It's an interesting premise, but almost everything they tested will significantly favor multi-core/multi-socket systems, and newer CPUs with newer instruction set enhancements. There should've been a "second half" where they looked at more common 2002-2004 era benchmarks or applications also.

There was a similar highly publicized article like this at I think TomsHardware or something like that. I don't remember there ever being such fascination with comparing newer CPUs against the P3 or P2 when they got old, but the P4 draws a lot of these types of comparisons for some reason.
The P4 was at a peak of high wattage processor designs prior to any meaningful power management, and with rare exception didn't yet have multi-core (and those that do are extremely power hungry), so it's easy for it to look awful in modern comparisons like this.

shamino wrote:

There was a similar highly publicized article like this at I think TomsHardware or something like that.

I've seen the one where they took Core 2 chips and compared them to Core i5/i7 stuff, but not one with P4.

I don't remember there ever being such fascination with comparing newer CPUs against the P3 or P2 when they got old, but the P4 draws a lot of these types of comparisons for some reason.

I don't remember it either, and I also don't remember there being so much vitriol directed at either P2/P3 or P4 back in the day either.

So AMD's "crappy" FX-8350 encodes H.264 video over 19 times faster than a P4. That's actually quite amusing. 🙄

Standard Def Steve wrote:

So AMD's "crappy" FX-8350 encodes H.264 video over 19 times faster than a P4. That's actually quite amusing. 🙄

How is an FX-8350 crappy in any way? That thing is a beast no matter which way you slice it.

I don't think the FX is crappy, but it sure catches a lot of flak on tech forums. You know, with people calling it AMD's Pentium 4 and all.

They run hotter, draw more power, have worse IPC than the main competitor's alternatives. The difference is that the P4 was like that by design, the AMDs became that way because AMD is having a hard time catching up with Intel's R&D. Still, just like a P4, they can be useful, and there are situations where getting one of them makes sense.

alexanrs wrote:

They run hotter, draw more power, have worse IPC than the main competitor's alternatives. The difference is that the P4 was like that by design, the AMDs became that way because AMD is having a hard time catching up with Intel's R&D. Still, just like a P4, they can be useful, and there are situations where getting one of them makes sense.

like a tight budget, hince why im running an FX6300 and ocd it to 4.5 because It costs the same as the lowest i3 but oc'd preforms like an i5. But its not like a P4 at all, see you arn't paying 2x the price for .5 the preformance

candle_86 wrote:

alexanrs wrote:

They run hotter, draw more power, have worse IPC than the main competitor's alternatives. The difference is that the P4 was like that by design, the AMDs became that way because AMD is having a hard time catching up with Intel's R&D. Still, just like a P4, they can be useful, and there are situations where getting one of them makes sense.

like a tight budget, hince why im running an FX6300 and ocd it to 4.5 because It costs the same as the lowest i3 but oc'd preforms like an i5. But its not like a P4 at all, see you arn't paying 2x the price for .5 the preformance

+1. I started out with a small budget and a free dual core am3 cpu, so am3+ was a great platform to build from. Like most people I barely utilize half of the potential of my fx-8350.

shamino wrote:

There was a similar highly publicized article like this at I think TomsHardware or something like that. I don't remember there ever being such fascination with comparing newer CPUs against the P3 or P2 when they got old, but the P4 draws a lot of these types of comparisons for some reason.

You don't by accident mean the Benchmark Marathon?
Comparison of 65 CPUs from P100 to P4 3.06GHz/Athlon XP 3000+. I like this article.

I think what I must have been remembering was this "P4 vs Atom" article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-d510 … ettop,2649.html
It's older than I thought, and it wasn't comparing the P4 to more powerful modern chips, just the Atom.