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- Posted in
- CPUs
Dual Core Desktop Performance: AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4400+
AMD didn't send out any Athlon 64 X2 processors for this review. They promised us chips for the real launch in June, but we don't like waiting and neither do most of you, so we improvised.The Opteron x75 CPUs that AMD sent us run at 2.2GHz and have a 1MB L2 cache per core, which makes the specs basically identical to the Athlon 64 X2 4400+. Although the use of ECC memory and a workstation motherboard would inevitably mean that performance will be slower than what will be when the real Athlon 64 X2s launch, its close enough to get a good idea of the competitiveness of the Athlon 64 X2.
For these tests, we used the same workstation board that we used in the server performance tests, but in doing so, we encountered a lot of other random problems.
With only a single CPU installed in the Tyan S2985, the system would always hang upon restarting Windows. We could shut down Windows fine and we could manually restart the machine, but if we hit Start > Shut Down > Restart, our test bed would always hang at the "Windows is Shutting Down" screen. Populating the second CPU socket fixed that problem, but obviously for our desktop comparison, we only used a single CPU to simulate a single Athlon 64 X2 4400+. The problem is undoubtedly due to the dual core BIOS, but it was frustrating to say the least (note that our normal desktop benchmark suite requires over 200 reboots - and we did every last one by hitting the reset switch on that motherboard).
The next issue we had with the motherboard is that none of the four on-board SATA ports would detect a hard drive. Apparently, this is a common problem with this board and since we were using the absolute latest BIOS revision from Tyan (we had to in order to support dual core), there was no fix for the problem at the time of our testing. Because of this problem, we were forced to use a PATA hard drive, which unfortunately meant that we couldn't test with an NCQ enabled drive.
The final problem we had was that there were significant issues with regards to memory compatibility and performance on this Tyan board with the dual core BIOS. We were forced to run at much slower memory settings than we would normally run on a desktop Athlon 64 motherboard - we had to run with the bus turnaround option set to 2T in order to even get Windows to install. A side effect of some of these issues was that not all of our tests would run properly; most did, but a few didn't make it. Obviously, we'll fill in the blanks when we perform our actual tests for the Athlon 64 X2 review, but this will serve as a preview.
All in all, we were extremely disappointed with the only board that AMD would recommend us to use with their first dual core processors. The BIOS is far from ready and the board seems to have issues that extend beyond what can be attributed to the dual core BIOS. When Intel sent us a dual core setup earlier this month, we were surprised at how stable the system was. Our experience with AMD's platform was the exact opposite. While we're very confident that dual core Opteron systems from tier one OEMs won't have these sorts of issues, the fact that we were having these problems just weeks before the launch of a major CPU is worth mentioning. We've also held off on doing any sort of power consumption analysis between the Athlon 64 X2 and the Pentium 4 until we get desktop platforms in hand. That being said, AMD rates the Athlon 64 X2 as having the same thermal envelope as the current Socket-939 Athlon 64 processors. Thanks to a cool running 90nm process and slightly lower clock speeds, AMD is able to achieve just that.
With the problems out of the way, we were ready to get down to benchmarking. So, we put together a list of CPUs that made sense to compare for the desktop portion of this preview.
AMD's own marketing suggests that based on the price differences between their dual core CPUs and Intel's, the Athlon 64 X2 is in a class above the Pentium D. Instead, AMD suggests that the real competitors to the Pentium D 820, 830 and 840 are the Athlon 64 3400+, 3500+ and 3800+, respectively. To test that theory, we included an Athlon 64 3800+ as well as the fastest single core AMD processor, the Athlon 64 FX-55, in our comparisons.
The comparison that AMD makes is depicted below. Note that this is AMD's marketing comparison, not our own.
