Ten Year Anniversary of Core 2 Duo and Conroe

[frozentundra123456]

Yes, but the problem is, the power savings are not really driving the market. They show up in 3 main areas:

1. Laptops/ultrabooks. Performance has not even improved that much for the mainstream. We have gone from 35 watt laptops chips to 15 watt chips with similar performance. Yes the lower power gives better battery life and thinner, lighter ultrabooks, but I think most people use their laptops plugged in, and ultrabooks are so expensive they are more or less a niche product.

2. Mobile (phones, tablets): a disaster in this segment. We got some useful low end atom tablets, which are rapidly dying out due to market saturation and lack of "contra revenue", and the ultra-expensive Surface Pro and similar, again too expensive for the vast majority of consumers. And phones, well that was a money pit for intel which gave the consumer nothing.

3. Desktops: again, some performance improvements, but the reduced power consumption is a minor factor in most cases.

So really for the consumer, very little reason to upgrade from a Core 2 Quad or high clocked dual core, except for gamers and other heavy users, which are a small minority.

My primary desktop/light gaming machine is an i5 2320 at stock, and my work computer is an E8600 or E8400, not sure which. In any case, in normal use I can tell very little difference between the two. I also have an E4500 desktop, which is a low end Core 2 Duo, and that *does* feel slow compared to the other 2 machines.

 

[Eug]

Yes, but the problem is, the power savings are not really driving the market. They show up in 3 main areas:

1. Laptops/ultrabooks. Performance has not even improved that much for the mainstream. We have gone from 35 watt laptops chips to 15 watt chips with similar performance. Yes the lower power gives better battery life and thinner, lighter ultrabooks, but I think most people use their laptops plugged in, and ultrabooks are so expensive they are more or less a niche product.

2. Mobile (phones, tablets): a disaster in this segment. We got some useful low end atom tablets, which are rapidly dying out due to market saturation and lack of "contra revenue", and the ultra-expensive Surface Pro and similar, again too expensive for the vast majority of consumers. And phones, well that was a money pit for intel which gave the consumer nothing.

3. Desktops: again, some performance improvements, but the reduced power consumption is a minor factor in most cases.

So really for the consumer, very little reason to upgrade from a Core 2 Quad or high clocked dual core, except for gamers and other heavy users, which are a small minority.

My primary desktop/light gaming machine is an i5 2320 at stock, and my work computer is an E8600 or E8400, not sure which. In any case, in normal use I can tell very little difference between the two. I also have an E4500 desktop, which is a low end Core 2 Duo, and that *does* feel slow compared to the other 2 machines.

Actually, out of the half-dozen laptops my family and friends have bought in the last couple of years, all except one has been an ultrabook. The "except one" was a MacBook Pro. And several consistently carry them around. The 11.6" and 12" models fit nicely in large women's purses I'm told.

BTW, your desktop E4500 is even slower than my laptop P8400. But even those are relatively OK for basic surfing with SSD IMO. Not fast, but not bad. The P8400 is still my primary laptop for the time being actually.

I happened to have already posted on this in the other thread here so I'll quote myself:

Some of my machines:

Workplace desktop: Dual-core Pentium G840 2.8 GHz (PassMark 2586), 4 GB RAM, HDD, Win 7. Surfing on it is mediocre. Too much disk thrashing.
Home desktop: Triple-core Athlon II X3 435 2.9 GHz (PassMark 2485), 8 GB RAM, SSD, Win 10. Surfing on it is very good.
Home desktop: Quad-core Core i7 870 2.93 GHz (PassMark 5459), 12 GB RAM, Firewire 800 SSD, Mac OS X 10.11. Surfing on it is very good.
Home desktop: Dual-core Core Duo 2.0 GHz T2500 (PassMark 876), 2 GB RAM, HDD, Mac OS X 10.6. Surfing on it is poor, for multiple reasons.
Home nettop: Dual-core Atom 330 1.6 GHz (PassMark 596), 3.12 GB RAM, SSD, Win 10: Surfing on it is absolutely horrible.
Home laptop: Dual-core Pentium SU4100 1.3 GHz (PassMark 873), 4 GB RAM, SSD, Win 10. Surfing on it sucks.
Home laptop: Dual-core Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz P8400 (PassMark 1471), 4 GB RAM, SSD, Mac OS X 10.11. Surfing on it is OK.
Home laptop: Dual-core Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz T8300 (PassMark 1493), 4 GB RAM, SSD, Mac OS X 10.7. Surfing on it is OK but is limited by lack of hardware GPU h.264 decode and limited browser support.

