Discussion CPU Core Count VS Frequency?

[jnjnilson6]

If you could get a 1.4 GHz CPU with 24 cores, a 2.8 GHz one harboring 12 cores or a 5.6 GHz one with 6 cores which would be your ultimate choice?

I personally would go for cores over cycles. The impalpable beauty of more cores resonates thoroughly through lesser heat dissipation and curbed power requirements. It depends, of course, on the way the software employed within the system is written. A program may be written to support two cores; and a program may be written to support an indefinite number of them.

I still do think that having more cores would be better in terms of the future. Maybe there would be doubt evoked within the sphere of gaming currently; yet let's not forget that 'an arm's reach away' is propped up the everlasting shadow of the past with Pentium Ms running at 1.4 or 1.6 GHz, about 20 years in the past; and drastically increasing the number of cores would bring about a mellow consummation, shamelessly futuristic and highly evocative - an exultation synonymous to reading science fiction or thinking about the future longingly in the beginning of the 2000s. Yet unrealized dreams and pragmatical prisms lingering in many a mind go alongside the increase in cores which proves doubtlessly the birth of the future; the Pentium 4s being unable to hit more than 3.8 GHz and architectures shifting their searchlight to more pragmatical shades; the identicalness of multiple cores becoming unidentical with the latest generations today harboring different types of cores on the same chip.

What would you choose? Cores or frequency?

Write up and

Thank you! Every answer is greatly appreciated.

 

[rgd1101]

depend on what you are doing

 

[kanewolf]

depend on what you are doing

Exactly.
Running a hosting service for websites -- Max cores
Gaming -- Max clock speed
Web browsing at home -- Lowest heat/noise

There is no single answer.

 

[USAFRet]

Freq has been stable for 20+ years.

A current i7-1300k:
Base freq - 3.4GHz, Turbo - 5.4GHz

Pentium IV, from 20+ years ago:
3.4GHz - 3.8GHz


Cores and IPC rule.

 

[TerryLaze]

Same answers as last time you asked this......

Discussion - Cores VS Frequency

If you had to swiftly decide between running a system with more cores at lighter frequency or a system at higher frequency harboring less cores what would your decision be? Example: 12 cores @ 2 GHz 6 cores @ 4 GHz I would ascertain in the affirmative my inclination toward the Processor...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[rgd1101]

Same answers as last time you asked this......

Discussion - Cores VS Frequency

If you had to swiftly decide between running a system with more cores at lighter frequency or a system at higher frequency harboring less cores what would your decision be? Example: 12 cores @ 2 GHz 6 cores @ 4 GHz I would ascertain in the affirmative my inclination toward the Processor...

forums.tomshardware.com

nice. and I have the same response.

 

[jnjnilson6]

nice. and I have the same response.

Well, being like the romantic poets in dissolving and heartbreaking nuances upon benignant words in fathomless novels and stories, the passion for repetition is like the beauty of forgotten words re-enlivened; it is again of a newer nuance, vital and unraveling, despite expressing the same thing. Going over something again is like a beginning. And all true knowledge always spurts from the beginning.

 

[Order 66]

Same answers as last time you asked this......

Discussion - Cores VS Frequency

If you had to swiftly decide between running a system with more cores at lighter frequency or a system at higher frequency harboring less cores what would your decision be? Example: 12 cores @ 2 GHz 6 cores @ 4 GHz I would ascertain in the affirmative my inclination toward the Processor...

forums.tomshardware.com

true, but this gives me a chance to reply with my opinion. I would definitely take the 5.6 GHz 6 core, because I am a gamer. Is this referring to base or boost clock?

 

[jnjnilson6]

true, but this gives me a chance to reply with my opinion. I would definitely take the 5.6 GHz 6 core, because I am a gamer. Is this referring to base or boost clock?

Well, it is purely fictitious, of course, keeping in mind such CPUs hardly exist; there's always Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading changing the numbers and performance here and there. But let's imagine the clocks were base clocks and the chips had no option for boost clocks. Like in the Pentium III days. There was one clock which did not alter.

Yes, the 5.6 GHz option is quite tempting; the numbers bring about the same breathless exhilaration the Pentium 4s brought along with their high clocks at a time shortly past which the 1 and 2 GHz barriers were broken. It is that triumphant gaudiness in numbers which brought Intel a lot of sales in those days; it was like a hypnosis on the mind; people believed in those numbers.

 

[Order 66]

Well, it is purely fictitious, of course, keeping in mind such CPUs hardly exist; there's always Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading changing the numbers and performance here and there. But let's imagine the clocks were base clocks and the chips had no option for boost clocks. Like in the Pentium III days. There was one clock which did not alter.

Yes, the 5.6 GHz option is quite tempting; the numbers bring about the same breathless exhilaration the Pentium 4s brought along with their high clocks at a time shortly past which the 1 and 2 GHz barriers were broken. It is that triumphant gaudiness in numbers which brought Intel a lot of sales in those days; it was like a hypnosis on the mind; people believed in those numbers.

That is exactly why I chose the 7700x because I wanted those high base clocks for gaming. Not to mention it is relatively easy to cool. I can't imagine how hard this nearly 6GHz 6-core chip would be to cool. The other reason was because I wanted to try something new, since before that I had only ever used intel systems.

 

[jnjnilson6]

That is exactly why I chose the 7700x because I wanted those high base clocks for gaming. Not to mention it is relatively easy to cool. I can't imagine how hard this nearly 6GHz 6-core chip would be to cool. The other reason was because I wanted to try something new, since before that I had only ever used intel systems.

