Overview

11/6/2011. At the time of this writing, the Intel Atom 64-bit and i7-2700K was just announced, with addressing that rivals the Xeon (the Xeon can address 192GB RAM). the AMD Bulldozwer just came out, with multitasking performance that beats any of the intel processors.

the Atom proc is an embedded processor, and has historically been much slower than laptop or desktop processors, so I am not sure what teh new procs are like. will be interesting to see what machines come out... very little software is available for the Atom because open source compilers are not generally/easily available.

Intel Sandy Bridge (i7-2000-series), Xeon, Opteron, 64-bit Atom, or AMD Bulldozer (FX series)?

these are 2nd generation processors.

AMD Bulldozer (FX series) consistently got lower ratings in most benchmarks compared to sandy bridge (intel 2000 series). only in a couple of benchmarks did it get higher ratings.

We will see what Intel does with Ivy Bridge, but it appears so far that intel is way behind AMD on this. until they can get their thread scheduling correct, it won't make a difference. the video I saw demoing their proc doesn't beat bulldozer.

read on for discussion of worksations at the end, where the xeon is used.

The bulldozer and i7-2700k and xeon-e7 can address 32GB of RAM, which is 8GB more than i7 and 160GB less than previous xeons.

upcoming Intel Ivy Bridge processor to support 4K 4096x4096 "retina" displays (monitors may cost "2 kidneys")

there was an i7-990x and bulldozer czech benchmark recently done which I don't recommend due to the wholesale graphic nature of the test. for one thing it's not comparable, since the i7-990x has no gpu. it didn't really test the cpu, it tested the graphic cards. the passmark benchmark shows bulldozer below the i7-2600k and the 990x way on top. the 990 series is old hat now, since the i7-2700K has come out and topped the benchmark charts at 3.5GHz (3.9GHz turbo and of course I am going to use turbo!).

SO... Intel or AMD? the answer is, it really depends on what you are trying to do with the processor. each processor series has its own feature set, with strengths and possibly some weaknesses. I am banking on Intel...

there is now a xeon MP for multi-processor that has 1MB cache that isn't limited to 8 procs.

Multitasking

MULTITASKING: when it comes to multitasking (which I do a lot of as an engineer!) bulldozer beats the top processor in the charts, the intel i7-990x, when it comes to multitasking. the bulldozer did not stop its processing in the middle of tasks while switching to other tasks. at least in the AMD demo video... (I wonder how they set up that demo? were there tricks or some sort of optimal environment for the AMD?). this is because the bulldozer has a better thread scheduler (VERY SMOOTH, no jumpy video or CAD, can run several at once with no slowdown, 4-8 cores according to the AMD video). the 990X probably beats with raw speed (no overclocking). Bulldozer is an overclocker's dream. recently got the world's record at 8.43GHz (albeit missing a few cores) using liquid helium.

The xeons have now come out with E7 & E3 lines with a 160GB reduced ability to address RAM (32GB total). sad state of affairs if you are trying to do photoshop or video or anything serious! workstations have taken a dive. guess if I want a real workstation I will have to look at the opteron.

The opterons .

apps list

get a GOOD laptop cooler. I was thinking of one with a 200mm fan.

• gaming: all the power you can get. get a desktop. you will get better performance.
• email: anything will do.
• browsing: anything will do. unless you are using IE, then get whatever is fastest. if you are using IE, switch now. it is not standards-compliant. the only thing it is good for is
  • anything with an activex control, like remote desktop sessions for tech support and other pc fixing
  • stubborn pages from microsoft
  • plain web pages
  • "IE makes me cry" - web designer
  if you are using IE6, upgrade now to something else if possible such as fierfox 7.0.1 or whatever is most recent (8 is coming), or opera (better HTML5 forms controls), or whatever browser makes you happy.
• play songs: anything will do. I am unable to characterize playing songs at this point, I don't know what algorithms it uses or whether it uses multithreading.
• encoding songs: all the speed you can get for very short periods. get an i7-2600 series. sony makes a really fast laptop. typically not multithreaded, at least not at this point. not yet that I know of.
• play video. bulldozer processor. chances are you are going to be multitasking, and unless you want jumpy video, go with a bulldozer processor. not sure if this is multithreaded or not. may depend upon the player. nobody reveals whether their player is multithreaded or not, but it would be nice to know. they figure you aren't interested.
• video rendering/encoding: get a desktop. all the power you can get for long periods. get an i7-2600 series. sony makes a really fast laptop.
• CAD: get a desktop. all the power you can get. amd bulldozer processor would do best if you need the multitasking and smooth animation. not sure here what you are looking for most. the i7-990x desktop proc has more speed, but the xeon has more memory.
• office presentation: I have office 2010 with a pentium 4, and this works just great with playing powerpoints. video is awful though - don't do it on powerpoint, it mangles it and makes it look like colored garbage.

laptop, desktop, or workstation?

• laptop processors are made for power savings and so shut off cores that are unused and try to scale anything down that it can to save power, and you MIGHT be able to switch that off and heat up your laptop and get max performance, at the cost of maybe causing a thermal shutdown.
  • office
  • play audio
  • play video
  • webcam
  • office
  • web browse
  • email
• desktops handle about twice or more the memory, and are faster by multiple times.
  • office
  • CAD
  • Ray Tracing like POV-RAY and AutoDesk 3DS Max (for the speed and cores mostly)
  • web browse
  • email
  • Adobe Creative Suite (CS) products like Premiere Pro, Photoshop, InDesign, Fireworks, Master Collection MAYBE if you max out the RAM and get an i7-2600k or bulldozer (bulldozer is better because you can get 8 cores now, 16 cores later)
• workstations (sometimes what the desktop motherboard market labels xeon-capable mobos as "supercomputer" which it's FAR from, however, you can put supercomputing cards and workstation video cards into them) are currently not as fast as desktops, but they can address FAR more memory (not the full 64-bit limit unfortunately). These are AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon processors. these machines are typically used for:
  • Adobe Creative Suite (CS) products (just firing them up takes time) like Premiere Pro (typically need RAID and large storage, fast proc for rendering and conversion), Photoshop
    • gigapixel panoramas chew up RAM
    • multiple big layers chew up RAM
    • content-aware fill chews up RAM
    , InDesign (dog-slow on print), Master Collection
  • office
  • CAD/CAM, AutoDesk software
  • Ray Tracing like POV-RAY and AutoDesk 3DS Max (for the speed and cores mostly)
  • web browse (because you have to)
  • email (because you have to)
  • engineering
  • simulations
  • scientific applications

benchmarks

proc comparison videos