Pickin' a processor

[Matthew Gillen]

Kristian Erik Hermansen wrote:
> On 9/9/07, Tom Metro <blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> While the advice you'll get on this list is useful, there's no
>> substitute for doing some primary research using hardware review sites
>> like Anand's Hardware Tech Page[1], Tom's Hardware Guide[2], and
>> countless others.
> 
> I read Tom's Hardware for years.  I try not to keep up with that stuff
> anymore, because as you stated, it changes too quickly.  Now, when I
> am about to purchase something, I start doing research again. 

I concur that those sites are invaluable, but mostly because the marketing
types from /all/ vendors (CPU, Video cards, etc) have gotten really good at
making it difficult to compare products across vendors (for instance, the
4-digit number in AMD model names has nothing to do with clock-speed, the
aforementioned difficulty of finding out the cache sizes on AMD processors
from their website, etc).

Honestly, at this point I just want to learn a single vendor's
numbering/naming scheme so that I can keep my sanity.  Nvidia's system is
maddening (who would think that a 7800 is a /much/ better card than a
8400?), I can't imagine ATI's system is much better.

Which of course, is just the way the marketing people want it: once you're
in, there's a hurdle to switch to another vendor, because it's difficult to
even figure out what's comparable to what you're currently using.  I've gone
off on a bit of a tangent, but my point was that Tom's HW and it's ilk are
the only way mortals like me can decipher all these crazy systems.  They
also do a nice price/performance analysis that take all the hard work out of
it ;-)

> Tom Metro <blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Per my disclaimer above, I haven't researched CPUs since the Fall of
>> 2006, but at that time, Intel was way ahead.

Well, neither of us really gave the full criteria on which we were basing
our decisions on.  One of my major drivers was a hard upper limit on cost
(<$120), so I wasn't comparing the high-end of either vendor.  And on the
low end, AMD still beats Intel (according to Tom's about 2 months ago; but I
do remember that if price was no object, Intel did come out on top of the
price/performance curve with their near-the-top-of-the-line model).

Matt

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