The Core 2 Quad Q8400: Intel's $183 Phenom II 940 Competitor
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 7, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
It took dual-core chips falling below $200 to start increasing their prevalence in the market, and today only one of our standard CPU tests won't see a performance increase from a dual core chip. I believe we're at the beginning of that same transition for quad-core CPUs. Many of our tests show a benefit from having four cores over two but in the next two years that should change significantly. The advent of GPU computing and the impending release of Larrabee will both bring about more focus on multi-threaded development. In the coming years a new group of applications that can run on both GPUs and multi-core CPUs will cement the transistion from applications that struggle to stress more than two cores to applications that scale to a virutally infinite number of cores.
The sheer affordability of quad-core processors today is impressive; $180 - $190 will buy you a Core 2 Quad Q8400 (2.66GHz/4MB L2), a Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz/6MB L2) or a Phenom II X4 940 (3.0GHz). Whether you go dual or quad is really a personal choice depending on the types of apps you run. If you look at our SYSMark 2007 results you’ll see that the E8500 is a better choice overall. Personally I’d opt for the quad core but that’s because when I’m most performance constrained it’s in applications that scale well to four cores, but if you don't do any 3D rendering or video encoding (or heavy multitasking between two multithreaded apps) then a fast dual-core may make the most sense for you today. If you're buying for a system that you plan on keeping for 3 - 5 years however, I suspect that quad-core is the way to go.
Between the Q8400 and the Phenom II X4 940, at stock clock speeds, the 940 is the way to go unless you're very concerned about power consumption or happen to be running applications that are very well optimized for Intel's Core architecture. Update #2: Intel has just confirmed that the Core 2 Quad Q8400 does support Intel's VT-x from the start, so the update below is incorrect. The Q8300, E5400, E5300, E7500 and E7400 will also end up transitioning to versions with VT-x support as well but only the Q8400 supports it from launch. Update: As many readers have pointed out, the Q8400 does not support Intel's VT for hardware accelerated virtualization. Honestly it's silly that Intel is attempting to use VT as a profit driver at this point. Not supporting VT on any quad-core CPU just doesn't make sense. The Phenom does support AMD's hardware virtualization AMD-V, and thus gives it a tremendous leg up if you care about the feature.
If you plan on doing some light overclocking, the Q8400 has more inherent potential. Start bumping up core voltages and the Phenom II X4 940 regains strength as it's able to increase the clock speed advantage once more. Throw overclocking into the mix and the comparison isn't quite as clean cut, both AMD and Intel trade blows in their advantages. I'd say AMD would probably have more wins in our applications but at the expense of much greater power consumption.
It's good to see that there's competition here, but Intel's profit margin advantage on the Q8400 is ridiculous. AMD has to sell something Nehalem sized for under $200 to remain relevant today. I'm far less concerned about who pulls ahead while overclocked and far more concerned about AMD's health at the end of all of this. Maybe the right way of looking at this isn't by talking about a 6% performance advantage, but instead talking about whether or not you want there to be a real competitor to Intel in the future. Maybe the Phenom II X4 940 should get the win here just to ensure we have an AMD to talk about in a couple of years...
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TA152H - Friday, May 8, 2009 - link
Because of Windows XP virtualization? Are you crazy?OK, here's a reality check for those who think Windows XP virtualization is the greatest thing since the Atom Bomb.
It's not, it's a kludge, and if you want Windows XP, get Windows XP. It's going to be slower, because virtualization does have overhead, and running it in some virtual mode isn't the same as running something in XP.
How many applications really only run in XP anyway???? Show me a software vendor in this day that only supports apps in XP, and I'll show you one that's going out of business, really soon. They're incompetent.
If you're a software vendor, whether you like it or not, Vista is taking over, simply because Microsoft has it pre-installed on the vast majority of machines.
Backwards compatibility of this type can be helpful in some situations, but the importance is getting way overblown. It's not a show-stopper for the vast majority of people buying a PC, price is, and the Pentium branded CPUs offered a lot of value for the performance they give, and are excellent products.
