E8500,E8400,E8200 - Prices Are Up

[306maxi]

I must say I'm pretty disappointed with Intel/it's suppliers for not having stock out there on release day. I managed to get an E8400 last week but that place only had about 10 in and I was just lucky that it sent me an email to say they had stock at 3am in the morning and I was up at the time. I know of places back home in Australia where I could walk in the door and buy an E8400 yet in the UK there are none available. I just feel sorry for places like Scan who just aren't getting stock when they thought they were.

[Nickg]

yes. isnt that Quad Core vs Dual Core? Quad Core=win.

Penryn are just ~ 8-10% faster per clock speed with less energy usage... nothing major really...

[scruffy]

yes. isnt that Quad Core vs Dual Core? Quad Core=win.

Penryn are just ~ 8-10% faster per clock speed with less energy usage... nothing major really...

Not when the app/game you're using is only making use of 1-2 cores which is the point I think the people above are trying to make.

8-10% faster on a die shrink and cache increase isn't bad at stock, especially when you consider the price point of say the e8400 (£130) when it's faster than the e6600 (still going for £170, was even more on release). Plus it's looking like the e8400 is going to clock better than the e6600 too.

[obiwinnie]

I know of places back home in Australia where I could walk in the door and buy an E8400 yet in the UK there are none available. I just feel sorry for places like Scan who just aren't getting stock when they thought they were.

well there is always tottenham court road... but its just crazily expensive...
price matching in pc world is probably the best way to do it if u want it immediately.....

[phurn]

pc world dont seel new cpu's! i had a browse in there the other day and it was all celeron d's adn pentium d's............. appauling place.

[306maxi]

pc world dont seel new cpu's! i had a browse in there the other day and it was all celeron d's adn pentium d's............. appauling place.

Not true. I got my e4300 from them PC World That was when E4300's were new too.

[Nickg]

Not when the app/game you're using is only making use of 1-2 cores which is the point I think the people above are trying to make.

8-10% faster on a die shrink and cache increase isn't bad at stock, especially when you consider the price point of say the e8400 (£130) when it's faster than the e6600 (still going for £170, was even more on release). Plus it's looking like the e8400 is going to clock better than the e6600 too.

what? how many games are CPU limited? how much difference in a dual threaded game will even as much a difference as 300mhz make?

though you may be right for games of yesterday what about the games of tomorrow/those that DO support Quad Core, does a dual core CPU beat it in terms of performance, even with a higher clockspeed? no.

[scruffy]

what? how many games are CPU limited? how much difference in a dual threaded game will even as much a difference as 300mhz make?

though you may be right for games of yesterday what about the games of tomorrow/those that DO support Quad Core, does a dual core CPU beat it in terms of performance, even with a higher clockspeed? no.

So are you saying that duals are better than quads, or vice versa? I'm confused.

Games that people are playing now like HL2:EP2 and even recently released Crysis really aren't making the most of the extra processing available so really the dual is the way to go IMO - unless you want to throw money at a quad and use it for other things like encoding etc.

Anyway, it's nice to see stock appearing for these today Any word from Scan, or is it still the 30th?

[Saracen]

what? how many games are CPU limited? how much difference in a dual threaded game will even as much a difference as 300mhz make?

though you may be right for games of yesterday what about the games of tomorrow/those that DO support Quad Core, does a dual core CPU beat it in terms of performance, even with a higher clockspeed? no.

It's not just whether a given game supports four cores, but whether it does it effectively. But this isn't about games anyway. Raverbaby wants it "for music production", and Scruffy said "Not when the app/game you're using is only making use of 1-2 cores which is the point I think the people above are trying to make". And it was indeed the point I, at least, was trying to make. I've tested software that supposedly supports multiple cores/processors before, and some software might theoretically support it, but unless the app is written to effectively use it, it either makes no difference or only a nominal one. What you certainly can't assume is that just because there's two cores as opposed to one, anything you do will be twice as fast. It doesn't work like that. With some apps, you might indeed get pretty close to it, but with others, you'll see performance improvement percentages in the single figures, and sometimes low single figures at that. Multiple cores are great if you want to be doing several things at once, such as encoding in the background while working on a spreadsheet and running a print job, but it'll only make a dramatic difference to a given piece of software (in the absence of those other tasks) if the software is written in such a way as to take advantage of multiple cores by breaking work into chunks.

