AMD Vs Intel: 51-CPU megatest
On this page, you’ll find a graph displaying exactly where the value lies in the current CPU market.
How to read the graph (and we work out the ratings)
The graph below charts the benchmark results of all of the CPUs on test, colour-coded by family, against their current street price. The perfect CPU would be found in the bottom right-hand corner, since this would indicate maximum performance for minimum cost.
In reality, of course, prices tend to curve upwards as operating speed increases, particularly at the cutting edge of performance. However, the Core 2 Duo E8000 and AMD Athlon X2 series stand out as good-value processor families, undercutting most of their comparably-powerful competitors.
The graph also reveals which CPUs are worse value: some of Intel’s E4000 chips achieve no better performance than the cheaper Pentium Dual-Core, while the price premium you pay for a Core 2 Extreme processor isn’t remotely justified by the speed boost.
Prices for Intel’s E6000 series are all over the place, bearing little relation to their relative performance.
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| The Uber CPU Price Per Performance Graph. Click to Enlarge |
Next Page: Feature Table CPUs
This article appeared in the August, 2008 issue of PC Authority.
Comments: 5
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
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Jim.Dude
Jul 29, 2008 6:30 PM
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Awesome work guys! This should be stickied somewhere on the forums so that everyone can use it when considering their next upgrade.
Comment made about the PC Authority article:
AMD Vs Intel: 51-CPU megatest?
There may be two main CPU manufacturers, but picking the right processor is anything but simple. We put 51 CPUs through their paces
What do you think? Join the discussion. |
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bbjai
Jul 29, 2008 7:31 PM
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Yep I actually bought my friend a AMD processor based on this review for a quiet and power saving CPU. I think its great work guys and people really should use it! |
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chookstrangler
Aug 1, 2008 8:12 PM
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I posted a link in our forum to this article and I thought one of our members had a good point. "It's the best bang for buck in word processing and other everyday tasks according to their testing methodology. No mention of games though and that's where it really counts. I already know I can buy the cheapest CPU around and its gonna have way more power than I need to do a mail merge in Word." - GuruMag |
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.:Cyb3rGlitch:.
Aug 1, 2008 8:46 PM
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chookstrangler wrote:I posted a link in our forum to this article and I thought one of our members had a good point. "It's the best bang for buck in word processing and other everyday tasks according to their testing methodology. No mention of games though and that's where it really counts. I already know I can buy the cheapest CPU around and its gonna have way more power than I need to do a mail merge in Word." - GuruMag
That's true. However, gaming isn't very CPU intensive on single GPU setups anyway, so it shouldn't cause any bottleneck. |
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Jim.Dude
Aug 2, 2008 1:07 PM
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Yeah I'm inclined to agree with you there mate, it seems a pretty redundant comment from Chooky. I think we're all well aware of the fact now that an E4300 + 4870 will decimate a Q6600 + 7600GT. Also, I don't think the point of the CPU round-up was to figure out which one was the best for gaming, I'm guessing that would have been the point of the GPU round-up. :-P |