What does this tell me for web browsing?
1. Slow CPUs are bad, but higher clocked CPUs even from 5 years ago are fine.
2. HDD bad, SSD good.
3. 4 GB not quite enough. 8+ GB needed.
4. On a Mac, you need one of the latest iterations of OS X for proper browser support.
5. You need hardware h.264 decode support.

Given these results, I'd say any current desktop Core i3 would be fine for surfing, and as long as you have a modern OS, 8+ GB RAM, and SSD.

I agree with you about the desktop though. My AMD desktop has a 95 W CPU, but the thing is absolutely silent (now that I have an SSD installed) so I don't care. Since with basic business usage most of its time is in the idle state, the fan never ramps up.

 

[SPBHM]

the annoying thing is that until sandy bridge cheap laptops used to have 35W CPUs,
so if you take the typical cheap i3-i5 laptop from 2011-2012 and compare it to a more current one (all 15W CPUs), the performance increase is ridiculous (apart from the IGP)
and you might think battery life is way better, but, not really, they use lower capacity batteries...

at least this was my experience with Broadwell (i3 5005U) vs sandy bridge on cheap 14-15" laptops.

 

[Termie]

Just as impressive was the huge gamble Intel took moving from Core 2 to Core i. Not only was the name derided, but performance in 2008 applications was disappointing, with the Core i7-920 often losing to the q9650.

Today the Core i architecture has proven its worth. If only Intel would deliver another daring breakthrough like that.

 

[Roland00Address]

Yes, but the problem is, the power savings are not really driving the market. They show up in 3 main areas:

1. Laptops/ultrabooks. Performance has not even improved that much for the mainstream. We have gone from 35 watt laptops chips to 15 watt chips with similar performance. Yes the lower power gives better battery life and thinner, lighter ultrabooks, but I think most people use their laptops plugged in, and ultrabooks are so expensive they are more or less a niche product.

Speaking as a person who used to do laptop sales, this can't be further from the truth. There is a huge deal with selling a 7lb laptop vs a 4lb laptop (this was the case in the core 2 duo generation of 2007 to 2010). There is also a big deal with selling a 2lb laptop vs a 4lb laptop.

Oh furthemore the laptop brick is often 1 lb, but it is more than that, all those wires and such. Pretty much since sandy bridge people have been using their laptops without having them plugged in and if they do use it plugged in its half and half like a hybrid car where X miles is without the power adapter and then if they still need to use the laptop for the rest of the day they go to a dedicated spot like the couch, or the kitchen table and they plug it in for the remaining time of use.

Furthermore much of the switch to tablets where driven by two factors, even though with tablets you get a subpar performance compared to laptops.

1) Better screens (and for the early years of tablets you could only get the IPS better screens in small form factors due to quadratic function used with the backplane used for the lcd monitor. It was not until improvements with more leds combined with a new technology that is called e-ips do we see great screens in notebooks)

2) Lighter and able to be used without being plugged in for 8+ hours a day.

Less viruses aka number 3 was less important than 1 and 2. One way you can tell this is that both windows tablets and android and apple tablets were selling much better than computers where these newer devices were hollowing out and stealing laptop market share.

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[poofyhairguy]

Just as impressive was the huge gamble Intel took moving from Core 2 to Core i. Not only was the name derided, but performance in 2008 applications was disappointing, with the Core i7-920 often losing to the q9650.

Today the Core i architecture has proven its worth. If only Intel would deliver another daring breakthrough like that.

Isn't that what Knights Landing is supposed to be?

 

[whm1974]

Isn't that what Knights Landing is supposed to be?

Yeah but that's more for servers and supercomputers, not desktops.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My primary desktop/light gaming machine is an i5 2320 at stock, and my work computer is an E8600 or E8400, not sure which. In any case, in normal use I can tell very little difference between the two. I also have an E4500 desktop, which is a low end Core 2 Duo, and that *does* feel slow compared to the other 2 machines.

E4500 has only a 200 FSB. (QDR = 800)

 

[frozentundra123456]

Speaking as a person who used to do laptop sales, this can't be further from the truth. There is a huge deal with selling a 7lb laptop vs a 4lb laptop (this was the case in the core 2 duo generation of 2007 to 2010). There is also a big deal with selling a 2lb laptop vs a 4lb laptop.

