Intel Core Solo or Pentium 4

I am planning to make a desktop which would be better, a Core Solo T1300 or a Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz. I know the Pentium 4 has hyperthreading but I read that there is not much of a performance increase. Thanks in advance

 

Core Solo
Pros:
- WAY better battery life
- Faster performance
- runs way cooler
- Recently released processor may allow for further upgrading

Cons:
- prob a little more expensive than your P4

P4
Pros:
- cheaper

Cons:
- outdated
- runs hot
- consumes great deal of battery life due to desktop design
- slow

The choice is clear my friend. Make the world a better place.

 

I would still say solo, P4's are quickly becoming more and more outdated, plus they are much hotter without any more performance.

 

I would save a bit more and go for a Core Duo T2300. They are about $50-$80 more than the Solos.

Anything to do with the Pentium 4 & the Netburst stuff is not worth buying. At all.

 

well at Newegg the Core Solo is 140 so it is not much more than the Pentium 4

 

Wow, that's crazy to hear the P4 is outdated. My P4 still runs dang good, and I have no plans of upgrading until full support of dual-cores.

Please explain to me why the Core Solo is better? It has a lower FSB than my P4, and the same L2 Cache, along with a lower frequency. (1.66GHz)

Please forgive me, I know nothing about the Core Solos, but that just doesn't look "better".

And it's odd that if the P4 is "outdated", why does Newegg only have 1 Core Solo, and around 20 P4's? Newegg is usually ontop of all the upgrades.

Again, do not bash... I am just not up to date with the "Core Solos".

*EDIT* It does have 1M more of L2 Cache... sorry, my bad.

 

I would have though the P4 was faster. I know it's much slower clock-for-clock, but the P4's running at nearly double the clock speed.

KGann, the Core Solos use an architecture very similar to the Pentium-M (and also similar to the Core 2 Duo). Unlike the P4's Netburst architecture, this one doesn't need a very high FSB to perform well. A Merom T7200 (2Ghz with 667Mhz FSB) should beat just about any Pentium 4 in anything.

The other big advantage of the Core series is that they run cool. The Core Solo T1300 is rated at 27w TDP (Thermal Design Power). For comparison, the high-end P4s and Pentium-Ds were rated at 130w TDP. Even the top-end Merom (T7600) is only rated at 34w, and it'll easily beat any Pentium-D or P4.

That said, P4s are certainly not bad CPUs - they're just not a good choice when buying new because there are so many other (better) options.

 

Thank you, Slatye, for not bashing me for my lack of knowledge.

Well, I am glad to find out this information. I know my Prescott runs VERY hot, but after a couple of addon heatsinks, and 3 case fans, it runs at about 31C full load, and 26C idle.

 

i would have to say go with the Solo

 

heh, don't worry about your "lack of knowledge". It is a very good question.

Anyway...

Well, keep in mind that outdated doesn't mean "my cpu magically became a lot slower". Your P4 will keep being as fast as it is, and yes, for most purposes, *any* CPU you can find on the market today, is more than fast enough. But it's still *a lot* slower and less efficient than Core 2 Duo or even Athlon 64.
That's really all it means, and it might not even be relevant. There are faster CPU's, yes, but do you *need* faster CPU's? Depends on what you use it for, obviously, but often, the answer is no. (Even then, I'd still avoid anything Pentium 4-based, but not so much for performance-reasons)

Because there's a lot more to it.
Basically, performance = Clock rate (mhz) * work performed per cycle, or IPC (Instructions Per Cycle)
And the IPC is almost impossible to determine accurately, because it depends on *a lot* of factors, including even the program you're running.
Here are the most important factors:

- Memory access: Does the CPU have to stay idle waiting for data/code from memory? How big is the memory latency? How often can we find what we need in the CPU cache? FSB and cache size play a big role here, but other parts are important too. For example, the Athlon 64's integrated memory controller provides a big boost here by lowering latency. Core 2 Duo tries to compensate with some clever tricks when loading, and by having a big huge cache. Pentium 4 has to rely on external memory controller and a big cache, but without the C2D's "clever tricks")

- CPU width: Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 can both process up to 3 instructions per cycle. Core 2 Duo can do 4. With some instruction types, the former can do one instruction every other cycle, C2D can do one each cycle. (Technically, we could put the number of cores here. A dualcore CPU could be said to be twice as wide, except, it can only dedicate half its instruction slots to any given thread, so if you run singlethreaded apps, it can only utilize half the CPU (One of the cores))

- Pipeline length, or amount of stalls: Due to the pipelined architecture of all modern CPU's, you really start work on each instruction before the previous ones have finished. So when an instruction is read, we don't even know if the previous one was a branch or jump instruction, and so, if we should have actually read an entirely different instruction. And if the previous instruction generated a result we need in this instruction, we may have to wait a few cycles before the result is available for us, and in that time, we may have to stay idle.
This causes pipeline stalls, basically wasted time. This is where the P4 *really* falls apart. It has a huge pipeline, and it's just impossible for one end to know what the other is doing, basically. It wastes insane amounts of times when it fails to predict a branch instruction, and because instructions have to wait longer for previous ones to finish execution so their results are available.

Of course, most of this depends on the exact code being executed, and so, for some purposes, the P4 will be acceptable, and for others, it will fall far far behind.

And good performance really relies on a CPU doing well in all these factors. It doesn't matter how good your memory subsystem is, if you're incapable of executing instructions efficiently, and it doesn't matter how smooth your pipeline executes instructions, with no stalls whatsoever, if it can only ever execute one instruction per cycle. And it doesn't matter how many instructions you could execute in parallel, or how few stalls are introduced in the pipeline, if you can't get the data you need from memory.

I disagree. They are.
They're horrible from a design perspective, and disastrous from a performance/watt perspective. They're cheap, and they're faster than in raw performance than, say, a Pentium 3, but that's about the only positive things I'll say about them.

 

To sum up Jalf's lengthy yet informative expanation: the Pentium 4 is a stupid CPU

 

well for $10 more you can get an AMD x2

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103562

and AMD motherboards are usually much cheaper too.

 

Haha.

And Jalf, thank you. That actually explained alot... and you are right, I don't need a faster CPU. I actually burned up one of my CPU's in my brother-in-laws system. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was a Pentium 4 Xtreme Edition. Honestly, with his 6600GT, it didn't out-do mine too much. But, that could have been a different factor, who knows.

I am a Pentium 4 fan... love it, or hate it.

 

They also make better heaters than just about any other CPU on the market - and they persuaded companies like Thermaltake and Thermalright to make huge heatsinks, which are now more than good enough to cool any Core 2 Duo or A64.

That was a very nice explanation of it all.

I agree with others that the Core Solo is definitely a better all-round CPU - but I think the P4 will still be a bit quicker. Someone suggested waiting until you can afford a Core Duo, and that seems like a good idea. However, with the Core 2 Duos being released (at the same price as the Core Duos) it'd be even better to just buy a Core 2 Duo T5500.