Olle P wrote:
The competition for Core i3-2100 isn't Athlon II X2 but X4, since the 2100 has HT.
Yeah, there are differrent ways to pick contenders for a CPU review, you look at core count, thread count, performance, cost, power draw etc.
This review shows that the used CPU's are too far away from each other in four of the five aspects above, it's too much of an unbalanced review.
Core count or thread count is quite theoretical for most end users, people want top performance, lowest power draw, or best bang for buck or a combination of those.
Pick a X4 645 or even a Phenom X4 955 ($10 above the i3 2100, but with MB it will still be lower), the performance lead gets smaller.
The i3 2100 is close to the 955 in Anandtechs test, in terms of performance and cost, and the thread count is the same.
Check it out:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=88But then again, I have no idea how much SPCR can pick and choose between different models for test samples.
Olle P wrote:
Phenom II X2 has never been a good buy.
It was quite popular until Athlon X3 an X4 showed up, but now it isn't the obvious choice.
djkest wrote:
Awesome. Sandy Bridge looks so efficient, but it's funny to realize that AMD (who did quad core first) has been doing quad core so long that they really aren't making new dual cores.
What are you talking about? Athlon II X2 is pretty much as new as the Athlon II X4.
djkest wrote:
It's a shame. I would have loved to have seen a modern 35nm dual core from AMD.
I don't like their market strategy right now- instead of pushing for ultimate efficiency and value, they are going for big clock speeds and many cores instead. Oh well.
That's because they can't keep up with Intel in this regard, you can't misinterpret this as a deliberate choice. Intel have sold 32 nm CPU's for over a year, AMD is still on 45 nm.
It's not their market strategy, AMD is doing the best they can with what they have.
If you really want to know what they're up to this year you should check out this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdPi4GPEI74http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... p?t=267721I think AM3+ will be replaced next year with a completely different socket, and it has nothing do to with DDR4.