Barton or Thoroughbred

I'm confused. I want a new CPU, AMD 2800 to be precise. Here, (UK) there is
very little price difference between the 2800 Barton core and the 2800
Thoroughbred core processors. What's the difference, if any? Would I notice
the difference in normal use, word processing, PhotoShop, the odd game etc?

System Abit NF7, 120Gb HDD, 512 DDR. Geforce 3.

The Barton core has 512k L2 cache and the Throughbred has 256k L2 cache. Get
the Barton.

"Jack Norris" <jackn@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:c0b1fm$7qh$1@hercules.btinternet.com...
> I'm confused. I want a new CPU, AMD 2800 to be precise. Here, (UK) there
is
> very little price difference between the 2800 Barton core and the 2800
> Thoroughbred core processors. What's the difference, if any? Would I
notice
> the difference in normal use, word processing, PhotoShop, the odd game
etc?
>
> System Abit NF7, 120Gb HDD, 512 DDR. Geforce 3.
>
>

The increased processing power of the Barton will show up in Photo Shop.
JPS
"Jack Norris" <jackn@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:c0b1fm$7qh$1@hercules.btinternet.com...
> I'm confused. I want a new CPU, AMD 2800 to be precise. Here, (UK) there
is
> very little price difference between the 2800 Barton core and the 2800
> Thoroughbred core processors. What's the difference, if any? Would I
notice
> the difference in normal use, word processing, PhotoShop, the odd game
etc?
>
> System Abit NF7, 120Gb HDD, 512 DDR. Geforce 3.
>
>

jpsga wrote:
> The increased processing power of the Barton will show up in Photo Shop.

The Thoroughbred has a faster clock speed and will be faster for some
applications/tasks where the larger cache of Barton is less useful.

> JPS
> "Jack Norris" <jackn@btinternet.com> wrote in message
> news:c0b1fm$7qh$1@hercules.btinternet.com...
>
>>I'm confused. I want a new CPU, AMD 2800 to be precise. Here, (UK) there
>
> is
>
>>very little price difference between the 2800 Barton core and the 2800
>>Thoroughbred core processors. What's the difference, if any? Would I
>
> notice
>
>>the difference in normal use, word processing, PhotoShop, the odd game
>
> etc?
>
>>System Abit NF7, 120Gb HDD, 512 DDR. Geforce 3.
>>
>>
>
>
>

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 16:39:18 +0000 (UTC), "Jack Norris"
<jackn@btinternet.com> wrote:

>I'm confused. I want a new CPU, AMD 2800 to be precise. Here, (UK) there is
>very little price difference between the 2800 Barton core and the 2800
>Thoroughbred core processors. What's the difference, if any? Would I notice
>the difference in normal use, word processing, PhotoShop, the odd game etc?
>
>System Abit NF7, 120Gb HDD, 512 DDR. Geforce 3.

They're 'rated' same performance class by AMD.
Thoroughbred 2800 runs at a higher clock, Barton 2800
has a larger L2 cache.
Thoroughbred will do stuff like media encoding faster.
But I think I prefer the larger cache for most other stuff.

ancra

Jack Norris wrote:
> I'm confused. I want a new CPU, AMD 2800 to be precise. Here, (UK) there is
> very little price difference between the 2800 Barton core and the 2800
> Thoroughbred core processors. What's the difference, if any? Would I notice
> the difference in normal use, word processing, PhotoShop, the odd game etc?
>
> System Abit NF7, 120Gb HDD, 512 DDR. Geforce 3.
>
>
Definitely I would choose the bigger cache.

Matt wrote:
> Jack Norris wrote:
>
>> I'm confused. I want a new CPU, AMD 2800 to be precise. Here, (UK)
>> there is
>> very little price difference between the 2800 Barton core and the 2800
>> Thoroughbred core processors. What's the difference, if any? Would I
>> notice
>> the difference in normal use, word processing, PhotoShop, the odd game
>> etc?
>>
>> System Abit NF7, 120Gb HDD, 512 DDR. Geforce 3.
>>
>>
> Definitely I would choose the bigger cache.

I'm not sure - AMD seems to have overrated their processors a bit based
on cache size. Benchmarks at tomshardware etc. seem to suggest the
Thoroughbred is the better chip to have.

Big caches are great in servers which tend to use the same data over and
over, but with the sort of use to which home PCs are put, a faster chip
is probably more useful.

On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 09:59:06 +0100, BarryNL <barry@nospam.nl> wrote:

>Matt wrote:
>> Jack Norris wrote:
>>
>>> I'm confused. I want a new CPU, AMD 2800 to be precise. Here, (UK)
>>> there is
>>> very little price difference between the 2800 Barton core and the 2800
>>> Thoroughbred core processors. What's the difference, if any? Would I
>>> notice
>>> the difference in normal use, word processing, PhotoShop, the odd game
>>> etc?
>>>
>>> System Abit NF7, 120Gb HDD, 512 DDR. Geforce 3.
>>>
>>>
>> Definitely I would choose the bigger cache.
>
>I'm not sure - AMD seems to have overrated their processors a bit based
>on cache size. Benchmarks at tomshardware etc. seem to suggest the
>Thoroughbred is the better chip to have.

Maybe, depends.
Actually, the problem is tomshardware's benchmarks. They're not very
good. Sandra, PC Mark, SysMark, all are basically just clock counters.
Check some application benchmarks instead.
Barton and Thoroughbred, they're faster on different things, that's
all.

ancra

BarryNL wrote:
> Matt wrote:
>
>> Jack Norris wrote:
>>
>>> I'm confused. I want a new CPU, AMD 2800 to be precise. Here, (UK)
>>> there is
>>> very little price difference between the 2800 Barton core and the 2800
>>> Thoroughbred core processors. What's the difference, if any? Would I
>>> notice
>>> the difference in normal use, word processing, PhotoShop, the odd
>>> game etc?
>>>
>>> System Abit NF7, 120Gb HDD, 512 DDR. Geforce 3.
>>>
>>>
>> Definitely I would choose the bigger cache.
>
>
> I'm not sure - AMD seems to have overrated their processors a bit based
> on cache size. Benchmarks at tomshardware etc. seem to suggest the
> Thoroughbred is the better chip to have.
>
> Big caches are great in servers which tend to use the same data over and
> over, but with the sort of use to which home PCs are put, a faster chip
> is probably more useful.

How much advantage are you talking about due to the faster clock? I
expect that it might give a small advantage all of the time and that the
bigger cache is a huge advantage some of the time. I think the app I
wrote must have a tight locality of reference because it just screams on
my Barton 2500+ (OC'ed to 2800+ by increasing the multiplier). It runs
more than twice as fast on the Barton as on my 2.4G P4, I think because
AMD has a better (smarter?) cache scheme. The P4 also has 512MB cache.
I don't know how to explain it other than by guessing that it is due
to the cache schemes.