Explanation for a simple person: Processor Comparison

[Stargazer]

Hi,

I used to know a little bit about this stuff. And then I ran out of money and stopped trying to keep up because all I did was depress myself by looking at all the nice hardware I couldn't afford.

However, I'm in need of advice on processors. I've looked at a website that seems to rank the processors in a massive list, but what I'm really after is a good paragraph of two with an easy to understand analogy that will really help me figure all this out.

I have a PC with an AMD Athlon 3400+ processor. It runs at roughly 2600mhz. It is part of a PC that is becoming more and more woefully obsolete with each tick of the clock.

I have picked up a machine that had problems but still has good mainboard and processor in it. It has an Intel Dual Core E2160. This runs at 1800mhz.

Now I get that the more cores you have, the more a processor can take on before it falls over. But would I be cutting my gaming performance by runing a processor with a noticably lower mhz value? Does the second core make that much of a difference and if so how?

Should I just stick with what I've got or shall I migrate the new hardware in to my current rig?

Thanks in advance,

Rob.

[RJK]

I'm sure someone with more knowledge than I will come along shortly, but the dual core processors mean you have two 1800 MHz processors handling data at 1800 MHz rather than 1 at 2600. The other limiting factor on performance is RAM. Less than 2 gigs of RAM will noticeably slow your computer.

[monkey see monkey do]

It depends. Newer games benefit much more from a dual core CPU than opposed to older games. So older games might take a hit from the lower frequency. Dual core is only as good as how well the software is programmed. If software is only programmed to use one core (older software) it's not going to benefit from having a second core. Some old games might even be unplayable with a dual core. Having said that, frequency isn't everything. There's the architecture of the CPU, cache size, die size. All of which the E2160 excels in compared to the Athlon 3400+. Don't forget that the E2160 is based on Core 2 Duo design which beat the living snot out of AMD's dual cores at the time it came out! I'm positive you'll see a performance jump rather than a hit. Plus there's the option of overclocking. I'd go with E2160 in a heart beat.

[Lhun]

Now I get that the more cores you have, the more a processor can take on before it falls over.No.
But would I be cutting my gaming performance by runing a processor with a noticably lower mhz value?Yes.Does the second core make that much of a difference and if so how?Maybe.

Having multiple cores means that essentially you have several processors which can divide up the workload between them. If a program is not designed to take advantage of that, it will only use one core being about as fast as on a single core of that speed. (A little faster, since other processes run in the background, like the OS, will be taken care of by the other cores)
If a program is designed to utilize multiple cores it will (obviously) run faster than on a single processor with the same rating. But even if optimized for multiple cores, there's a limit to how many parallel processors make sense for a given task. Also, processor speed doesn't tell you everything, as shown by the fact that AMD chips run at much lower speeds than intel chips (or used to in single-core days) but have similar effective performance.
Newer games can generally use multiple cores, but then, CPU speed is rarely the limiting factor. The most likely bottleneck for game performance is the GPU.
Should I just stick with what I've got or shall I migrate the new hardware in to my current rig?I'd say stick with the AMD. Any game old enough to run on a E2160 probably won't have decent multi-core support.

[kuwisdelu]

1. As Lhun said, MHz don't mean much anymore when comparing processors these days, unless you're talking about processors in the same family. Here (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+Dual+E2160+%40+1. 80GHz)'s where your Intel E2160 falls in benchmarks. The Athlon 3400+ is halfway down the page below it. The Intel CPU will be faster.

2. Again, as Lhun described, whether you will benefit from multiple cores will depend very much on what kind of applications you're running and how they were programmed. If the programmer hasn't split the program up into multiple threads, you'll just see a big process going in one core, and nothing much happening in the other. Newer programs will generally take advantage of multiple cores if they were programmed intelligently. However, assuming a modern OS, you can still get benefits if you're running multiple programs — if you're gaming and browsing at the same time, different threads can take care of these different activities and can be distributed among the cores, keeping both snappy.

3. If the game already runs fine now, you probably won't see much of an improvement. The GPU handles most of the heavy lifting for the graphics in games. The CPU will get more complicated calculations, but the GPU will make the bigger difference.

In short, no, you shouldn't suffer a hit. It's a much better CPU, but you may not see too much of an improvement unless you go for more CPU-heavy tasks, although that, too, depends on the kinds of games you're playing. All that said, I'm not at all familiar with these two particular CPU's.

[Lhun]

I suggest looking up benchmarks on Tom's Hardware. The result of a CPU benchmark program alone are next to worthless in judging what performance a specific processor will give, since different task will require different features. Tom's Hardware benchmarks with scores ranging from timed file compression to actual game FPS.
Though you'll have to dig through the archives, the E2160 hasn't probably been in any comparisons for the last three or four years.

[Dave.C.Robinson]

The big advantage of dual cores is overall system smoothness. Shifting between applications is often quicker and you can run more things in the background without losing as much overall performance.

I wouldn't worry so much about processor speed in MHz. The Intel Core series do much more with each clock tick than earlier processors so they don't need the same speed.

[Stargazer]

Thanks for all the input.

I must admit, I'm kind of in two minds about making the switch, perhaps more than I was before.

If I'm reading all of the above right, I'll be much better off for general stuff and I'll shave about 90secs off my boot-up time, but games won't necessarily improve which is about 80% of my PC up-time.

Just to put some perspective on my current rig, I can run Call of Duty 2 beautifully on the high setting so long as I don;t have shadows switched on. Call of Duty 4 runs mostly okay most of the time but is on the absolute lowest possible quality settings.

Dead Space runs but has been compromised heavily. IL2 1946 and rFactor run rather nicely at high quality settings although rFactor suffers terribly when driving under lights or on large grids.

I guess I'm after the chance to see some of these run at maximum settings without any slow-down. Also, I'd like to start checking out some newer titles than the ones I'm currently on.

I guess I'm looking at a completely new machine then. I'll have to do extra housework and keep my wife happy so maybe she'll let me have some of my bonus, if/when it gets paid to me.

Many thanks,

Rob.

[Dave.C.Robinson]

Yeah, games are where it gets tricky.

Many are single threaded and respond better to a faster processor than to more cores, though this is changing. The other issue is that many games are video card bound - so you may need a better video card (but that may not work to full effect without a faster processor).

Good luck with the bonus.

[Lhun]

Just to put some perspective on my current rig, I can run Call of Duty 2 beautifully on the high setting so long as I don;t have shadows switched on. Call of Duty 4 runs mostly okay most of the time but is on the absolute lowest possible quality settings.If changes in the graphics settings change the performance of game, it's the GPU not the CPU that's the bottleneck. Evidence of a slow CPU is if the game slows down when lots of objects are active (pathfinding for example is huge load on the CPU), though it only shows that it might be the CPU. Could be the GPU as well.