CPU relative speed graphs (Intel vs AMD)
 

In the old days you always used to see graphs showing how fast a 386-33 was compared to a 386-40 and how much faster a P2 was compared to a Pentium. Now it is hella difficult to find out how CPU speeds actually stack up against each other.

I have a P4 2.4GHZ and I am looking at a laptop that is powered by an AMD Sempron 3600+ 2.0GHz. I hate to admit it but I don't have a damn clue if that is faster, slower or the same. Anyone seen any good graphs/charts that show comparisons of different chips?

core 2 duo will be faster than any amd you can throw money at.

I just got my dell xps laptop with the core 2 t9300 2.4 ghz, I love it so far

these days there are just too many processors on the market at any given time to easily chart comparative speed. your best bet is to buy the fastest clock speed, and the fastest FSB you can afford and hope it's fast enough.

Things to look at...
Cores (can't really use more then 2 at the moment)
FSB speed (front side bus)
Gate length (90nm vs 65nm)

Price.... You can get one of the intel dual cores with crazy overclocking for real cheap.

anandtech.com still does processor comparos. I was just looking at some the other, uh, month. :-(

Not really.

While clock for clock the higher you go you do get faster, same for bus speed. At a certain point its diminishing returns for the price.

Sometimes it makes sense to get a mid level dual core, or an entry level quad because the price skyrockets with higher clock speeds and in exactly a month the price halves because a new processor came out thats faster then that one.

Makes no sense to chase the market today, especially with how damn fast mid range processors really are.

I run a Core 2 duo...hell I don't remember the name...that runs stock at 2.16GHz (running @ 2.7 currently) that I bought a year and a half ago and it still runs everything fine (games, development stuff, it is even fast enough to decode blu-ray rips).

Right now, I'd personally go with a Core 2 Duo or an entry level quad. The price/performance ratio of these chips is amazing and unless you're doing some seriously intense work, any Core 2 in the low 2GHz range will be just fine. Seeing as how you're still running an old P4, the new system you're building/buying will offer significantly better perfomance if you buy ANY Core 2.

Reading shit like that amazes me. My "main" desktop at home is a P4 2.4GHz Sony Vaio running XP that I bought nearly 7 years ago now. :giggle:
It has a PCI video card (128mb I think? It was the best one I could find for PCI, and yes PCI not PCI-E or AGP), an upgraded power supply (due to vid card), and is maxed out at 1G ram. There is nothing that I've not been able to do, run, or rip with this machine.

My other desktop we got a couple years ago to act as a Media Center (it has XP MCE) is some sort of AMD dual core and has 2G ram, but was less stable than my Sony, and has been sitting in a closet for 1.5 yrs now.

And the point of all that was?

(In)Stability is rarely a hardware issue. If you loaded XP or even 2000 on the machine in your closet, it would be plenty stable as long as the parts can talk to each other.

I'm running an ancient system because it does what I need it to do. I run win 2000 because I bought a license in college for $5, and I can install it for the rest of my life. When I find a cheap/free copy of xp I'll run that.

After troubleshooting win98 and what was that other crap one, mc or something? Anyway, after dealing with stupid releases of windows, I've learned not to be an early adopter. Some of the stuff they make fails miserably, some of it fails at first and is then resurrected with patches.

try playing a blu-ray disk.

Don't forget about your other components. Even a Core 2 Extreme machine will feel noticably slower with crappy memory/hdd(s). It's not really a problem with aftermarket ram/hdds, but you have to be careful alot of times with that pre-built stuff. The extremeoverclocking.com forums have some really informative stickies for picking out a proc.

try playing any game made in the last 5 years with that thing.

+1

i used to care and keep up with the latest and greatest stuff out there for gaming, just don't have the time or care anymore. my latest build cost $50 and used parts i got for free from friends that bought new stuff. i only use the computer for the internet anyway

+1

As I get older, I begin to realize that it's worthless to try to stay up-to-date unless it's for bragging rights. :jerkit: As long as it works, fuck it!
As for gaming, I've always been a pc guy but for the first time in my life last Christmas I just bought a console... The whole thing costs less than a high end graphics card anyway.:eek5:

I was only saying that performance-wise, a P4 system simply can't compare to almost any Core 2 system. Take out the video card (not that it matter since PCI doesn't have enough bandwidth to play any newer games) and assume decent hard drive/memory (<- faster because RDRAM or DDR is going to have less real world bandwidth than DDR2/3) and focus on things like encoding/decoding media (try playing a BluRay rip using a software decoder...my system barely can do it), playing a modern game...hell just run something like Prime95 or SuperPI, or PCMark to see the differences...which will be significant. It can more or less do the same tasks, sans games and anything that needs newer processor extensions like SSE2/3, but it'll do them considerably slower.

I totally understand that your hardware does what you need it to...hell, a year ago I was still running an Athlon XP 2600+ w/ 1.5G of DDR333. It did everything I NEEDED it to, but every task was slower on it vs. my new system. Try running SQL Server, IIS, Visual Studio 2008, playing music or a game and leaving all of those processes going when you go to do your normal web browsing/e-mail tasks and the difference will become quite apparent. For everyday, non CPU/GPU intensive stuff, anything in the last decade will work, and older hardware certainly makes a great, inexpensive file/webserver. I guess it all comes down to what you want to do and how much you want to wait. Just like your P4 works for you know and was the best price/performance at the time (assuming you bought it pre-Athlon 64), a Core 2 is the best buy now and will probably have a useable life longer than any P4 system, assuming software is kept up to date. Yeah, I'm a geek.

A 1.6ghz 800mhz fsb celeron dual core extremely enforces the ANY part of that statement. I hate how these fuckers at dell can sell a computer to a end user for 300 dollars because it is loaded will pure bullshit and the consumer doesn't understand the difference. All they know is that my price is higher, but I guess it's not worth paying extra for something that works. </rant>

Anyway, I have never been a fan of AMD, and everyone I have ever asked about an AMD hasn't been able to tell me why it is better than a pentium. The most common one is "it's better for games", however that really doesn't exactly mean anything technical.

To actually try and answer your question, I googled the processor and read a review on the first link, and came across this
AKA OMG ITS A PIECE OF SHIT.

If I were you I would wait for dell to have one of their stupid cheap deals on a nice intel dual core processor that actually has some processing speed and front side bus. Another thing you want to look at, especially with laptops, is the harddrive and memory speed. They like to put the slowest shit possible in them for price and power consumption reasons.

You really just need to ask yourself if you want a laptop that is quick, or a laptop that is portable.

Good luck.

Here is a link to a speed test comparing the sempron to various processors.

http://www.behardware.com/art/imprimer/510/

To save you the time, it says the sempron is equally slow as the pentium 2.4 celeron (Which is a slower processor than yours, but they didn't have yours).