Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 955: 65nm, 4 threads and 376M transistors
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 30, 2005 11:36 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming Performance using Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4
Gaming performance is pretty respectable for the Pentium EE 955, with the chip being quite competitive with AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4800+.
The most interesting thing we found is that even with a high end GPU like the Radeon X1800 XT, a number of games are still quite GPU limited even at 1024x768, which is why you don't see F.E.A.R. and Splinter Cell: CT here. Even some of the games that we did include required us to turn down some of the detail settings to start to stress the CPUs.
The pendulum often swings between games being CPU and GPU limited, and it seems that with the latest generation of games, we are definitely more GPU limited.
Gaming performance is pretty respectable for the Pentium EE 955, with the chip being quite competitive with AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4800+.
The most interesting thing we found is that even with a high end GPU like the Radeon X1800 XT, a number of games are still quite GPU limited even at 1024x768, which is why you don't see F.E.A.R. and Splinter Cell: CT here. Even some of the games that we did include required us to turn down some of the detail settings to start to stress the CPUs.
The pendulum often swings between games being CPU and GPU limited, and it seems that with the latest generation of games, we are definitely more GPU limited.
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Betwon - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
NO.Don't You think that Future versions of the patch will be written by intel.
Viditor - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
Doubtful (but who knows)...I can't see Intel spending 100s of millions with every developer (or even 1 developer) for the long term, just to keep tweaking their patches. It's just not a very smart long term strategy (and Intel is quite smart).
Betwon - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
You just guess it.We find that the good quality codes can provide better performance for both AMD and Intel.
Intel can often benefit more, because the performance potential of Intel is high.
Now, You can not find another SMP-game which can make fps of SMP CPU improve so much great.
If you find it, please tell us.
There is no one who found it.
Viditor - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
Now it's you who's guessing...
Betwon - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
NO.It is true.
Viditor - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
OK...prove it!
Betwon - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
For example:we saw a test(from anandtech)
With the good quality codes, AMD become faster than before, but Intel become much faster than before.
They use Intel's compiler.
Betwon - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
When not use the intel's compiler, AMD become slow.Viditor - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
I know you've often quoted from the spec.org site...
I suggest you revisit there and look at the difference between AMD systems using Intel compilers and the PathScale or Sun compilers. In general, the Spec scores for AMD improve by as much as 30% when not using an Intel compiler...especially in FP.
http://www.swallowtail.org/naughty-intel.html">http://www.swallowtail.org/naughty-intel.html
defter - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link
This is not true, for example:
FX-57, Intel compiler, SpecInt base 1862:
http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q2/...">http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q2/...
FX-57, Pathscale compiler, 1745: http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q2/...">http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q2/...
Opteron 2.8GHz, Intel compiler, SpecInt base 1837: http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q3/...">http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q3/...
Opteron 2.8GHz, Sun compiler, SpecInt base 1660: http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q4/...">http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q4/...
In SpecFP Intel compiler produces slightly slower results, but the difference isn't 30%:
Opteron 2.8GHz (HP hardware), Intel compiler, SpecFP base 1805: http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q3/...">http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q3/...
Opteron 2.8GHz (HP hardware), Pathscale compiler, SpecFP base 2052: http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q3/...">http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q3/...
Opteron 2.8GHz (Sun hardware), Sun compiler, SpecFP base 2132: http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q4/...">http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2005q4/...
So let's see:
Intel vs Sun compiler:
- Intel complier is 10.7% faster in SpecINT
- Sun compiler is 18.1% faster in SpecFP
Intel vs Pathscale compiler:
- Intel compiler is 6.7% faster in SpecInt
- Pathscale compiler is 13.7% faster is SpecFP
It is quite suprising that Intel's compiler gives best results for AMD's processors in many situations.