How do you measure cpu performance?

[Pooherino ツ]

I know that you can do benchmarks and stuff. But can you tell a cpu performance or at least get an idea from just looking at the spec? Is it just related to cores and speed?

[Curufinwe_wins]

With a stick.

[arronleeds]

I know that you can do benchmarks and stuff. But can you tell a cpu performance or at least get an idea from just looking at the spec? Is it just related to cores and speed?

best way is to benchmark and compare to others, ram speed can affect cpu scores.

 

looking at specs can and cannot tell you, example look at amd cpus, more cores but theyre a lot less powerful than intel cores.

 

but then looking at cache can tell you whats going to be better than what.

[Pooherino ツ]

best way is to benchmark and compare to others, ram speed can affect cpu scores.

 

looking at specs can and cannot tell you, example look at amd cpus, more cores but theyre a lot less powerful than nvidia cores.

 

but then looking at cache can tell you whats going to be better than what.

yeah you're right. Did you mean intel cores? not nvidia

[OAcesync]

best way is to benchmark and compare to others, ram speed can affect cpu scores.

 

looking at specs can and cannot tell you, example look at amd cpus, more cores but theyre a lot less powerful than nvidia cores.

Didn't know Nvidia did CPUs

[DXMember]

I know that you can do benchmarks and stuff. But can you tell a cpu performance or at least get an idea from just looking at the spec? Is it just related to cores and speed?

Īt's never related to cores or speed.

The only way to measure cpu performance and any computer component or computer as a whole system is by doing benchmarks that represent the workflow you intend it to use for. For example it's useless to measure how many memory IO operations the CPU can perform if all you will be doing consists of floating point operations

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

Eh, it's hard to tell just from specs as there isn't a spec for instructions per clock... your best bet is reading reviews and benchmarks.

[Komplett]

Intel has faster cores

 

An i5 with 4 cores is the same as an FX8350 in multithreaded performance, (4 vs 8 cores) But in single threaded the i5 is way ahead.

 

[Me1z]

Clock speed and cores can be used when comparing two CPUs from the same architecture (Skylake, Haswell, etc). Outside of that you need to use benchmarks and personal experience. After a while you start to memorize the performance levels of certain models at different speeds and that makes cross architecture comparisons possible. So yes, you technically can tell a CPUs performance just by looking at it specs, but not without prior knowledge.

[Curufinwe_wins]

I know that you can do benchmarks and stuff. But can you tell a cpu performance or at least get an idea from just looking at the spec? Is it just related to cores and speed?

Seriously though. There are benchmark suites, but generally it works like this.

 

Since the first core I series (and actually for as long back as core2duo, the pentium 4 was the most recent case I can think of a cpu's replacement temporarily being worse than it was.) basically its the newer the generation at the same clock the better.

 

 

At the same clock speed (VERY VERY ROUGH GUIDE):

first gen +20%=second gen

second gen+8%=third gen

third gen+8%=fourth gen

fourth gen +7%=fifth gen

fifth gen +2%= sixth gen (this is due to the removal of l4 cache which massively empowered broadwell on many applications that happened to be able to use it)

 

fourth gen + 5-10%=sixth gen (unfortunately in gaming there is basically no benefit)

 

AMD clock for clock is on par with first gen i7s (depending on application)

 

As far as cores. 4 is min good, 4 is max needed ever, 6 is coolio, 8 is a waste (unless its AMD in which case moar cores or its literally not worth the stock cooler it comes with).

[Tedol]

Now you can't say which is better just watching  at theirs  specs

You must be constructor, to really fain something

[Electronics Wizardy]

I know that you can do benchmarks and stuff. But can you tell a cpu performance or at least get an idea from just looking at the spec? Is it just related to cores and speed?

They only time you can compare core cound and speed is when they are the same archtecure. For exapmle a i7 at 4ghz will be about 2x the speed of the same i7 at 2GHZ

[Curufinwe_wins]

Now you can't say which is better just watching  at theirs  specs

You must be constructor, to really fain something

Just saying that once you know your way around the previous generations and current architectures its pretty easy to with around 95% certainty say what product is better (at least when looking at single core performance) just from a spec sheet.

[arronleeds]

Didn't know Nvidia did CPUs

fuck i meant intel brah.

[mikat]

I know that you can do benchmarks and stuff. But can you tell a cpu performance or at least get an idea from just looking at the spec? Is it just related to cores and speed?

if they are the exact same in every other way example: 

http://ark.intel.com/compare/80909,80910

then yes you can go by clock speed, otherwise benchmarks are the way to go