Processor speed con?

I've always wondered just how important it is to get the latest all-singing processor rather than one a rung or two down.

It's interesting to look at advice on how to upgrade an old computer. The prevailing wisdom is to boost RAM first, then hard disk size. As to swapping the processor - apparently it's not worth the hassle and cost for the small performance increase.

If that's true of a system that's now second-hand, wasn't it true when that same machine was new? Yet people would have paid far more for the fastest machines of the time.

And isn't the logic just as true for today's new machines? Lots more money for the very top flight, but not a huge speed benefit. In fact, isn't the stress on processor speed just a con?

Kevin Overbury

July 22, 2005 in Processors | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How accurate is Sysmark?

The results of your tests show that the AMD Athlon64 was faster in all but one video encoding test
compared to the Intel CPU where it was 20% slower.

During some tests this year, a commerical Windows 32bit application was built using Intel compilers with optimisation enabled. The same application was then built using a Sun compiler and run on the same dual CPU AMD hardware but with no optimisation flags enabled.

In each case the PC had a clean install of 64bit Windows or Solaris installed, and the same test data
was used.

The Sun 32bit compiled code was between 140% - 180% quicker. Thus, in any test comparing AMD and Intel a vendor-neutral compiler is essential. Given that Intel produces faster compilers than Microsoft it is fair to assume that the Sysmark tests are built with the Intel compiler.

Paul Smith

July 8, 2005 in Processors | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Sinclair's double vision?

Hi
Two things:
Firstly, what's all the fuss about multiprocessors?  AMD and Intel are bringing out dual processors. Surprise, surprise! Some years  ago you interviewed Sir Clive Sinclair. He said something along the line of that  the race for faster and faster processors is going down a blind alley. What they  should be doing is going for low cost multiprocessor systems. This was around  five years ago I think, it would be interesting if you could find the  article.

Secondly, in the numerous reviews on multimedia  gadgets I've yet to see a review of the Vivitar DVR-390H. As well as playing  videos, music etc, it also has a detachable 3.1megapixel stills camera and an Mpeg4 video  camera. It's a great bit of kit I bought for my wife and she uses it almost  daily. The only fault with it is that it doesn't have a built in microphone.  Otherwise, well done Vivitar!

Thanks for a great mag. I've still got the first  six mags of PCW! I don't know why I still keep them.

Keep up the good work.

Ed Peers

May 4, 2005 in Processors | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack