Computer & Laptop Hardware

[#1]

Is an AMD Athlon II X2 240 Dual Core 2.8Ghz, 3GB Ram, 500GB HDD computer better than Intel Pentium Processor E5300 2.6Ghz, 5GB Ram, 500 GB HDD computer? And Why?

[#2]

Most people don't use more than 2-3GB of Ram with day to day computing.

So the 5gb really means not much, its just a number, as you will only be utilizing about 3gb in either system.

Processors Athlon II x2 240 vs the pentium e5300? the pentium e5300 is slightly faster in the synthetic benchmarks i've seen, you may not be able to tell the difference in real world usage.

Personally I would go with the Athlon II x2 240 over the Pentium for 2 reasons 1: I like AMD, they are the underdog (Intel owns 80% or so of the personal computing market) and 2: AMD's integrated graphics are superior to Intel's - now your specs didn't specify if there was a discreet graphics card present but I am willing to bet there isn't due to the budget nature of the processor and AMDs 785gx (most likely the chipset present  - radeon 4200) will beat intel's GMA4500

[#3]

You're absolutely right about the RAM.  I have 4GB of the DDR2 variety, and even when I've got a half-dozen programs running, I have never quite reached 2GB of actual usage.  Then again, Win7 uses about 1.3 GB of RAM while just idling in my experience.

[#4]

AMD Athlons are much better then the Intel Pentium processors. Much easier to overclock and 5gb of RAM is a waste unless you're a professional photographer or video editor that uses a lot of high usage programs like Adobe Photoshop or DvD encoding programs.

[#5]

the easiest way to check for the better processor would be to simply look at the speed. If that doesn't satiate you, then take a look at the "cache", this is a very good number that would determine your processor's performance (remember: the more cache, the better)

[#6]

looking the cahce, they both seem to have 2Mb. So the only factor in determining the better processor would be the speed, so technically speaking, AMD computer wins in your case.

[#7]

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franco22 wrote:

AMD Athlons are much better then the Intel Pentium processors. Much easier to overclock...

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It depends on the models, sometimes the Pentium Dual Core is better some other times the Athlon wins. In this case, the Pentium E5300 is going to be a little bit faster in most case but the Athlon 240 is able to win in some case (gaming for example). Here, have a look:

Athlon II X2 240 VS Pentium E5300

As for overclocking, it's pretty much a moot point here as we're probably talking about big brands computers meaning the BIOS is going to have a lock to keep the user from overclocking. But just for the sake of arguments, companies produce processors that can be greatly overclocked, once again it depends on the model.

[#8]

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kent92 wrote:

the easiest way to check for the better processor would be to simply look at the speed. If that doesn't satiate you, then take a look at the "cache", this is a very good number that would determine your processor's performance (remember: the more cache, the better)

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Be very careful of what you say on the internet or you'll end up spraying false information to the community.

The Hertz (MHz, GHz, etc...), what you probably call "speed" is only relevant when you compare two processors with almost identical specifications aside from the clock rate. Here, you have two completely different architecture from two different companies so it CANNOT be used to help someone determine if one model is faster than the other? Don't believe me? I'll give you a simple example:

Intel Pentium 4 660 - 3.6GHz - 2MB L2 vs. Intel Pentium Dual Core E2140 - 1.60GHz - 1MB L2

As you'll be able to see, the Pentium 4 which use twice the cache and is clocked at more than twice the frequency of the E2140 and it still lose in all benchmarks (aside from one where it's winning but not by much). You might reply "But it's not fair, the Dual Core... has two cores" and you'll be proving exactly my point; processors are so different in their architecture (in ways that only someone in Electrical Engineer might be able to understand) that it's impossible to compare them by using simple things such as Cache size of frequency... Unless you compare to processors made using the same architecture.

[#9]

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kent92 wrote:

looking the cahce, they both seem to have 2Mb. So the only factor in determining the better processor would be the speed, so technically speaking, AMD computer wins in your case.

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If you post the exact wordings on Tom's Hardware and Anandtech forums I'm sure you will have received flames up to your nose by now.  But folks on the FS forum are a little more forgiving...

AMD and Intel CPUs are structured differently such that in some situations AMD comes out top, yet other cases would be Intel.  Therefore the overall speed cannot be determined simply by cache size and frequency alone.

[#10]

True this, clockspeeds are becoming less relevant, they are useful to compare processors of the same family, but between families it becomes relevant. Among some techie/enthusiast circles the term clock-for-clock is thrown around quite a bit, in those circles "stock" clocked processors mean nothing as most people overclock (make the processor run faster than AMD/Intel says it can run at) so if people make the argument: Processor X @ 3.2ghz runs faster than processor Y @ 2.2ghz. Others will come along and be like, but if you overclock processor Y to 3.2ghz it smokes processor X.

However in a forum such as this most people don't overclock (they can't due to buying not building thier own computers)

when comparing processors one must look at the following

Architecture - this is generally more important than clockspeed. Different architectures include: Phenom, Phenom II (Athlon IIs are the same as Phenoms, missing L3 cache), Core iX (i3,i5,i7 - all belong to the Nehalem family). Next year Intel will launch a new architecture codenamed sandy bridge & AMD will launch thier new architecture code named Bulldozer

clockspeed - still important, works well when comparing processors of the same architecture (ie Athlon to Athlon)

Process - we are seeing Intel/AMD aggressively move to new processes, currently AMD is on a 45nm process and Intel has moved onto a 32nm process - the smaller the process the less distance the electrons have to travel which means faster response & less heat.

Cache  - usually a bigger cache = more performance due to programs being able to use the cache instead of the far slower RAM (this is why a Phenom II beats an Athlon II by 5-10% in benchmarks)

FSB - front side bus is dead. Intel replaced the front side bus with quick path interconnect (QPI) in its core iX (i3,i5,i7) series and AMD uses a tech called hypertransport.  QPI and Hypertransport (I won't call it HT due to possible confusion over Intel's Hyperthread tech) are how the various CPU cores "talk" to each other and other components (ie RAM) as both chip makers found that the FSB was no longer viable (though Intel still used the FSB in the core 2 series and they beat AMDs Phenoms)

Cores - Most people believe that the more cores a computer has the better it is. Cores are important, BUT a lot of desktop programs don't use more than 2-4 cores, it really depends on the applications you use. We will be seeing both Intel and AMD launch 6 core processors within the next couple of months, but in the desktop environment most people won't notice the additional cores. AMD hopes to help mitigate this issue by having a core disable feature built into the chip (so if you are only using 3 of 6 cores it will "turn off" 3 cores and "overclock" the 3 cores that are in use. Interested in seeing "core usage" on your current desktop? hit ctrl-alt-delete and click start windows task manager, then click on the Performance tab, there will be a thing on the screen that says "cpu usage history" and a bunch of graphs below that caption, if the "graphs" are barely visable or if only a few graphs appear to have any movement than those are the cores that are being used (not very well explained, I am sorry)

Thats about all there is (that i can currently think of) to comparing processors (CPUs). You can also look at power consumption and heat output as well, but thats pretty straight forward

When comparing 2 computers in a store don't neglect other aspects of a computer either. IE RAM, Graphics Card, Hard Drive. As a computer has more to it than just a processor. If you don't know decide what you want to use your computer for and ASK! As having a computer with the fastest processor in the world won't matter if you have a dog of a graphics card and want to play computer games!

hope this helps