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AMD's dual core Opteron & Athlon 64 X2 - Server/Desktop Performance Preview

 by Anand Lal Shimpi, Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on April 21, 2005 9:25 AM EST
144 Comments | Add A Comment
144 Comments

Business/General Use Performance

Business Winstone 2004

Business Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:
  • Microsoft Access 2002
  • Microsoft Excel 2002
  • Microsoft FrontPage 2002
  • Microsoft Outlook 2002
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
  • Microsoft Project 2002
  • Microsoft Word 2002
  • Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition 2003
  • WinZip 8.1

Business Winstone 2004

Business Winstone is a good example of a collection of single threaded applications used in a relatively light multitasking manner; the Athlon 64 X2 4400+ does better than Intel's fastest dual core CPUs, but it is still slower than the fastest single core AMD chips.

Office Productivity SYSMark 2004

SYSMark's Office Productivity suite consists of three tests, the first of which is the Communication test. The Communication test consists of the following:
"The user receives an email in Outlook 2002 that contains a collection of documents in a zip file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while VirusScan 7.0 scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0. Finally, Internet Explorer is used to look at samples of the web pages and documents created during the scenario."

Communication SYSMark 2004

Right off the bat, we see that the Athlon 64 X2 4400+ is reasonably competitive. Here, it is within striking distance of the FX-55, but all of the contenders are fairly close in performance.

The next test is Document Creation performance, which shows very little difference in drive performance between the contenders:
"The user edits the document using Word 2002. He transcribes an audio file into a document using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6. Once the document has all the necessary pieces in place, the user changes it into a portable format for easy and secure distribution using Acrobat 5.0.5. The user creates a marketing presentation in PowerPoint 2002 and adds elements to a slide show template."

Document Creation SYSMark 2004

With a score of 224, we have a new record for performance. Remember that the Athlon 64 has never been able to execute more than one thread at a time. So, the performance benefit that AMD will see from dual core can be larger than what Intel has seen simply because Intel has had Hyper Threading on all of their desktop Pentium 4 CPUs for quite some time now. This is one such example where AMD gets a pretty big benefit from dual core, with the 4400+ outpacing the FX-55.

The final test in our Office Productivity suite is Data Analysis, which BAPCo describes as:
"The user opens a database using Access 2002 and runs some queries. A collection of documents are archived using WinZip 8.1. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet using Excel 2002 and are used to generate graphical charts."

Data Analysis SYSMark 2004

The 4400+ offers the best performance that AMD can, but this test clearly favors Intel's Pentium 4/D architectures more.

Microsoft Office XP SP-2

Here, we see in that the purest of office application tests, performance doesn't vary all too much.

Microsoft Office XP with SP-2


Mozilla 1.4

Quite possibly the most frequently used application on any desktop is the one that we pay the least amount of attention to when it comes to performance. While a bit older than the core that is now used in Firefox, performance in Mozilla is worth looking at as many users are switching from IE to a much more capable browser on the PC - Firefox.

Mozilla 1.4


ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0

ACDSee is a popular image editing tool that is great for basic image editing options such as batch resizing, rotating, cropping and other such features that are too elementary to justify purchasing something as powerful as Photoshop for. There are no extremely complex filters here, just pure batch image processing.

ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0

Once again, we find the X2 4400+ in between the two high end Athlon 64s and the two dual core Intel chips.

Dual Core Desktop Performance: AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Multitasking Content Creation
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  • saratoga - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link

    " The three main languages used with .NET are: C# (similar to C++), VB.NET (somewhat similar to VB), and J# (fairly close to JAVA). Whatever language in which you write your code, it is compiled into an intermediate language - CIL (Common Intermediate Language). It is then managed and executed by the CLR (Common Language Runtime).
    "

    Waaah?

    C# is not similar c++, its not even like it. Its dervived from MS's experience with Java, and its intended to replace J#, Java and J++. Finally the language which is similar to c++ is managed c++ which is generally listed as the other main .net language.

    http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/

  • Shintai - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link

    #80, #81

    Tell me how much faster a singlecore 4000+ is compared to a 3800+ and you see it´s less than 5% in average, mostly about 2%. Your X2 2.2Ghz 1MB cache will perform same or max 1-1½% faster than a singlecore 2.2Ghz 1MB cache in games. So 10% lower for is kinda bad for a CPU with higher rating. Memory wont help you that much, cept in a fantasy world.

    And less take a game as example.
    Halo:
    127.7FPS with a 2.4Ghz 512KB cache singlecore.
    119.4FPS with a 2.2Ghz 1MB cache dualcore.
    And we all know they basicly have the same PR rating due to cache difference.

