Newer Cpus, Are They Overkill?

[SilverFox1405241541 0]

Every model of PC brings higher faster Processors. I've found Processors as fast as 3.0 Ghz in normal home user's PCs. Companies are soaring the speed at which our Processors Process, as well as their cost. I personally have found little difference on my 1.8 GHz and the 2.8 GHz machines I have used. Simply I believe that the new Processors are overkill. The Motherboard remains a bottleneck with no solution but fiber optics, further driving up the cost of PCs.I believe the new speed of Processors is overkill, until the motherboard is speeded up and until the average user matches the Processor.Another travesty I have seen is a 2.8 Ghz or so laptop with 256 MB RAM. That's certainly a waste. My question is what are your feelings on this?

[faulty.lee 0]

That's certainly true. That's why MS created vista to "help" utilized all that spare cpu cycles. It's a waste of energy, human resources and our money.

[SilverFox1405241541 0]

That's certainly true. That's why MS created vista to "help" utilized all that spare cpu cycles...

What do you mean? They made Vista to have waste processes so that it drains the CPU That's wired.

[WeaponX 0]

Was just going to say the same thing as faulty.lee With the newer processors these days, they seem to be the only ones that will run Vista decently. I personally think it's a great thing that they are making them faster because it will help out a lot of those users who need the extra processing speed (think about video editing and other programs that require fast processing without slowing down the whole machine).

[HellFire121 0]

Well if software keeps moving forward you need the hardware to catch up. Imagine you have a huge high definition movie to convert or burn or something. Now this would take quite some time on a slower cpu because of the lower cycles a second, if you have a faster cpu then it is done quicker. Anyway to the point now, just say some new video format comes out that is better than high definition and gives one of the best quality pictures ever, you are definately going to need those cpu cycles unless you want to wait days or even weeks for it to process.More cpu speed also equals more multitasking (more so on quad and dual core)-HellFire

[SilverFox1405241541 0]

Yes but I was talking about your NORMAL home user. That dosn't include "video editing", or coverting a "huge high definition movie to convert or burn or something.". How many home users do those tasks? I might be wrong but I don't think many do.

[Quatrux 4]

Well, then I could add that most of normal home users likes to play video games and new games really need a lot of computer resources if you want to play on Maximum everything, but that also includes not only CPU, but RAM and GFX Card. Personally, I agree with you, that the CPU doesn't matter as they were advertising it as earlier and it isn't something new.. Laptops are sold with less RAM, that they would be much cheaper, usually people add a lot of extra RAM into the laptop which is really logical. And furthermore, a lot of programmers or whatever you call them, lieks to say "we have a lot of MHz and RAM that that doesn't matter" and some really slow stuff is being used.. Maybe there is some truth in those words, but still, I don't like them, I encourage/say that people still need to use asm code in their programs, it isn't hard once you learn it in a year or two

[SilverFox1405241541 0]

Maybe I just don't play high end games. Lol. I only really play WoW sometimes and CivIII, neither are big CPU/RAM drainers. All the PCs I fix for people are mainly office based (Excel, Word, IE are thier main programs). But I still think motherboards need an upgrade. And I've never heard of ASM code, what's that?Btw I'm not a Programmer

[unimatrix 0]

Problem is programmers have no incentive to tighten code. I mean think about out it...Word Processors have done everything I've needed since Wordperfect 5 for DOS. Yet now some of my stories or such are 120k words and over a meg in size. Now I'm in the graphics world, particularly video editing and 3DFX. So the faster it takes to render something, the quicker I can go on to the next project and make more money! Right now I have the last generation PowerMac G5 Quadcore with 8GB of Ram. It makes rendering in Lightwave, FCP, and Apple Shake a breeze as well as burning with DVD Studio Pro. I am seriously looking at getting a new MacBook as my dad's intel iMac kicks the crap out of this powerbook g4 even though I have more Ram in the laptop. So a lot depends on your situation and what you are using your computer for.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

That's exactly why the new Intel Core series DO NOT emphasize in speed, instead, it emphasize on multi-core and energy saving. Same goes with the new Athlon 64s.

Also, Microsoft, IBM and ATI solved the bottlenecking issue with the XBOX 360. You should read it up here:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

xboxrulz

[Saint_Michael 3]

To comment on the processors able to sustain vista that really depends on the ram you have, because from the early reports Vista is a resource HOG. I still don't think 1 gig of ram will help vista run smoothly, they claim it will with vista ultimate even though I see 2 gigs of ran at least to RAM to keep it lagging after the wear and tear is set in.But yeah All the new processors that are coming out are built specifically for Vista if you running like Windows 95 (AHAHAHAHA) on a dual core processor, then share the wealth because that would be the overkill for older systems.

[Grafitti 0]

I think it's not overkill. For users that are into graphics and video processing, the extra cycles do help a lot. Same thing for hardcore gamers. For the average PC user, even if they only use office and internet explorer, it still makes sense. Because the ones who swap PCs every year are either professionals who need to, or those who simply have money to burn. For the average PC user who plans on keeping his computer as long as possible, you'd want to go for the best you can afford, so that even if a pentium 2, for example, can run all regular programs today, maybe in 5 years the minimum specs will be different, and by buying a higher end model today, you're saving time and money in the long run. Plus, even for simple things like Office, a new one is simply faster. A P2 may be capable of running it, but pitting it against a P4? There are big differences.

[wutske 0]

I can't realy give a simple answer on your question, it just depends.
First of all, today it isn't just the frequency (most people link frequency with processing power, altough this is absolutely not correct anymore) that matters, but there also the number of cores, the amount of L2 cache ...

If you multitask a lot (not like, listening to music and surfing at the same time, because even a celeron can do that), then switching to a Dual Core (or even a Quad Core) is reasonable.
Next thing to consider is what you want to do, if you do a lot of simulations, coding/decoding, ... then you realy want a processor with a lot of power and preferably one with 2 cores or more (since more and more applications support more cores), this can realy reduce the time you have to wait.
For gaming it'd say you don't need to have the fastest cpu around, since they won't realy offer you any speed gain.

The techreport has written a good review about the current cpu's around: http://techreport.com/review/12091/intel-vs-amd-today-generation-compared


bottom line: if you only do simple tasks like word processing, surfing, listening to music, you can even be happy with a Duron clocked at 1Ghz, but there are a lot of people who realy need the processing power that is available nowadays.