the performance of the Athlon 2650e, L110, M500, any of that. Yet these chips are sold all over the place.

You guys are my one of my favorite hardware info and review sites- don't fail us in the mobile realm!

Thanks for all your hard work guys,
Decembermouse
 

bigght

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And ATI is not meeting the supply vs demand because they have a no competition from Nvidia to their HD5000 series
 
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