Karaoke Forums

Just wondering what processor works best for you guys

Pentium

I've never had a problem with AMD, and prefer to use them, however, I've read some research that shows the Pentium is better for multitasking.

I run AMD and Nvidia for my Video Dj Setups. Home and Office I run what ever, Pentium, AMD, or Celeron I have a few of each. The all work well with 2 gig of ram.

AMD has to be athlon cos the lesser chip has the same prob multitasking as celeron

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"Be who you are and say what you feel... Because those that matter... Don't mind...And those that mind... Don't matter."

When selecting your processor, you have to understand what you want to do with it. Cutting through all the hypes, here are the facts.

There are typically four types of processors, mobile, budget, desktop and server. Since I assume you are using this for Karoake purposed, you probably won't need mobile or server so I will focus on the middle two.

The main difference between the budget processor, such as Celeron or Sempron processors and the desktop processors are very small. Matter of fact, often the silicon underneath is exactly the same. Matter of fact, the desktop processor with different clock speeds share the same silicon as well. They make the budget processors by limiting the amount of cache, backside clockspeed (to access memory) and the number of pipes (how many parallel processing it can do) when they package it. As for the clock speed, they test it at a highest advertised frequency, if it passes, it gets that clock speed. If it fails, it gets tested at lower speed, etc. until they are sorted out. It's much cheaper to produce one type of silicon wafer than different type/speed etc. They just sort them out at the packaging level.

That's why often you find people overclock their processors and it's a hit and miss depends on which one you get.

If you are doing light work and don't require a lot of horse power, there is no reason to pay extra for the desktop processor, just stick with Celeron or Sempron. What you have to understand is what your needs are. Depending on your needs, by purchasing more memory rather than faster processor, you can find similar performance. Only reason to buy higher end processor is if you have very math intensive processing. Often times, what you need is application intensive action, which more memory helps more than processor.

As for the desktop processors if you absolutely have to find the best performing processor, look for a couple of things, not necessarily the pure clock speed. First, look at the cache size. Often it's larger the better. Also, look for the backside clock speed. This is the speed in which to access the memory. You are better off getting a processor running at 2Ghz with backside speed of 800Mhz than 2.5Ghz with backside of 667Mhz. This is also very true for those new dual core processors since they use the backside connection to communicate with each other.

Finally, for AMD versus Intel. My preference is AMD for several reasons. First, they are cheaper for similar performance. Secondly, they were the pioneers of 64 bit processor with IA-32 compatibility and they do it better and faster. Matter of fact, , since Intel was late to catch on with IA-32 emluation on 64-bit processor, they licensed the technology from AMD to rush out their product. Don't believe the hype about Intel's hyperthreading technology. AMD has multi thread technology, just done differently. There are some applications that takes advantage of the Intel's hyperthread, and it does help in performance if you do that. However, most of the applications are generic and doesn't care which multi threading technology it uses, the final result is the only thing that matters. My recommendation is to buy AMD 64 bit desktop processor for just a bit more than celeron and get a performance boost and stay within budget.

I hope this helps.

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Seize the day and SING!!!

I agree, dog!!

GO EBAN, Go Eban... it's yer birthday!

I've always been an AMD fan myself and have owned a number of their processors, even though my current desktop has a Pentium 4 2.8ghz. However I'm currently typing this on my AMD x64 3200 notebook. For awhile I even owned AMD stock, but sold it some months ago when it finally shot up to a great sell price.

There are many choices and reasons to buy cpus. The best option is to be informed on performance, characteristics, and price. Benchmarks are the best and really only way to compare performance since Intel vs AMD processors do different amounts of work per clock cycle based upon their different architectures. There are many online sources for benchmarks one pretty good one is Tom's Hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/index.html . Other thing you need to be able to compare is price. Best I know of is Pricewatch http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/.

For the longest time Intel has dominated the performance arena with AMD always threatening. Usually AMD has offered a better price for performance however. About a year or two ago AMD came out with 64 bit chips and then dual core technology while still supporting the x32 instruction set. These chips eventually became faster than Intel. Intel was trying to force everyone to their more proprietary format which would require changes to OS to run. Basically everyone backed AMD for once. This pushed Intel hard and for some time they have been losing market share from AMD particularly in the coveted server market because AMD's chips ran with lower wattage and less heat per performance level.

Recently this has changed with Intel's introduction of Core 2 Duo technology. For now Intel has a solid lead in performance, but as far as I can tell it appears that AMD still offers a much better price.

Both AMD and Intel have made some solid performing chips for some time. To choose which you wish to get first determine what you need it for and how much you are willing to spend. Then based on that check out some benchmarks, and price comparisons. If you do this you will feel like the smart shopper.

Also Eben mentioned hyperthreading. Yes, it is supposed to help performance on applications which are written to support it. I believe this is the same coding as is required for multi-processor capability. I think Adobe Premier may be one of them with video encoding to take advantage of it. I used to think hyperthreading was a great thing until I ran benchmarks and compared the performance of my system (which I built) to others existing out there, and was shocked to see that my processor performance was about half. I messed around with it for awhile scratching my head and eventually thought to turn off hyperthreading in system bios. When I did my cpu performance score shot up and surpassed all the other computers in the performance database - which I felt was right because it was a pretty custom system.

So, for applications and uses where you need hyperthreading and it is written to support it then use hyperthreading; otherwise you should most likely turn it off. Basically what hyperthreading does is it emulates dual processing capability by using un-utilized processing capability per clock cycle.

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The Truth Is Out There

I agree on AMD....I just built an AMD 64 3400 music machine where I had my choice of hardware...I chose AMD.

Eben is most correct!

Hey, if you go with AMD, just make sure to cool it properly, ok?

I bought a HP 8309  17" widescreen, AMD Turion 64 ML-34, 1gig ram, 80gig HD
pretty nice machine! I like it!

hope i dont sound like an idiot  :confused: but whats the best  way to cool it?

I choose intel as amd runs too hot for my liking. Especially if you are running a small footprint case that doesn't opffer a lot of ropom for air circulation.  I built a computer for my friend that used a smaller case and the only way I could keep it from overheating and shutting down on him was to go intel.

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