There's architectural issues, too. A dual core processor shares it's L2 cache on-die, with dynamic partitioning according to need, and data ownership handed off between them. But that isn't the case between the two dual-core elements that the quads are (which are really more of a double-dual than a quad). For the two dual-cores to work together, especially when parallel-processing the same data in a multi-threaded app, they have to be kept in sync and they have to do that through the FSB. It's inherently slower, and there's an element of housekeeping to do that impacts performance.

Some single-threads apps will give better performance on a single CPU than a double of the same speed. Why? Because if you've got double cores, Windows is sending bits of a task here, buts there, and the overhead of keeping track of it all ends up producing slower performance, not faster.

On the other hand, if you have something like a game, and it can detect that use four cores then, as an example, it might use one to handle character reactions, a second to farm out certain types of graphical work (that isn't done by the GPU), another to handle sound and a fourth the OS use. It's essentially doing four things at once, not trying to break one thing down and spread it across four processors.

The performance to be gained from four cores over two can be substantial, but you can't take it for granted that it'll be huge.

[Saracen]

..... so really the dual is the way to go IMO - unless you want to throw money at a quad and use it for other things like encoding etc.

Even for encoding, it isn't a given. LAME's author once pointed out that LAME uses linear pipelining to encode. It reads a chunk ahead and buffers it, thereby being suited to two processors. But that to go to four would mean not being able to use that linear processing, and would imply a complete redesign of the encoding process to utilise parallel processing, and that implies some significant problems of it's own, not least bug-hunting in a parallel environment.

[306maxi]

what? how many games are CPU limited? how much difference in a dual threaded game will even as much a difference as 300mhz make?

though you may be right for games of yesterday what about the games of tomorrow/those that DO support Quad Core, does a dual core CPU beat it in terms of performance, even with a higher clockspeed? no.

Lots of games like having more clockspeed. I play TF2 and got a huuuuge performance jump when going from an e4300 to my e8400. It's still CPU limited on my X1950XT as the 1st core still maxxes out.

[scruffy]

Anyway, it's nice to see stock appearing for these today Any word from Scan, or is it still the 30th?

*cough*

[LuckyNV]

Lots of games like having more clockspeed. I play TF2 and got a huuuuge performance jump when going from an e4300 to my e8400. It's still CPU limited on my X1950XT as the 1st core still maxxes out.

that is because Source engine only supports single cores for the moment.
That isn't the definition of being "cpu limited" though.
Also, if you fit an 8800GT in there you'd see a decent fps boost despite Source based games being quite CPU heavy.

this I noticed from X1900XTX to 8800GT and I do play TF2 on a regular basis.

But in general, Source based games are the only ones to truly benefit from having a good cpu coupled with a good gfx card, majority of other games a good gfx card paired with an "average" cpu is prefectly adequate.

[306maxi]

that is because Source engine only supports single cores for the moment.
That isn't the definition of being "cpu limited" though.
Also, if you fit an 8800GT in there you'd see a decent fps boost despite Source based games being quite CPU heavy.

this I noticed from X1900XTX to 8800GT and I do play TF2 on a regular basis.

But in general, Source based games are the only ones to truly benefit from having a good cpu coupled with a good gfx card, majority of other games a good gfx card paired with an "average" cpu is prefectly adequate.

But if a faster CPU will give better results then the game is CPU limited

Most games only use a single CPU anyway so a fast single core would be the best bet but since Intel doesn't do fast C2D single cores a dual core will always be the cheapest option for the best results for the forseeable future.

[scruffy]

*cough*

*cough*cough*cough*

[scruffy]

Looks like the e8400s are in stock