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
Development Performance - Compiling Firefox
Our Quake 3 compile test was getting a bit long in the tooth, so we're introducing a brand new test: compiling Firefox. We followed the instructions diagramed here. 
The Real Test - AnandTech's Multitasking Scenarios
Before our first dual core articles, we asked for feedback from the readers with regards to their multitasking usage patterns. Based on this information, we formulated some of our own benchmarks that would stress multitasking performance. We've already gone over the impacts of dual core CPUs on subjective interactions, so we'll just point you back to previous articles for our take on that if you haven't read them already. In the end, we know that dual core CPUs make our systems much more responsive and provide the same sort of smooth operation that SMP systems have done for years. But, the question now is: who has better multitasking performance? AMD or Intel? And that's exactly what we're here to find out.We started with a test bed configured with a number of fairly popular applications:
Daemon ToolsWhat's important about this list is that a handful of those programs were running in the background at all times, primarily Microsoft's AntiSpyware Beta and Norton AntiVirus 2004. Both the AntiSpyware Beta and NAV 2004 were running with their real time protection modes enabled, to make things even more real world.
Norton AntiVirus 2004 (with latest updates)
Firefox 1.02
DVD Shrink 3.2
Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta 1.0
Newsleecher 2.0
Visual Studio .NET 2003
Macromedia Flash Player 7
Adobe Photoshop CS
Microsoft Office 2003
3ds max 7
iTunes 4.7.1
Trillian 3.1
DivX 5.2.1
AutoGK 1.60
Norton Ghost 2003
Adobe Reader 7
Cygwin
gcc
mingw
Doom 3
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
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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.