Why are conroe ghz so low

[Durrthock]

Because intel was up to 3.8 ghz and now there down to 1.90 wtf

[Slug Toy]

its all about efficiency, my friend. intel got their act together and really "loaded" conroe with some awesome features. clock for clock, conroe now does more work than any of the athlons, and this means the clock speeds can be low for now... they dont need any more power at the moment. now the question is... how high will they get?

[meticoeus]

For the short version: with the P4's, there were a lot more pipelines (up to 31), alowing them to get much higher frequencies. This was kind of silly, b/c it also meant the data had to travel alot farther to it took longer to process data. Core 2 architechture uses less than half the pipelines (14) and correspondingly has much lower frequencies.

You can read this (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1989019,00.asp)article, it gives a more in-depth answer than this and explains things better than I did.

For years, Intel's propaganda was all about "Bigger is better" and AMD ultimately proved them wrong. So now they have done the wise thing which has basically amounted to eating their words and in some way or other, admitted they were wrong and put out an excellent (albeit-currently overpriced) chip.

[DaveW]

Same sort of thing applies to the AMD Opteron. Comes clocked at 1.9 yet it has 1mb of l2 cache, and it can supposedly be overclocked to 3.5 with ease-making it roughly the same as an fx-57 for under £100.

-Dave

[simon275]

Really I heard the opterons were good to overclock but really that much? Dam.. You would need some serious cooling though.

[DaveW]

Dam.. You would need some serious cooling though.

Not sure. I'm pretty sure a zalman super flower could do the trick.

-Dave

[progbuddy]

Does anyone know how much I could overclock an original Pentium?

[isunktheship]

progbuddy: depends what cooling you have on it, i have heard of 2.7 or 2.8 from a 1.8 with watercooling.

I have the Core 2 Duo 6300, about 1.90 Ghz. With watercooling it could get up to 2.4 or 2.5. Core 2 means it has 2 processors in one chip... so double the Ghz, and you get the true speed. (basically)

so my 1.9 = 3.8 ghz. if i overclock it, i may get it to 4.8 or 5ghz.

This is the reason why I have been looking at watercooling systems. i dont want to spend more than 200 bucks on the basic cpu watercooling... but memory and vga cooling will follow shortly.

[Chel]

You dont need extreme cooling for conroes. Lots of people are ocing with stock hsf and keeping good temps.

[Slug Toy]

I have the Core 2 Duo 6300, about 1.90 Ghz. With watercooling it could get up to 2.4 or 2.5. Core 2 means it has 2 processors in one chip... so double the Ghz, and you get the true speed. (basically)

so my 1.9 = 3.8 ghz. if i overclock it, i may get it to 4.8 or 5ghz.


no offense, but that is an absolutely terrible way of looking at it. having two cores doesnt double your performance or your clock rates by any means. it CAN double the amount your cpu can handle at once though, but in a single threaded program this cant be taken advantage of. dual core shows gains in multithreaded programs, but is just the same as single core for anything else.

this is probably one of the most common mistakes people make. unfortunately, its wrong though. theres no doubling going on anywhere, except for the number of cores.

[isunktheship]

yeah i didn't want to get too technical, so I wrote (basically). because its basically 2 processors at 1.9Ghz, and while the processors don't work on the same thing it is basically 3.8Ghz.

thank you for the clarification, next time when making a correction rethink the way you start your post :(

[Slug Toy]

because its basically 2 processors at 1.9Ghz, and while the processors don't work on the same thing it is basically 3.8Ghz

no, thats still wrong. theres no 3.8GHz in there. its two cores running at 1.9. dont even think about it that way because your world will fall apart. even "basically" its still wrong. just dont go there.


next time when making a correction rethink the way you start your post

sorry, but its just so wrong. i couldnt help it. it really IS a bad way to look at it. you'll just disappoint yourself if you try to prove it. theres just no other way i can put this except bluntly... just get that idea out of your head at all costs, or else my head might explode.

[Chel]

A single core processor can still deliver better performance in games that arent multithreaded than a dual core can (for the most part).

[Redundant]

And why would you say that? If each core was as good or better than that single core, it should actually run better since the OS programs can be offloaded to one core; right?

[Slug Toy]

true, but only if you set affinities. in most cases, task will be evenly distributed over both cores, and seeming as single threaded games take advantage of one core, which is already busy, there really isnt any benefit in being a dual core processor in this case.

if you set affinities so the OS works on one core, and games works on another, you would see better performance in dual core... assuming you compare something like an fx-57 and an fx-62 which have the same clock speeds.

bottom line is that dual core cpu's arent specialized for single threaded applications. amd is working on a technology that makes dual core processors appear as a single core processor, and this could change things in the near future.