Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part II: A Deeper Look
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 6, 2005 12:23 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
The point of this article was to present you with the choice that you'll be making, should you decide to upgrade to a new system in the coming months; the choice between very fast single task performance (and to some extent, light multitasking performance) or more responsive, heavy multitasking performance. No one is really exempt from this decision and you'll have to come to the decision based on your own needs.
We've shown the Athlon 64 to have extremely solid single threaded performance. With the exception of our encoding tests, the Athlon 64 really can't be beat when it comes to running a single application.
The tables are turned as soon as multitasking is introduced, where you can't beat the fact that the Pentium D is able to fulfill the needs of more applications running in the background.
So, the question quickly becomes, how heavy of a multitasker are you? If you're primarily a gamer and you find your gaming performance gets bogged down at all by the tasks you're running in the background, then dual core will most likely outweigh the benefits of a strong single core CPU. If not, then your answer is clear: go for the faster single core.
For encoding performance, you still can't beat the Pentium D. Even a dual core Athlon 64 isn't going to help enough in that area.
To characterize all other non-gaming, non-encoding performance is extremely difficult. For the most part, if you're doing a lot of things at the same time or if you have a lot of applications eating up CPU time - you're better off with the Pentium D. If you are a much cleaner operator and don't have all that much going on, then a single core CPU will still be your best bet; and what better single core to have than the Athlon 64.
The surprise here is the impact of NCQ on multitasking performance. The difference in two of our tests was not only measurable, but also quite noticeable in real world usage. Given that NCQ is quickly becoming a "free" feature of new hard drives, it's a feature that we'd strongly recommend to have in your next system. It doesn't improve performance across the board, but it doesn't hurt things and when it does work, it works extremely well.
With all this excitement, we still have to keep ourselves grounded in the thought that dual core isn't here yet; it's still as much as two months away. For AMD, as we've known all along, the wait is going to be a bit longer on the desktop. The workstation and server markets will be serviced by AMD first, and we will have a look at workstation/server dual core performance as soon as AMD launches those parts. It's looking like, at least on the desktop, if you want dual core at a reasonable price point, your only option will be Intel. But the prospect of more affordable dual core chips out of AMD in 2006 is quite exciting as well.
A dual core Athlon 64 solves a lot of our dilemmas simply because you get stronger single threaded performance than the Pentium D (in everything but encoding) while also getting the multitasking benefits of dual core.
For Intel, the Pentium D is a saving grace - it's the first time that we've been interested in any processor based on the Prescott core. It's also perfect timing; if it weren't for the Pentium D, we'd have no interest in the Intel 945 and 955 chipsets, and definitely not in NVIDIA's new nForce4 SLI Intel Edition product. With that said, it should be pretty clear what our next article in this series will be...
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justly - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
#84 What do you consider "very soon"?
The following was quoted from "part 1".
"Make no mistake, Intel isn't officially releasing their dual core desktop processors today; this is merely a preview. Intel's dual core line is still on track to be released sometime in the April - June timeframe."
IF it where to be released in April then there should have been more reviews (sorry, previews).
IF it comes out in May then there is no need to do a preview this early (except to gain marketing hype).
IF it comes out in June then a "preview" this early should have contained technical information about the chip with a "review" containing benchmarks at a later date closer to its release date.
jojo4u - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
Was Cool'n'Quiet enabled at the power draw test?fitten - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
#81, Intel publicly stated that implementing HT on the P4 was about a 5% increase in logic/area on the chip. While it may be "ugly" and such, 5% certainly isn't that much of area when you consider how much area other functionality takes up.#82, I haven't seen anyone announce duel core products. Dual core products, however, should be out very soon from Intel (and are [p]reviewed in the article this discussion is attached) for example). ;)
Kagjes - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
I must say i really can't relate to any of these multitasking scenorios. Well, except the teamspeak-gaming part.What would be most interesting for me is dual-core, dual monitor setup. That would ROCK, and i'm really suprised noone remembered that. For instance, playing a divx on 1 monitor while gaming on other. Or watching TV on 1 while gaming on other (i do that a lot, if the football match is boring). These tasks are pretty much repeatable and can be measured. I was thinking about getting another monitor for these kind of purposes, but i'm not sure on how would my comp react to that kind of stress.
justly - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
My personal thoughts about publishing an article on a duel core that is not yet availabile, nor will be for awhile, is that it is strictly marketing hype similar to what happened with the 1.13 GHz P3 or any other product that we the consumer have to wait for.The idea that duel core would have a benifit in multitasking or multithreaded apps could have easily been demonstrated on a multiprocessor system using Opterons or Xeons. So now we get a review full of new (wow factor) benchmarks describing the new found benifit of having two processors working together.
I have no real problem with "preview" style articles, but having a plethora of benchmaks in a "preview" is pointless unless the goal is to advertise (hype) a product. The only people I see having any use for this "perview" are the ones that desperately want proof that their manufacturer of choice (this time being Intel) is superior, or those people who are so fickle that they will support the newest thing on the block no matter if it is needed, affordable or even the best option at the time it becomes available.
Quanticles - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
Ive heard that HT is very ugly to impliment, you have to tear everything up. I'm not sure HT is very useful when you have dual core anyway.fitten - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
#47, if HT is simply a "bandaid", then why is AMD the only major CPU vendor not using it? IBM uses it heavily in their Power5, Sun is making their next CPUs (Niagra) very highly SMT (same thing as HT). Arguably, both of those architectures have much more shallow pipelines than the P4, yet see reason to provide SMT. AMD is the only holdout.dougSF30 - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
Make that 2.4GHz in Q3 (not Q4) for the DC Opti 2.4GHz.dougSF30 - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
DC A64 samples are at 2.4GHz, not 2.2GHz.DC Opteron is supposedly launching at up to 2.2GHz in a couple weeks, and will be available at 2.4GHz in Q4.
DC Opteron fits in 95W TDP, DC A64 gets a 110W TDP.
Both are apparently 2 x 1MB L2, per the Italian site that put the CeBIT-timed article about the DC A64 sample.
dparish - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
Great article. I am confused by one piece:From page 8:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 NCQ - 25.2 minutes
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 no NCQ - 33.6 minutes
Western Digital Raptor WD740 - 30.9 minutes
I'm shocked that the WD740 is slower. Isn't this the NCQ enabled 10,000 rpm drive? I would have expected this to beat out the 7200.7 NCQ seagate. Any reason why the WD740 would be slower?
Another point / comment:
Is it possible that DVD Shrink is slower on the AMD's because it has not been compiled / optimized for the AMD? Would this be any different on the 64 bit version of XP if DVD Shrink was compiled for 64 bit? Of course this may be moot as DVD Shrink is not longer being developed by the author.
-Dave