Oh furthemore the laptop brick is often 1 lb, but it is more than that, all those wires and such. Pretty much since sandy bridge people have been using their laptops without having them plugged in and if they do use it plugged in its half and half like a hybrid car where X miles is without the power adapter and then if they still need to use the laptop for the rest of the day they go to a dedicated spot like the couch, or the kitchen table and they plug it in for the remaining time of use.

Furthermore much of the switch to tablets where driven by two factors, even though with tablets you get a subpar performance compared to laptops.

1) Better screens (and for the early years of tablets you could only get the IPS better screens in small form factors due to quadratic function used with the backplane used for the lcd monitor. It was not until improvements with more leds combined with a new technology that is called e-ips do we see great screens in notebooks)

2) Lighter and able to be used without being plugged in for 8+ hours a day.

Less viruses aka number 3 was less important than 1 and 2. One way you can tell this is that both windows tablets and android and apple tablets were selling much better than computers where these newer devices were hollowing out and stealing laptop market share.

--------

I must be on the wrong side of the tracks i guess. My wife, son, daughter, and grandson all have laptops, and none of them are ultrabooks. In fact, i dont know one single person that has an ultrabook, not one.

 

[Eug]

I must be on the wrong side of the tracks i guess. My wife, son, daughter, and grandson all have laptops, and none of them are ultrabooks. In fact, i dont know one single person that has an ultrabook, not one.

They do hit different markets, but yeah, ultrabooks are becoming very popular. I for one won't buy another laptop much over 3 lbs. In fact, my goal is closer to 2 lbs.

Interestingly, that means no current MacBook Pro meets that criterion, as all of them are 3.5 lbs or more. The MacBook Airs fit the bill at under 3 lbs for a 13", but I don't like the screens on those, so I haven't bought one of those either. Then there is the 12" MacBook which meets the form factor I've been lusting after for years and the screen on it is beautiful, but I don't like its keyboard so much and I would prefer to have more than one USB port. But it's oh so light at 2 lbs. Even with the slower Core M CPU, I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it had a higher travel keyboard.

So, I will be waiting for the 2016 revamp of the MacBook Pro 13" and the MacBook 12" version 2. I betcha the MBP 13" will come in at a shade over 3 lbs, not much more than the current MacBook Air. My dilemma will be whether I can stand the much higher weight of the MacBook Pro (even though that weight will likely be only a little over 3 lbs I'm predicting) or if I can stand the low travel keyboard of the MacBook.

BTW, I use my iPad Air 2 more than my laptop, and that thing is less than 1 lb. That is a tough act to follow in terms of weight.

 

[Blitzvogel]

C2D E4400 + Radeon 7750 for funsies Inspiron 530

To be fair, the machine likely would've faired much better with more RAM, an SSD, and Windows 7. E4400 still gets slaughtered for the most part.

 

[Roland00Address]

I must be on the wrong side of the tracks i guess. My wife, son, daughter, and grandson all have laptops, and none of them are ultrabooks. In fact, i dont know one single person that has an ultrabook, not one.

One of the things you find out selling computers is people do not buy an ultrabook just because it is an ultrabook. Instead they are buying a new computer due to some reason. Their old computer broke, their old computer is full of viruses, their old computer gets no battery life, their old computer is damn slow, etc.

And given this opportunity to "start over" their priorities of what they want is completely different. And during this new opportunity to seek out a new machine what they search out for is not speed, but instead price, portability (weight), size, and screen quality.

Power is an abstract concept like am I safe in society (thing like police, terrorism, societal conflict etc).

Things like weight, price, battery, screen are directly observable and are always at the forefront of the person who is deciding to buy the computer.

------

And even when ultrabooks were not selling well it was not due to the size of the computer it was due to the price and the fact that ultrabooks had more expensive storage for until recently solid state storage was very expensive. Get rid of the solid state part and you will see numerous people buy slimmer and lighter computers with both intel and amd cpus.

It became such a big deal that we saw the disappearance of 17" computers except in niche markets, followed by a reduction of 15" and 14" becoming the new standard for big laptops.

 

[jpiniero]

Ultrabook form factor or not, the 15W U models is Intel's best selling laptop processor now.... especially now that the 28W U is Iris only. Have to wonder if that will move to 4.5W Y when Cannonlake shows up.

