Pentium 4 vs Core i3 (GHz confusion)

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vintom

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Dec 9, 2013
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Hi all

At present I have A DESKTOP
Pentium-4,
2.6 GHZ,
1.5 GB RAM

But now i am planning to buy a Laptop.

So i went to retail stores and the dealer showed me
Core I3 3rd gen Laptop of Dell/ HP/ Acer but those were just 1.8 Ghz. Some were 1.6 Ghz


So my question is :

Will a Core i3 (1.8 Ghz) laptop be able to provide more speed and performance than a Pentium-4 (2.6 Ghz) Desktop ?

Why do Core i3 processors have less Ghz ?
I am not able to make a decision due to less GHz of Core i3 (3rd gen).

Please clear my confusion.

I mostly work in Coreldraw and Adobe Photoshop.

Thanks
Vineet
 
Solution
Intel has made some significant improvements since the single core Pentium 4 were released over 10 years ago.

At the same clockspeed, a single CPU core in an Ivy Bridge CPU is probably about 50% - 60% more powerful than a Pentium 4. Plus the P4 lack more modern instruction sets found in recent generation Intel CPUs. The lack of these instruction sets means that the P4 would perform very poorly with some modern day applications.

The number of cores can help improve performance and nowadays 2 cores is the minimum. However, the performance do not increase linearly with the number of cores. Meaning a quad core i5 CPU is not 2x more powerful than a dual core i3 CPU. The overall performance would be better than just a dual core CPU in...

Traciatim

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Pretty much ignore Ghz if you are comparing across processor generations. If you look at benchmarks instead a Pentium 4 at 3.7Ghz scored 539 on Passmark's CPU bench where as an Intel Core i3-3110M running at 2.40GHz scored 3080. . . Over 5 and a half times quicker.

You can look them up on www.cpubenchmark.net for a quick and rough guide on raw number crunching performance.
 

wanderer11

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It is meaningless to compare the clock speed of two different architectures of cpu. Do you think every 4.0L engine is more powerful than every 3.8L? The answer is no. The i3 will be much more powerful than the pentium-4.
 

thdarkshadow

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An i3 at 500mhz would be more powerful than a Pentium 4. Clock speed is only a way to compare an i3 to another i3 in the same generation. There have been a lot of architectural enhancements since Pentium 4 so modern CPUs clocked much lower can be way better and much more efficient.
 

spiketheaardvark

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More than likely your Pentium 4 is a single core processor, while the i3 is dual core and supports multi-threading. Even if it is a dual core, Intel has also made huge strides in the instructions per clock since the very bad p4s. I know my 1.8gHz Core2 laptop was faster than the old 2.6 p4 dells we have a work and it's quite a bit older. While the i3 are bottom rung it will almost certainly out perform a p4. That said, I'd suggest you consider bumping up to an i5. The cost difference is usually small for what you get. But, unless you're doing big image files or running some crazy filters you should be fine.
 

vintom

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Hi all

Thanks for your suggestions and clearing my confusion.

Another thing i would like to know whether
Intel HD 4000 Integrated graphic card will be enough to watching online videos or online HD streaming videos.

Or will i need to buy a graphic card for watching videos/ HD Videos online ?

Thanks
Vineet
 

Traciatim

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The HD4000 is great for any 2D style work like your desktop, office apps, movies . . . the only thing it's really terrible at are 3D games.

 
Intel has made some significant improvements since the single core Pentium 4 were released over 10 years ago.

At the same clockspeed, a single CPU core in an Ivy Bridge CPU is probably about 50% - 60% more powerful than a Pentium 4. Plus the P4 lack more modern instruction sets found in recent generation Intel CPUs. The lack of these instruction sets means that the P4 would perform very poorly with some modern day applications.

The number of cores can help improve performance and nowadays 2 cores is the minimum. However, the performance do not increase linearly with the number of cores. Meaning a quad core i5 CPU is not 2x more powerful than a dual core i3 CPU. The overall performance would be better than just a dual core CPU in many, but not all scenarios.

The Intel HD 4000 is fine for HD video playback. I believe it is also capable of playing back 4K resolution video. However, since 4K has not even replaced 1080p yet, it should not be an issue.

 
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beyondlogic

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If your going to stream videos adobe photoshop etc you will probly want to go with a amds apu

i would suggest looking at A8-5550M 2.1GHz quad-core processor or a8 5557m depending on retailer why there are 2 models of this chip who knows lol

a8 is a quad core processor with a much better graphics chip then intel but intel has faster processors.


http://www.walmart.com/ip/Lenovo-Black-15.6-G505s-Laptop-PC-with-AMD-A8-5550M-Quad-Core-Processor-4GB-Memory-500GB-Hard-Drive-and-Windows-8/30253240
 
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