    And the cheap singlecore here beats the more expensive, powerusing and hotter dualcore CPU with 7% faster speed.

    So instead of paying 300$ for a CPU, you now pay 500$+, get worse gaming speeds, more heat, more powerusage....for what, waiting 2 years on game developers? Or some 64bit rescue magic that makes SMP for anything possible? It´s even worse for intel with their crappy prescotts, 3.2Ghz vs 3.8Ghz. Atleast AMD is close to the top CPU, but still abit away.

    Real gamers will use singlecores the next 1-2 years.

  • Shintai - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link

    Forgot to add about physics engine etc. For that alone you can add a dummy dedicated chip on say..a GFX card for it for 5-10$ more that will do it 10x faster than any dualcore CPU we will see the rest of the year. Kinda like GFX cards are 10s of times faster than our CPUs for that purpose. Not like good o´days where we used the CPU to render 3D in games.

    The CPUs are getting more and more irrelevant in games. Just look how a CPu that performs worse in anything else as the Pentium M can own everything in gaming. Tho it lacks all the goodies the P4 and AMD64 got.

    It makes one wonder what they actually develop CPUs after, since 95% is gaming, 5% workstation/servers and corporate PCs could work perfectly and more with a K5-K6/P2-P3.

    Then we could also stay with some 100W or 200W PSU rather than a 400W, 500W or 700W.

  • cHodAXUK - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link

    make that 'performed to 91% of the fastest gaming cpu around'.

  • cHodAXUK - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link

    #79 Are you smoking something? A dual core 4400+ running with slow server memory and timing plus no NCQ drive peformed within 91% of the fastest gaming chip around. Now the real X2 4400+ with get at least a 15% pefromance boost from faster memory timings and unregistered memory and that is before we even think about overclocking at all.

  • Shintai - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link

    So what the tests show is like 64bit tests.

    Dualcores are completely useless the next 2+ years unless you use your PC as a workstation for CAD, photoshop and heavy encoding of movies.

    And WinXP 64bit will be toy/useless the next 1-2years aswell, unless you use it for servers.

    Hype, hype, hype...

    In 2 years when these current intel and amd cores are outdated and we have pentium V/VI or M2/3 and K8/K9. Then we can benefit from it. But look back in the mirror. Those early AMD64 and those lowspeed Pentium 4 with 64bit wont really be used for 64bit. Because when we finally get a stable driverset and windows on windows enviroment. Then we will all be using Longhorn and nextgen CPUs.

    Dualcores will be slower than singlecores in games for a LONG LONG time. And it will be MORE expensive. And utterly useless cept for bragging rights. Ask all those people using dual xeons, dual opterons today how much gaming benefit they have. Oh ye, but hey lets all make some lunatic assumption that i´m downloading with p2p at 100mbit so 1 CPU will be 100% loaded while im encoding a movie meanwhile. yes then you can play your game on CPU#2. But how often is that likely to happen anyway. And all those multitasking things will just cripple your HD anyway and kill the sweet heaven there.

    It´s a wakeup call before you be the fools.
    games for 64bit and dualcores ain´t even started yet. So they will have their 1-3years developmenttime before we see them on the market. And if it´s 1 year it´s usually a crapgame ;)

  • calinb - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link

    "Armed with the DivX 5.2.1 and the AutoGK front end for Gordian Knot..."

    AutoGK and Gordian Knot are front ends for several common aps, but AutoGK doesn't use Gordian Knot at all. AutoGK and Gordian Knot are completely Independent programs. len0x, the developer of AutoGK, is also a contributor to Gordian Knot development too. That's the connection.

    calinb, DivX Forums Moderator

  • cHodAXUK - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link

    Hmm, it does seem that dual core with hyperthreading can be a real help and yet some times a real hinderance. Some benchmarks show it giving stellar performance and some show it slowing the cpu right down by swamping it. Some very hit and miss results for Intel's top dual core part there makes me wonder if it is really worth the extra money for something that can be so unreliable in certain situations.

  • Zebo - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link

    even if i can't spell them.

  • Zebo - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link

    Fish bits

    Words mean things sorry you don't like them.

    Cripple is true. The X2 is crippled in this test since it's not really and X2.

    It's a "misrepresentation" of it's true abilities.

    I was'nt bagging on Anand but highlithing what was said in the article then speculating of potential performance of the real X2 all things considered.

    Sorry I did'nt attend PC walk on my tip toes class. I say what I mean and use accurate words.
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