 

[Eug]

Ultrabook form factor or not, the 15W U models is Intel's best selling laptop processor now.... especially now that the 28W U is Iris only. Have to wonder if that will move to 4.5W Y when Cannonlake shows up.

Dammit you. I keep telling myself that I will buy Kaby Lake, but the draw of 4.5W Cannonlake like that is alluded to in your post makes me pause. But I don't really want to wait that long.

 

[nerp]

Roland00Address is SPOT on. I'm in a unique position because I work with people who see computers as tools and appliances and don't really know specs but do care about "speed" and screen and weight. He describes the usage shift I've seen in coworkers, family members and even my wife over the past few years. People want something they can flip open, be fast and easy, slap shut, tossed on the bed, always ready to go and maybe charge up overnight or every couple of days, like their phone. Very few people would consider a desktop computer, even if they have a home office with plenty of space. They'd rather it look like a Pottery barn catalog with a shiny laptop on the desk with no wires blending in with the decor.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Very few people would consider a desktop computer, even if they have a home office with plenty of space. They'd rather it look like a Pottery barn catalog with a shiny laptop on the desk with no wires blending in with the decor.

Yeah, that does seem to be the case.

 

[guachi]

Given these results, I'd say any current desktop Core i3 would be fine for surfing, and as long as you have a modern OS, 8+ GB RAM, and SSD.

This is probably why my six year old PII x4 965 lasted me so long.

Win7 - modern enough OS
8GB RAM - 4 would have been way too low considering my uses. A good use of the $200 it cost me at the time
Intel SSD - A very expensive $450 for 160GB that filled way too quickly, but exceptionally useful.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Given these results, I'd say any current desktop Core i3 would be fine for surfing, and as long as you have a modern OS, 8+ GB RAM, and SSD.

Would you say the same about a Core2Quad? Looking to upgrade a friend's C2D dual-core rig with 4GB and a HDD (already has Win7 64-bit), to a quad-core with 8GB and an SSD, and possibly a video card if they can swing the $$$.

 

[Eug]

Would you say the same about a Core2Quad? Looking to upgrade a friend's C2D dual-core rig with 4GB and a HDD (already has Win7 64-bit), to a quad-core with 8GB and an SSD, and possibly a video card if they can swing the $$$.

I've never used a Core 2 Quad, but if decently clocked then I'd assume a really nice boost over C2D. But wasn't that you saying the CPU was just a $17 upgrade? Assuming the mobo is compatible, then do it! That's what I spent on breakfast the other day.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Who cares about power consumption? If the hefty usage of electrons is causing your room to heat up, buy a window AC and add to it. Burn that flame, man! Burn it!

 

[eton975]

Who cares about power consumption? If the hefty usage of electrons is causing your room to heat up, buy a window AC and add to it. Burn that flame, man! Burn it!

Energy = $$$$$

 

[Roland00Address]

Who cares about power consumption? If the hefty usage of electrons is causing your room to heat up, buy a window AC and add to it. Burn that flame, man! Burn it!

Consumers
Power Consumption translates to Heat, Heat translates to device form factor. Less heat means you can do devices that was not possible with greater amounts of heat.

Power Consumption must be fed by either 1) Power directly from the wall or 2) Battery

Form Factor makes computers more useful. By having portable computers always in your pocket with all day battery life, you can keep new forms of sensors, new forms of communication always on you. You are now augment the human body and human knowledge with these artificial tools. Human civilization advances due to creating artificial tools to do things our bodies can not, to increase efficiency and speed of doing tasks using artifact tools, to build bigger things that we could not possibly do without the tools. Form Factor and all day battery life allows us to add new things to our human being even if they are not integrated into our body directly, even if these electronics are not part of our DNA.




Server / Businesses
Power Consumption translates to Heat and it takes 3 times as much energy to lower a degree of heat than it does to heat up a degree of energy.

Devices need to be maintained within a certain range of temperatures or failure rates increase, and/or the device does not work at all.

Power Consumption means power, power costs $$$$. When you use the hardware 24/7 like Servers and other business hardware does, power equals lots of money so much so that businesses do not just upgrade due to faster speeds but also do to reductions of power even if performance stays the same.

