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From: Paul on 28 Oct 2009 17:40
jpsga wrote:
> "Syfo-Dyas" <Syfo-Dyas(a)nomail.com> wrote in message
> news:ujdee5lgr1kn98o92qst2hc8dusprs9adt(a)4ax.com...
>> Hi,
>>
>> A friend of mine has an intel cpu 8400 and I would like to know what
>> is the closest AMD equivalent to that processor. Another friend wants
>> the same or similar power and speed but hates intel. So he only wants
>> or prefers AMD. Do any of you experts on here know of the AMD
>> equivalent in power and speed of an intel 8400 3.0Ghz processor???
>>
>> Thanks in Advance
>
> How about the new Athlon II 250. Same speed � the price.
>
> JPS
>
>

From hwbot.org

E8400 SuperPI 32M @ stock 3GHz speed. 15min 59sec 130ms

http://www.x-cade.com/uploads/Supes/Superman/AllBenchmarks/E8400/SPI_32m/STOCK_15m_50_125s.jpeg

To match that result, a Athlon II X2 250 has to overclock to 4.38GHz,
from its stock 3.0GHz. At 4.38GHz, the benchmark takes 16min 23sec 560ms.
That is the closest result I can find for the X2 250.

http://hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=897932

So 68% of the speed, half the price, on single threaded.

A better buy, might be the AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition.
If you enable the two hidden cores, and the processor tests OK
on all cores, then your multithreaded performance should be
higher than the E8400, and you've only paid $100. But the
single threaded, would still require a significant overclock.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16819103680

Paul
From: geoff on 28 Oct 2009 22:21
> A lot of software is single threaded, and doesn't
> use multiple cores.

I'm actually not sure how one would designate which core does what at the
programming language level. If I start a program up on xp, that creates a
process, 'myProgram.exe'. Within that process, at the programming language
level, I can create multiple threads and have them execute blocks of code,
then the thread terminates.

Your saying that windows does not have the ability to load balance
programs/threads and/or multiple programs/threads over several cores?

--g


From: Paul on 29 Oct 2009 00:15
geoff wrote:
>> A lot of software is single threaded, and doesn't
>> use multiple cores.
>
> I'm actually not sure how one would designate which core does what at the
> programming language level. If I start a program up on xp, that creates a
> process, 'myProgram.exe'. Within that process, at the programming language
> level, I can create multiple threads and have them execute blocks of code,
> then the thread terminates.
>
> Your saying that windows does not have the ability to load balance
> programs/threads and/or multiple programs/threads over several cores?
>
> --g
>

It does have the ability to load balance. The question is, whether
a typical application does that or not. If you're running MS Word,
and are attempting to scroll as quickly as possible, to the end
of the document, how many threads would that use ? It is my personal
belief, that high performance programming is not a priority for
most programmers. (I know, because I worked with some. I actually
had to teach some of them, what a profiler was!) All they aim for,
is accurately implementing a function, and the rest of it is noise.

Game design, on the other hand, can benefit from careful
optimization. How many gaming houses, will get the same
level of support as Microsoft did, when it asked Intel
for help with FSX ? The answer, is not many.

That is why I discount quads, as the "cure for cancer".
Sure, they're faster on a small range of applications.
If I know I'm going to be shrinking DVDs, creating output
from a video application, or other multimedia type applications,
I expect to see some parallelism there. But not for that pile
of legacy software you don't plan on changing any time soon.

Another part of the problem, is actually viewing what is
going on, with your OS. The Task Manager display is not
a very good way to visualize what the OS is doing. There needs
to be a way where a record can be kept of what was scheduled
during each time slice, so that a person could review exactly
how much parallelism is going on. Since the scheduler in WinXP
bounces stuff around willy-nilly, the separate plots per core
are rather meaningless. That is why I can't take what I see
there, at face value. When you see 75% in one graph, and
25% in the other, it could be one process running at 100%, and
being bounced from core to core.

I rely on SuperPI (a single threaded benchmark), so I can honestly
say "the worst you're going to see, is this ratio of performance".
The multiple cores *may* offer some benefits, but without knowing
what applications are being used, you can't offer anyone a guess
as to how much benefit their multiple cores will be. Have you
ever tried to get information from software sites, as to whether
their programs exhibit parallelism ? I've yet to find a software
house, that will help you out in terms of an optimal hardware
configuration. And it is why I can't say to a person, "go to the
Adobe site, and they'll help you determine whether a dual or a
quad core is the right answer". The information simply doesn't
exist. The best we can do, is rely on users and their experiments,
to tell us how the software works.

Paul
From: geoff on 29 Oct 2009 04:05
> It does have the ability to load balance. The question is, whether
> a typical application does that or not.

I would expect the load balancing to be done at the OS level and the
application unaware of which core is handling a particular thread.


> If you're running MS Word,
> and are attempting to scroll as quickly as possible, to the end
> of the document, how many threads would that use ?

I ran a test one time (for a different issue), using Delphi Pascal, where I
put a web browser control on a window and ran it. I loaded yahoo.com and
their log window showed the main process and multiple threads
running/created/destroyed as the page loaded.

My expectation would be at the OS level, if those threads caused the CPU
utilization of a core to reach a certain threshold then the next core would
be used to help out.

Your other point, I agree with. Writing software for multiple cores will
always be faster than letting the OS load balance. Especially if the
programming language has some kind of construct like:

parallel begin
execute block1
execute block2
etc.
parallel end

.. . . but that principle has always been true just like a skilled assembly
programmer will always write more efficient code then the code generated by
a compiler. So, a CPU test, using a game, would skew the results because of
its more efficient use of cores. However, IMHO, software not specfically
written for multi-cores but is multi-threaded, as is a lot of software,
would still get a benefit from multiple cores (and not a slight or minor
one).

--g


From: Syfo-Dyas on 29 Oct 2009 13:32
On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:04:13 -0700, Steve <ivalid(a)invalid.com> wrote:

>In article <ujdee5lgr1kn98o92qst2hc8dusprs9adt(a)4ax.com>, Syfo-
>Dyas(a)nomail.com says...
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> A friend of mine has an intel cpu 8400 and I would like to know what
>> is the closest AMD equivalent to that processor. Another friend wants
>> the same or similar power and speed but hates intel. So he only wants
>> or prefers AMD. Do any of you experts on here know of the AMD
>> equivalent in power and speed of an intel 8400 3.0Ghz processor???
>>
>> Thanks in Advance
>
>Does it have to be dual core?

Yes!

>Do you want the equivant in price, gigahertz or processing power?

As I said in the post it has to have the same processign power...
It simply has to be as close as possible to the 8400.
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