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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segagenesis - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Since I mostly play games ill stick to buying the AMD64 3500+. Thanks. My definition of multi-tasking is using a whole other computer ;)The Pentium D seems pretty decent at multitasking as you would define running two things at once but I rarely do that sort of thing since its kind of dumb to encode a DVD in the background while playing a game. Or does encoding a DVD really interfere with browsing the web? I dont know... that and the heat factory output as if it was bad enough is now worse.
Woodchuck2000 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#23 - I'm assuming that a dual core A64 at 2.2GHz will blow a Pentium D out of the water at any of the launch frequencies! The Prescott core isn't really designed for multi-core operation, and needs some kind of arbitration logic and some funky-memory-controlling-thingy to work. As a result, the performance improvements in multi-threaded applications aren't anything like the theoretical extra 100% another core could bring. With A64 being designed for multi-core operation I'd expect the increase in performance to be nearer 85%.As regards the performance gap between the P4 630 and A64 3500+, the majority of the benchmarks shown here are designed specifically to show performance improvements in multi-core processors. The 630 is hyper-threaded and therefore logically multi-cored, if not physically so. As such the 630 will have artificially high performance compared with the 3500+ - in most single-application benchmarks, the AMD chip would thrash both Intel chips.
Is there any chance of adding benches for the 630 with HT disabled (or at least giving us an idea of performance.)? We've got a vanilla A64 versus a HT 630 and Dual-core system. It'd be good to see how a single core performs for reference.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Jeff7181I really can't say more, but you are barking up the wrong tree with those assumptions :)
AMD's dual core will be quite impressive, even more so than Intel's. Don't look at performance as the only vector to measure though...
marcusgarcia
We did look at HT performance when it came out, but the problem is that HT doesn't improve performance in all cases. Look at the Gaming Multitasking Scenario 2 tests, HT reduced performance significantly - most likely because DVD Shrink and Doom 3/Splinter Cell were both contending for floating point resources that were in use. Dual core solves this problem by having two complete sets of execution units, so there's no worry about contention between threads for shared resources.
As far as Half Life 2 goes, it is still single threaded so its performance characteristics would be no different than what you see here.
mlittl3
I've been looking into running VoIP or some sort of voice chat program in the background, the problem surfaces in trying to put together a reliable, repeatable workload. Dual core will most definitely help there, but how much - I do not know.
I haven't given up yet :)
BruceDickenson
Glad to have you on-board and thanks for the kind words :)
Woodchuck2000
The new dual core chips are still LGA-775, but they do require a new motherboard (unlike AMD's solution which just requires a new BIOS). Currently Intel's 945 and 955 chipsets will support dual core, and tomorrow I should have a nForce4 SLI Intel Edition board that will support dual core as well. The new NVIDIA chipset does support dual core, but it's up to motherboard makers to implement support for it in their designs.
Check with the motherboard maker to make sure that dual core is explicitly supported by the board, it should say so somewhere in the manual or on the box.
Take care,
Anand
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#22... Anand said a 2.2 GHz Athlon 64 won't compete with the 2.8 GHz Pentium D. That either means a 2.2 GHz dual core Athlon 64 will have lackluster performance, or it will be AMD's new enthusiast line like the FX is right now, which means it would be competing with the Extreme Edition chips, not the regular line.I guess there's a 3rd possibility. He was referring to dual core Opterons which obviously won't compete with the Pentium D any more than the Opteron competes with the Pentium 4 right now.
Woodchuck2000 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Just out of interest, does anyone know what socket do the new cores use? Will the new nVidia chipset support the new cores (it was hinted at briefly, but not stated explicitly...)?#19 - What's your source for those assertions? I've heard reports that AMD have got samples running at well over 2GHz and since the K8 architecture is natrually better suited to multiple cores I'd have expected blistering performance. BTW, does anyone know if the AMD cores will be based on the new Venice rev? Is SSE3 a given?
BruceDickenson - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Hey all, long time reader, this is my first "post"/comment...Just had to say this is one of the most interesting articles I've read in a long time. I loved the NCQ tangent, it almost felt like you were part of a conversation when you read how Lal Shimpi analyzed the anomaly in his testing.
Loved it! Thanks AT!
marcusgarcia - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
14# again.Forgot to say in the last post, my rant is about HT, not dual cores.
I know 2-cores won't make THAT difference on these trivial things (who needs another 2.8ghz for simple stuff?)...but..HT is benefiting GREATLY from it, yet noone mentioned it and didn't even try this sort of test when HT was launched.
When you see the 3.0 HT doing better than a AMD 3500+ (supposedly 500 points faster), you gotta ask how badly would it beat the AMD 64 3000+, which happens to cost almost the same than the P4 3.0 ghz...which happened to destroy the much faster AMD on the test.
That pretty much sucks and leave us with the impression that people either:
a - wanted to benefit AMD
or
b - were too ingenuous to think on these tests when doing HT tests (which can't be true because i always wanted them)
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Errr... correction...1.) The dual core 2.2 GHz Athlon-64's will be less than impressive and won't even perform in the same class as a Pentium D @ 2.8 GHz.
2.) The mainstream Athlon-64 dual core chips will be running at much less than 2.2 GHz, and the 2.2 GHz dual cores will be the FX line, which compete with the Extreme Edition Pentiums.
marcusgarcia - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
14#Completely wrong.
1º: Outlook checks 8 pop accounts for mail and apply it's rules to it every minute or so.
2º: MSN with webcam can eat quite some CPU, specially because i play on the dark with the "low light filter" turned on, which happens to eat quite some CPU.
3º: For every file opened/closed both the AVG and the MS anti-spyware are going to have a check if that's malicious and if the action is allowed.
When i close everything and run 3dmark01 i get around 300 - 600 more points out of it from my 12200 points score.
PS: don't forget IE, which is usually opened here or on tom's hardware (or both and some more), which happen to have a lot of those huge flash banners.
I think that DOES make *a lot* of difference.
Add to that the fact of many people using skype while gaming, mainly on FPS and RTS, which can make all the difference.
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
"Let's just say that the dual core Athlon 64 running at 2.2GHz won't be compared to a dual core Pentium D running at 2.8GHz."So you leave two possibilities.
1.) The dual core 2.2 GHz Athlon-64's will be less than impressive and won't even perform in the same class as a Pentium D @ 2.8 GHz, but rather dual core Extreme Edition chips.
2.) The desktop dual core Athlon-64's will be running at much less than 2.2 GHz.