 

[sxr7171]

Yes, but the problem is, the power savings are not really driving the market. They show up in 3 main areas:

1. Laptops/ultrabooks. Performance has not even improved that much for the mainstream. We have gone from 35 watt laptops chips to 15 watt chips with similar performance. Yes the lower power gives better battery life and thinner, lighter ultrabooks, but I think most people use their laptops plugged in, and ultrabooks are so expensive they are more or less a niche product.

2. Mobile (phones, tablets): a disaster in this segment. We got some useful low end atom tablets, which are rapidly dying out due to market saturation and lack of "contra revenue", and the ultra-expensive Surface Pro and similar, again too expensive for the vast majority of consumers. And phones, well that was a money pit for intel which gave the consumer nothing.

3. Desktops: again, some performance improvements, but the reduced power consumption is a minor factor in most cases.

So really for the consumer, very little reason to upgrade from a Core 2 Quad or high clocked dual core, except for gamers and other heavy users, which are a small minority.

My primary desktop/light gaming machine is an i5 2320 at stock, and my work computer is an E8600 or E8400, not sure which. In any case, in normal use I can tell very little difference between the two. I also have an E4500 desktop, which is a low end Core 2 Duo, and that *does* feel slow compared to the other 2 machines.

I remember a time when for fun I would configure a Thinkpad ultraportable into the $4000s. Now they are relatively expensive but you can get some really good ones for 3 figures. In fact the X1 carbon is going for $950 at Lenovo right now.

You can configure those to around $2K but with today's machines and CPUs I don't see the point of getting much more than the base model. They all perform about the same for what I would use it for. Every laptop I've ever bought (with one exception) has been an ultraportable and I'm spending on average half of what I used to.

I think the people buying the $400-800 machines are entry level students (not engineering) but consumers with jobs used to light tablets are likely to spend the extra few hundred to get a light machine. Right now there are contenders from every manufacturer that all could be had for less than $1k and in some cases $800. Some iPads cost more if you can believe that. Dell, HP, Samsung, Lenovo, all have great ultraportables. On both their business/pro and consumer sides. The new thing is seeing so many consumer ultraportables, they used to all be expensive business machines only.

 

[therealnickdanger]

My friends and relatives always ask for my opinion about what computer to buy and they always have some preformed opinion about brand quality or know that they "need Intel" or "moar jigabits". I usually recommend something with a quality camera (for chat) and an SSD. Then they go buy the latest $299-349 POS that breaks after their kids touch it for 5 seconds.

"They don't make 'em like they used to."
"Kids? No... no they don't."

 

[Eug]

My friends and relatives always ask for my opinion about what computer to buy and they always have some preformed opinion about brand quality or know that they "need Intel" or "moar jigabits". I usually recommend something with a quality camera (for chat) and an SSD. Then they go buy the latest $299-349 POS that breaks after their kids touch it for 5 seconds.

"They don't make 'em like they used to."
"Kids? No... no they don't."

Heh. A while back... over a decade ago in fact... my boss came to me and asked what laptop to buy for business app type use. I told her to get something with a mid-range processor, lots of RAM, a mid-size screen, and light weight and gave her a few examples.

So a month later I see her in her office with her new computer, which was a giant gaming laptop with top-of-the-line CPU and big screen, and it weighed something like 7 lbs. She had ignored my advice and took the advice of her young son, who obviously had a different bias in computers. She lasted a few months with it before getting something else... that had a mid-range processor, a mid-size screen, and lighter weight.

Now, ALL of the boss types here have ultrabooks. So at least they're learning, some of them through experience the hard way.

That said, I'm still using my CAD$399 POS (US$ more like $300) that I bought back in 2009. Stuck an SSD in it, upgraded the keyboard to a US English keyboard ($20 from eBay), getting rid of that stupid multilingual one with short shift keys, and installed Win 10 on it eventually. Slow as hell in 2016 terms, with crappy screen, but it works, and it's not my primary laptop. I bought it mainly as a netbook but couldn't stand the bazillion Atom based netbooks out there with the tiny keyboards and Windows 7 Starter or whatever. I found them unusable. At least this Core 2 Duo sibling, a 1.3 GHz Pentium SU4100, was usable, and had hardware h.264 decode support as well, for just $100 more or so over an Atom netbook.

That reminds me. I also tell people not to get the POS laptops for their primary laptops because they usually have bad screens and here in Canada, irritating multi-lingual keyboards. It's not until the mid-range do you get better screens and a choice of keyboard types. But people often don't realize this until after the fact.