Feature Articles

Q3 2007 CPU Performance Charts

By Vijay Anand - 29 Oct 2007

Price Performance Index & Closing Comments

Price Performance Index & Closing Comments

On this page, we find out which processor gives you the best price performance balance. For this purpose, we've used AMD's and Intel's published processor prices which are generally quite close to the prices offered by online retailers. We then used the composite performance index scores to derive the price performance index (which is then multiplied by 100 to give a reasonable figure) as illustrated in the table below. Higher values indicate more performance per dollar spent. Take note that the table has been arranged with reference to the highest composite performance index to the lowest:-

Processor Performance Index, Price and Price Performance Index
Processor Model Composite Performance Index Estimated Price (US$) Price Performance Index
Core 2 Extreme QX6850 2.18 999 0.218
Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.03 530 0.383
Core 2 Quad Q6600 1.90 266 0.714
Core 2 Duo E6850 1.76 266 0.662
Core 2 Duo E6750 1.65 183 0.904
Core 2 Duo E6550 1.52 163 0.936
Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 1.45 167 0.868
Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 1.42 146 0.971
Core 2 Duo E6420 1.40 183 0.766
Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 1.33 125 1.066
Core 2 Duo E4400 1.29 113 1.142
Core 2 Duo E6320 1.29 163 0.791
Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 1.27 115 1.105
Pentium Dual-Core E2160 1.14 74 1.546
Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 1.14 78 1.460
Athlon X2 BE-2350 1.08 96 1.129
Pentium Dual-Core E2140 1.05 64 1.636
Athlon X2 BE-2300 1.00 91 1.099

To visibly see which processor offers better value and at the same time maximizing performance, we decided to color code the price performance index in three distinct price categories (below US$100, US$100 - 200 and above US$200) and plotted it against our previous graph which is the raw composite performance index (that's matched against the Athlon X2 BE-2300 baseline):-

As the legend dictates, red indicates price performance index of processors over US$200, while orange is reserved for processors of the US$100 to US$200 category and green for the most affordable class below US$100. Generally the sweet spot would be a processor whose price performance index and the composite performance index within the category are both high. On an overall note, price and performance were much better matched from AMD and Intel this year as opposed to last year.

Starting off with the sub US$100 green segment, the Pentium Dual-Core E2140 offers the highest price performance index, but is expectedly among the lowest performers in the group. Good thing that it however manages to stay ahead of the AMD Athlon X2 BE-2300 on all grounds except power consumption. And as shown in our article dedicated to that processor, it's not much of a power saver over the Intel counterpart. Plus factor in the vast overclocking potential of the Pentium Dual-Core processors, you certainly can't go wrong with them. We highly recommend this Intel series in the budget group of processors be it for normal use or for overclocking. The same goes for the identical performing Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and the Pentium Dual-Core E2160 as the latter has the edge in price.

In the mid performance group whose price ranges between the US$100 and the US$200 category, the Core 2 Duo E4400 and the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ both offer great price performance indices. If you want more performance, the Core 2 Duo E6550, E6750 and the Athlon 64 X2 5600+ all offer compelling price points worthy of consideration. The Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 and E6320 processors are not recommended for their price points as E6550 and E6750 supersedes their performance at the same price. Clearly, they are on their way out of the market, but it will be sometime before those stocks deplete. So beware of them unless there's a great bargain on them.

Over in the high-end processor group of above US$200, it seems that the Core 2 Quad Q6600 offers the best bang for the buck, but beware of the application mix you throw at it. Those that do benefit from the quad processing cores, your money is well spent on this CPU. However, if you feel that most of what you're running is single-threaded or lightly-threaded, you're better off with the fastest Core 2 Duo, the E6850 processor. It's difficult to say how much software will mature in the next year as it has taken some time for dual-cores to show their advantage and it will be more time yet before quad-cores reciprocate in the same manner. Game developers say that the upcoming games around the year-end and early next year would have much better support for quad-core processors, but we really can't vouch anything till the actual goods arrive. For the moment, if you belong to the group of heavy multi-taskers who transcode videos often while gaming or performing other system maintenance tasks like running anti-virus and the likes, quad-core offers you a much smoother experience and room to cram even more tasks in parallel.

However we remind you once again that our recommendations are quite generalized after much averaging of the workloads and results to obtain a single measure of comparison for each processor. This is useful if you are not sure what to choose, but if you have specific usage model(s), we urge you to compare the individual performance results for a more targeted outlook suiting your needs. Another catch to the price performance index is that this only takes into account of the processor's price and not of the platform. Intel's platforms tend to be a little pricier as opposed to those supporting AMD processors and a perfect example is the Intel P35 Express class motherboard. There are numerous variables on the motherboard aspect and the choices made are very much based on user preferences. Thus, this cannot be accurately accounted for in our article. Overall, this is our attempt at making sense of price and performance. It does not intend to be a tell-all definitive chart as other factors like heat dissipation and power consumption were not considered, thus, these factors can tip the balance of the charts as well. The term performance in this chart basically means 'raw' performance and nothing more.

With that note, this brings us to the end of the article and we hope it has helped you as an important point of reference to make more informed purchase decisions on your next processor upgrade and even serve as a base of comparison against the upcoming processors. The new class of processors from Intel and AMD are just around the corner but we expect most would be high-end processors, which shouldn't affect much of the processors compared in this article. Remember this time last year, we were comparing processors of much higher value than today and thanks to the heated competition between AMD and Intel, the bulk of the processors are well below the US$200 mark. This might change with the new influx of processors, but that's another topic waiting to be unraveled when the time is right. So for now hold that thought as the year is almost drawing to an end, and with that more exciting hardware awaits us all with www.hardwarezone.com in the thick of the action covering the scoop.

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