Core i3 and Athlon II, Where Value is King

[Hooch Tan]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://techreport.com/articles.x/18448/1' target='_blank'>http://techreport.com/articles.x/18448/1</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"For one, Clarkdale CPUs have proliferated everywhere, and we've gotten our hands on one model, the Core i3-530, that promises to be a much better value than the relatively high-end Core i5-661 that we first reviewed. To counter, AMD has introduced five new value-oriented CPUs, ranging from two cores to four, including the Athlon II X4 635, a potent value quad-core priced directly opposite the Core i3-530."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1266427295.usr20447.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>The two CPU giants are battling it out again, this time in the lower cost segment of the industry.&nbsp; Both CPUs run great, and each have their own advantages which highlight the recent trends each manufacturer has been following.&nbsp; AMD tends to favor great value and performance, while Intel offers better power consumption and overclocking.&nbsp; What is even more interesting is that The Tech Report was able to borrow a Pentium 4 computer from a museum to see how it would compare.&nbsp; The results reveal two interesting facts.&nbsp; First,per CPU performance has not significantly improved over the past few years and has instead improved speeds through more cores.&nbsp; Second, and perhaps more importantly, power consumption for work done has gone down considerably.&nbsp;&nbsp; This would certainly explain why I see so many aging computers around.&nbsp; They still have the oomph to handle all but the more demanding tasks.&nbsp; Now I do not feel so bad for gifting some of my older computers away!&nbsp; What are you using?&nbsp; The latest and greatest, or does your computer still have Turbo button?</p>

[Reid Kistler]

There is a lot of value in the low- to mid- range cpu market - and they provide ample power for most users (remembering that MOST users do not play complex games or run serious media editing applications!).

Wife's primary desktop runs an AMD Sempron, and mine runs an Athlon 64 X2 (Power User! :p ) - both systems are running multiple HDs, dual boot (XP/Win7 or XP/Vista), contain 2GB RAM, and discrete nVidia-based graphics cards.

My wife does have a fancy laptop that is used for heavy duty programming, but that is more of a security / segregation issue than a capability issue, & she maintains several websites using the desktop, as well as doing Access, Excel & Powerpoint projects. (Although I think all PowerBuilder work is now done on her laptop.)

My laptop runs a 450Mhz PIII (Yep....) - which perhaps explains why I think our Dell Mini 10v is just peachy! We have a second Athlon X2 which I have earmarked to replace our current "family / backup" machine, which is also a PIII, although running at 1Ghz. In addition, have 2 old towers that I use as "mules": yet another PIII AND a PII, both with Promise cards and removable drive bays stuck in to permit mounting various HDs, including laptop drives (useful for cleaning malware / junk off the drives....).

And, yeah, somewhere in the basement workroom there is indeed a system with a TURBO button, that still ran the last time anyone bothered to turn it on. Also, we still have my first PC hanging around: A Columbia VP, running an Intel 8088.... :eek: