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A true quadcore depends largely on the person's definition.
Exactly. I suggest folks look at unbiased benchmarks to see which area(s) a given CPU performs best and worst, and how that applies to what they use it for. Then do the cost/performance calculation. Number of cores doesn't quite mean what it used to, as marketing and stretching truths have rendered the term near-useless. Kinda-sorta like what the term synthetic means for today's oils!
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In my head, it always made sense it had 4 cores, but not 4 full caching systems which are generally thought to belong to each core, but when you think of an AMD processor in the way in which many have interpreted it, a 4 core A or FX series is still a 2 core 4 thread, 3 core 6 thread, etc. When thought of that way, then I would say Amd comes out on top a lot of times. That means an fx4300 processor should be compared to an I3 where the FX 4300 generally overpowers most I3 models in things that understand more than 1-2 cores/threads of use.
Each "core" is missing much more than a seperate cache. Each pair of cores (a module) share a single branch prediction engine, a single instruction fetch and decode stage, a single floating-point math unit, a single cache controller, a single 64K L1 instruction cache, a single microcode ROM, and a single 2MB L2 cache. That's a lot of stuff missing that is present in what Intel calls a core.
A physical die could consist of anything, so that doesn't mean much. If each integer core had an FPU, I think they could make a case that an 8-core is indeed an 8-core, even though there is still some resource sharing going on. But you're exactly right, the definition of core is what a given person thinks a core should be.
I don't buy the stability angle-- The processor is just a piece of hardware. It's up to the software to use it in a way that gives you a stable computing experience without blue screens and such. I can't see how Intel's Hyperthreading implementation is any way less stable than the way AMD configures its CPU. They've been using HT for 15+ years. It a useful feature for some situations, but I typically don't spend extra money on an Intel CPU w/ HT versus one without, when I'm building my own PC.
I hope AMD hangs around longer as competition is a good thing. CPU performance has reached a plateau it seems in the last 5+ years, mostly because AMD has lost the competitive edge in the desktop market that they used to have years ago. Now the price divide between the two is less than it's been, which makes an modern AMD CPU a tough sell in most cases (for me and the computers I build for people.) I still like to by them whenever possible, however, even if it means a slight trade-off in performance.
I've built lots of PC's with the A10 processor, and have never heard any complaints, that's for sure! It's a great chip.
A true quadcore depends largely on the person's definition.
Exactly. I suggest folks look at unbiased benchmarks to see which area(s) a given CPU performs best and worst, and how that applies to what they use it for. Then do the cost/performance calculation. Number of cores doesn't quite mean what it used to, as marketing and stretching truths have rendered the term near-useless. Kinda-sorta like what the term synthetic means for today's oils!
Quote:
In my head, it always made sense it had 4 cores, but not 4 full caching systems which are generally thought to belong to each core, but when you think of an AMD processor in the way in which many have interpreted it, a 4 core A or FX series is still a 2 core 4 thread, 3 core 6 thread, etc. When thought of that way, then I would say Amd comes out on top a lot of times. That means an fx4300 processor should be compared to an I3 where the FX 4300 generally overpowers most I3 models in things that understand more than 1-2 cores/threads of use.
Each "core" is missing much more than a seperate cache. Each pair of cores (a module) share a single branch prediction engine, a single instruction fetch and decode stage, a single floating-point math unit, a single cache controller, a single 64K L1 instruction cache, a single microcode ROM, and a single 2MB L2 cache. That's a lot of stuff missing that is present in what Intel calls a core.
A physical die could consist of anything, so that doesn't mean much. If each integer core had an FPU, I think they could make a case that an 8-core is indeed an 8-core, even though there is still some resource sharing going on. But you're exactly right, the definition of core is what a given person thinks a core should be.
I don't buy the stability angle-- The processor is just a piece of hardware. It's up to the software to use it in a way that gives you a stable computing experience without blue screens and such. I can't see how Intel's Hyperthreading implementation is any way less stable than the way AMD configures its CPU. They've been using HT for 15+ years. It a useful feature for some situations, but I typically don't spend extra money on an Intel CPU w/ HT versus one without, when I'm building my own PC.
I hope AMD hangs around longer as competition is a good thing. CPU performance has reached a plateau it seems in the last 5+ years, mostly because AMD has lost the competitive edge in the desktop market that they used to have years ago. Now the price divide between the two is less than it's been, which makes an modern AMD CPU a tough sell in most cases (for me and the computers I build for people.) I still like to by them whenever possible, however, even if it means a slight trade-off in performance.
I've built lots of PC's with the A10 processor, and have never heard any complaints, that's for sure! It's a great chip.