AMD have made a great return in the CPU sector. I haven't owned an AMD since the AMD M300 and E-450 days... I've had a friend who had had, a long time ago, an AMD 1090T (or 1100T) which had 6 cores. His PC was from 2010. And well, that thing did not skip a frame in gaming and seemed to be very good. Another point was my friend got overcharged and paid around 3200 dollars for a machine with that processor, 4 GB RAM and an HD 5850.

Now, about the processor, it did seem very powerful and well-suited for action. So I am sure that your CPU would present a very high entertainment experience and would quash those heavy tasks swiftly underneath its heel. It is probably within that measure of 'fast' in which there's nothing really, in the gaming world, that could find it 'unprepared for battle.'

 

[pf100]

I'd want a single core 10ghz cpu.

 

[Order 66]

I'd want a single core 10ghz cpu.

Good luck cooling it.

 

[Order 66]

Well, it is purely fictitious, of course, keeping in mind such CPUs hardly exist; there's always Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading changing the numbers and performance here and there. But let's imagine the clocks were base clocks and the chips had no option for boost clocks. Like in the Pentium III days. There was one clock which did not alter.

Yes, the 5.6 GHz option is quite tempting; the numbers bring about the same breathless exhilaration the Pentium 4s brought along with their high clocks at a time shortly past which the 1 and 2 GHz barriers were broken. It is that triumphant gaudiness in numbers which brought Intel a lot of sales in those days; it was like a hypnosis on the mind; people believed in those numbers.

I would love to overclock that 1.4GHz 24 core to 5GHz and see what kind of benchmark scores I get. You did say that they wouldn't have turbo boost, but you never said anything about overclocking.

 

[geofelt]

As above, it depends on intended use.
Clock means nothing.
What counts is how much work a cpu can do per clock.
Modern processors do more per clock.

The value of core count depends on how many cores can be usefully used at the same time.
Multi core apps will still need a master thread to dispatch and control the workload.
That brings back the need for a strong single thread performance.
The theoretical underpinnings are postulated in "amdahl's law"

Amdahl's law - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And... cooling a single core is not so hard; it is when a large number of cores are fully active that heat builds up.

 

[jnjnilson6]

I would love to overclock that 1.4GHz 24 core to 5GHz and see what kind of benchmark scores I get. You did say that they wouldn't have turbo boost, but you never said anything about overclocking.

Yeah, that would be quite cool to presume. I remember ordering the Corsair H110 water cooling to overclock my i7-3770K to 5 GHz back in the day; it was quite some work in the BIOS and a lot of hopefulness that the cooling and the CPU would stick it out. Ends up ... well, I did make it to 5 GHz, exactly.

At that speed the i7-3770K beat the i7-3930K (6 cores / 12 threads) at stock by a very small margin on Cinebench.

My first CPU - a Celeron 1.3 GHz, I was able to overclock up to 1.5 GHz many years since I'd acquired it. It was a Tualatin. Was a great little unit.

Well, back in 2001 that machine (the Celeron machine) had about 256 MB RAM... A lot at the time, but shortly to become below all minimums. As shortly as 4 years later people had about 1 GB RAM on machines suited for regular work; to admit a point, maybe some retained 512 MB as a minimum. 256 MB was out of the question. It's like, for example, having 24 GB RAM in 2023 and 4 years later, in 2027 - needing 96 GB for gaming and web browsing and everything... A time of tremendous change it was.

So - I would also find it cool to see a CPU clocked at 1.4 GHz default making it to 5 GHz. There was a really cool old video ->

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0jQZxH7NgM

 

[Wuwu]

I would rather have the right balance of GHZ vs Cores and power envelope. 5800x3D is perfect for what I need.

 

[JeffreyP55]

If you could get a 1.4 GHz CPU with 24 cores, a 2.8 GHz one harboring 12 cores or a 5.6 GHz one with 6 cores which would be your ultimate choice?

I personally would go for cores over cycles. The impalpable beauty of more cores resonates thoroughly through lesser heat dissipation and curbed power requirements. It depends, of course, on the way the software employed within the system is written. A program may be written to support two cores; and a program may be written to support an indefinite number of them.

I still do think that having more cores would be better in terms of the future. Maybe there would be doubt evoked within the sphere of gaming currently; yet let's not forget that 'an arm's reach away' is propped up the everlasting shadow of the past with Pentium Ms running at 1.4 or 1.6 GHz, about 20 years in the past; and drastically increasing the number of cores would bring about a mellow consummation, shamelessly futuristic and highly evocative - an exultation synonymous to reading science fiction or thinking about the future longingly in the beginning of the 2000s. Yet unrealized dreams and pragmatical prisms lingering in many a mind go alongside the increase in cores which proves doubtlessly the birth of the future; the Pentium 4s being unable to hit more than 3.8 GHz and architectures shifting their searchlight to more pragmatical shades; the identicalness of multiple cores becoming unidentical with the latest generations today harboring different types of cores on the same chip.

What would you choose? Cores or frequency?

Write up and

Thank you! Every answer is greatly appreciated.

Newer CPU's like AMD if setup correctly will adjust frequency on demand. The 1st gig speed CPU was the AMD Athlon. Also a nice space heater.. 8088 XT PC started at 4 megahertz. Cold as a cucumber.. Having fun Friday!

 

[gamerk316]

Is the question is "Halve the cores but double the clock", assuming static clocking and no temperature considerations, then you ALWAYS take the fewer cores/higher clock due to imperfect software scaling.

Remember: An infinitely fast single-core machine will always win out over more cores.

 

[TerryLaze]

Remember: An infinitely fast single-core machine will always win out over more cores.

Well, not always, but as far as a normal user is concerned, pretty much almost.

Even if one core could do anything in a single cycle it would have to do things one at a time adding up cycles to the bottom-line time, more cores, as many as there are thing to do, would do it in one single cycle.