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cHodAXUK - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
Anand, Jason and Ross.. hell of a job guys, you have out done yourselves. As for the X2 4400+ preview results, holy shit is all I can say, better than I expected and those scores are WITHOUT the aid of an NCQ enabled drive. The cost is high, very high infact but the X2 just scales so much better than the equivelent Intel. All I want to see now is an X2 4400+ with the FSB overclocked to DDR500 speeds, I am really interested to see how much that extra 1gb/s+ of bandwidth helps a dual core setup. Perhaps that is something you can look into for us please Anand and Co? T.I.A. ;)Darth Farter - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
http://www.hardwaregeeks.com/comments.php?catid=1&...[quote]:
Current Intel Price List(3)
Price in
1,000 unit
Performance Processors quantities
64-bit Intel Xeon processor MP 3.33 GHz with 8 MB L3 cache $3692
64-bit Intel Xeon processor MP 3.00 GHz with 8 MB L3 cache $1980
64-bit Intel Xeon processor MP 2.83 GHz with 4 MB L3 cache $1177
Value Processors
64-bit Intel Xeon processor MP 3.66 GHz with 1 MB L2 cache $963
64-bit Intel Xeon processor MP 3.16 GHz with 1 MB L2 cache $722
[/quote]
Intel's not too shabby with pricing either... ;)
btw Dual OPTERON vs 4way(?) XEON @ techreport
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/opteron-x75/i...
Groovester - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
65- Recommend you reread "A Look at AMD's Dual Core Architecture" page. The fact that AMD's Athlon64 and X2 memory controllers are on-die gives it a leg up on Intel's Pentium D's. On the X2, the communication between the two cores doesn't have to traverse the external FSB.bob661 - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
WHOODOGGIE!!!Quanticles - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
68 - he did the best he could, but the point is the same... lol. we're going to see some pretty amazing preformance from the real thingSon of a N00b - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
hit me up with one of these, four vid cards, some headphones and a 24' screen for hours of gaming bliss....w00t!anyway i can actually see also a game suddenly coming out written for dual core, with the developers pulling something outta their collective a$$'s....
I'll wait for these to get a bit more refined though and the pwnage is clear that a dual core offers total uberness...
good article anand...almost to complete lol...i actually have to save some time in my day to read em....gj!
fishbits - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
From the article: "Although the use of ECC memory and a workstation motherboard would inevitably mean that performance will be slower than what will be when the real Athlon 64 X2s launch, its close enough to get a good idea of the competitiveness of the Athlon 64 X2."Anand didn't "cripple" or "misrepresent" anything. He got as close as he could with the materials available to him, and made it clear that some liberties/extrapolation would be required.
However, it does look promising that the X2 will perform even better than projected today. Just as Anand said up front.
KillerBob - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
You are right Griswold, and it was in these tests the Intel won the race;)Zebo - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
Expect at least 15% more performance when real X2 is released.Anand crippled/misrepresented it by running a 175 in his tests... Which has ECC memory, 2T, and my guess is 3-3-3 (most all ECC ram is 3-3-3 since he does'nt say I must go with the odds).
Talk about hamstringing a A64. Anands own tests show just how crippleing 2T is for A64 upwards of 10% alone less performance. I've shown 3-3-3 vs 2-2-2 to be signifigant in my mem matrix tread about 5% since A64's love low latency. ECC knocks out about 3-5% more performance due to extra wait state. Would the "real" X2 debuting at 18% faster be unfair?? I don't think so when paired with desktop memory.
It's going to get REAL ugly on the desktop for Team Blue no matter how you slice the numbers when a real live X2 comes with un-buffered mem, LL and 1T since Intel already loses to a unadventurous server chip right now.
Fricardo - Thursday, April 21, 2005 - link
64 - I'd like to know the same. I definitely won't buy a processor for more than 250, no matter what the performance is. I'm sure they'll drop eventually, but I wonder if that'll happen before 939 is completely obsolete and I have to buy an M2 mobo anyways...Also, something I've been wondering: if dual core does have such an impressive effect on desktop performance and future programs will be multithreaded to take advantage of dual core, how come nobody ever talks about making multi-socket desktop boards? A dual-939 setup with a couple of $120 OC'd Winnie's would be just as fast as the X-2 and a heck of a lot cheaper. Or you could slap a couple of X-2's in there when they actually come out and have sick performance.