Judging them from something of limited use, on an operating system that has not even been released, about a feature Microsoft announced a few weeks ago, is completely unfair to Intel. Going back before the Microsoft announcement, did anyone think people would be using that feature much on a budget processor? It was a good way for Intel to avoid Pentiums being used in an unintended market. Now, they might change it, since the use is more universal, but it is hardly damning for them to not have included it.
I do not know when Microsoft decided to tell Intel about this, but, it could very well have been after Intel finalized their specifications on the chips. If Intel's next Pentiums do not have this feature, I might be a little less understanding of it, but really, it is does not remove them as a choice, because it is really not as useful as people are saying. I would probably never use the feature, virtually (no pun intended) all apps run on Vista now, or have a version that runs on it, and Windows XP apps running on Windows 7 will not be as fast as those running on Windows XP. I don't think I'll have too much need for this type of kludge. But if you do, get a processor that does support it.
GeorgeH - Friday, May 8, 2009 - link
Crazy? One can never be sure, but the voices say no.XP Mode is something most people will never need, use, or be aware of and is most definitely not the best thing since the "Atom Bomb." (Aside: If the "Atom Bomb" is your go-to comparison for all things great, you might want to do some crazy checks of your own.)
Both AMD and Intel offer about the same performance at the same price points in budget and midrange quad cores. However, AMD's offerings can perform tasks that Intel's simply cannot. Even if the chance of you wanting to perform those tasks is miniscule, you'd have to be a fool to select the hamstrung Intel offerings.
You can play the Intel apologist all you want, but the fact is that Intel deliberately disabled VT support in an attempt to force their customers into purchasing more expensive processors if they wanted a fully functional PC. Microsoft is blameless here; Intel simply got too greedy and as a result is now being caught with their pants down.
taisingera - Thursday, May 7, 2009 - link
They could do something like Q8310 or E7410 to show that there is a bit more value in the cpu.leomax999 - Thursday, May 7, 2009 - link
Intel has announced vt support for Q8300, E7400, E7500, E5300, E5400.So i dont see any reason why q8400 shouldnt get it.
http://www.tcmagazine.com/comments.php?shownews=25...">http://www.tcmagazine.com/comments.php?shownews=25...
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, May 8, 2009 - link
You are very correct - Intel just informed me that the Q8400 has VT-x from the start. The other CPUs you mentioned will get VT in the latest versions but I don't believe it's retroactive. I believe it's a new silicon revision for those chips that enables it, but all Q8400s have it.Take care,
Anand
piroroadkill - Thursday, May 7, 2009 - link
iirc amd-v is better than intel vtduploxxx - Thursday, May 7, 2009 - link
oh great 2 versions of cpu just because of painfull wrong marketing decissions in the past.way to go intel ....and what about all the other q8xxx series? or a full list of mobile cpu's
Samus - Thursday, May 7, 2009 - link
its just disabled in hardware, which means it can be re-enabled, just like cores can be re-enabled on phenom x3. just let someone figure it out. they will. they always do :)Roland00 - Friday, May 8, 2009 - link
you can re-enable the Phenom II tri cores for they were disabled via software.If the chip is disable via hardware (using a laser to disable parts of the chip) then there is nothing you can do to re-enable the chip. Then first generation Phenoms can't be re-enabled for it was disabled via hardware.
JumpingJack - Saturday, June 6, 2009 - link
Depends on how it is disabled. Fusing in a chip can be actual diabling of circuits or actual 1's and 0's that make the logic read by the BIOS at startup (such as CPUID), the CPUID then dictates from BIOS code feature sets etc. etc. that are enabled.This is how quads arise from tri-cores and dual cores from AMD -- the core is not physically fused off/disconnected, rather the BIOS reads a certain CPUID and identifies it as 'a tri-core'. In such a case, features can be turned 'on' or 'off' simply by updating the BIOS.