If you pick only one and test only that then you lose the big picture.Ī concrete example: zen2 cpus were faster in multithreading than intel comet lake, but comet lake was better in gaming. If you plan to do productivity work only, don't pick the cpu based on gaming performance.ĭifferent architectures behave differently in different scenarios. If you plan to use your cpu only for gaming, don't buy your cpu based on blender/cinebench/linpaq benchmark results. The idea is you need to watch benchmarks for your workload. Other cpus may perform really well in cache dependent benchmarks. Some cpu excel in multithreaded workloads, some in singlethreaded. Some cpus may win in syntetic benchmarks and lose in real world workloads. CPU A could beat CPU B in the linear algebra benchmark and lose to it in gaming or the other way around. The second architecture executes 10000 instructions in a single clock cycle so obviously the second one gets 100x more work done per clock and is better. The first architecture executes 100 instructions during a clock cycle. If you look just at clock speeds, you would pick the first one because 100ghz go brrrrr right? Wrong. Assume 2 different architectures, one that can execute exactly 1 instruction per clock, with a clock of 100ghz and another one that executes 10000 instructions per clock with a clock of 1ghz(kinda extreme example, just to make a point). The issue appears when other parameters are wildly different. Obviously keeping everything else the same, a cpu with faster clock is faster. Clock speeds are easy to understand for everyone, "bigger is better, easy" so people just focus on what they can easily understand.Īlso, in the same family of processors(same architecture, like 10th gen, 12th gen) clock speeds are useful. It is hard for marketing to explain things like these to non technical users(things which can't be directly compared by looking at 2 numbers). All these and more matter when comparing cpus. The 2-core machine was still faster, but only by a factor of 1.3X, not 5X !īut, tbh, they also mentiom stuff like core architecture redesign, ipc increases, cache, core counts, etc. Feel like I way underestimated how slow these older CPUs are.īut the good news is when using all 8 cores, the older Dell compared favorably with the 2 core cascade lake system. But I was still shocked by the difference. I realize there are a lot of other variables that affect chip performance. This was surprising since the clock speed is 70% as fast as the cascade lake. On sequential benchmarks, the XEON was around 5X slower than the cascade lake. I ran some cpu intensive parallel benchmarks to compare performance to a 2-core machine with 3.8 Ghz Cascade lake processor: The processor is 2.67 Ghz with these specs: Picked up an older Dell Precision 490 workstation for $40. This includes comments like "mUh gAeMiNg kInG" Related Subreddits: Please visit /r/AyyMD, or it's Intel counterpart - /r/Intelmao - for memes. Rule 5: AyyMD-style content & memes are not allowed. AMD recommendations are allowed in other threads. Commenting on a build pic saying they should have gone AMD is also inappropriate. i7-9700k vs i9-9900k?) recommendations, do not reply with non-Intel recommendations. Rule #4: Give competitors' recommendations only where appropriate. No religion/politics unless it is directly related to Intel Corporation Rule 3: All posts must be related to Intel or Intel products. Rule 2: No Unoriginal Sources, Referral links or Paywalled Articles. If you can't say something respectfully, don't say it at all. This includes comments such as "retard", "shill", "moron" and so on. Uncivil language, slurs, and insults will result in a ban. Subreddit and discord for Intel related news and discussions.