High End Workstation Performance Commentary
Workstation performance, as measured by SPECviewperf, has been an area where Pentium 4 has dominated recently. The 2.0GHz Opteron certainly brings this area into parity at the very least, and Opteron becomes the leader in some areas. Comparing the ATI 9800 PRO performance, we find the A64 level Opteron the top performer in DRV-08 and UGS-01 benchmarks. In other SPECview tests, performance is very competitive and much faster than we have tested with the Athlon 3200+ on nForce2.To satisfy curiosity, we also compared performance of the Workstation nVidia Quadro FX2000 video card on both the dual Xeon Intel 875 platform and the single-CPU Opteron platform. You would expect that 2 Xeon 3.06 CPUs with 1MB of cache would be the clear winner of this comparison. The results, however, are quite surprising:
| SPECviewperf 7.0 Performance nVidia Quadro FX2000 Workstation Video |
Benchmark | Asus PC-DL Dual Xeon 3.06 | nForce3 Single Opteron 2.0 |
| 3DSMax | 22.17 | 21.88 |
| DRV | 59.80 | 59.80 |
| DX | 59.83 | 59.87 |
| Light | 29.88 | 25.75 |
| PROE | 27.55 | 29.18 |
| UGS | 31.39 | 28.48 |
The results are basically even, which is amazing considering we are comparing a single 2.0 GHz Opteron to Dual 3.06 Xeon with 1Mb cache. Certainly, Opteron/Athlon64 has much improved in Workstation performance compared to Athlon.
High End Workstation Performance Benchmarks
Content Creation and General Usage Performance Benchmarks
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
79 Comments
View All Comments
Anonymous User - Saturday, October 25, 2003 - link
I found it difficult to compare products because of the way the descriptions of processors and components were laid out.Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Well for any Intel posters you can avert your eyes. I've recently been doing some shopping to piece together a new system for myself. I'd decided on AMD since their systems have always been good to me and cuz ..screw the big boys.Anyways I've been out of the hardware game for a while and the 64bit cpu is really interesting for me. I do a lot of 3d animation and video editing. SO my question is this 1)is there a trustworthy, compatible Mobo out there now that will work with amd64 that I could build now and upgrade up to later? 2)Is there another solution from the current 32bit amd processors that could give me all my needs (gaming, animation, editing, etc..)? or should I just wait for 64 to come out (which I really REALLY need to build a pc fast)??
I'm open to any and all suggestions :)
Anonymous User - Saturday, September 13, 2003 - link
Speaking of AMD vs Intel & the Sysmark 2002 cheating allegation, just wait until XP-2003 for AMD comes out and you install Sysmark 2002. Anyone with half a brain will understand what Intel & Bapco did to stack the deck when the system reboots after install. Very revealing.Remember this.
Anonymous User - Saturday, September 13, 2003 - link
Hmmm, talking about stocks. Actually in the last 3 months, AMD also doubled its price. So, if you own either Intel or AMD stock, you will have gain a lot of money. The stock increase occurs because investor expect that the chip sector is improving this year, i.e. there is an increase in the demand of cpus.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 13, 2003 - link
I don't know if anyone is considering this but don't you think the prices for a processor are becoming a tad bit HIGH!? As it stands in order for me to get a piece of this new technology(Athlon 64 and its motherboards) I would have to cough up $1000+! $1000 for a cpu and motherboard!!! For companies that want its customers to flock to thier stuff when they release them that is TRULY not encouraging anyone to go out there and buy at all. As it stands I don't think a lot of people will be able to buy this thing right off the back no matter how bad they want it. The Opteron 940 is higher than my HOUSE NOTE right now for my 2-story home. The AthlonFX isn't any better. Right now Directron.com has the Athlon64 up for pre-order at the price $489. Ladies and gentleman that is a whole f***ing check for most people. I really do think that the Athlon64 and the Opteron are an advancement and a powerful one but could they please stop raising these prices?Anonymous User - Friday, September 12, 2003 - link
Please stop repeating the same questions...The only thing I wanted to point out is that the drivers that are recompiled for the Athlon 64 are going to make a difference more than anything else discussed in this comment section.
As for this Pentium 4 arguement, the P4 3.2 GHz 800MHz is $613. That is about $200 more expensive than the Opteron 242 and $150 more thank an Opteron 144. The MBs will become cheaper due to the lack of a Northbridge and ease of design. $130-140 is the price I expect the Nforce 3 boards to sell.
Whatever you want is what CPU you should use. Just know that if you buy an Opteron or Athlon 64, that every driver update is going to get you more speed. Every update patch to games will get you more speed. And you have the ability to go to Windows XP 64 when it is finished and run even faster. Over time, you may have a 20% or more improvement in speed. If it doesn't, then you have a really fast CPU at 1.8 GHz running less than 39c while benchmarking.
It will be a nice laptop.
SenatorPerry
http://www.newberrycollege.net/doom3low.jpg
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 11, 2003 - link
The testing methology is flawed here.You have an Opteron that is OVERCLOCKED to 222MHz HT bus/RAM, versus a stock standard 3GHz P4 (why no 3.2GHz?)
It's like comparing a 2.8C @ 3.2GHz and comparing it to a 1.8GHz Opteron. I'm sure that would create an uproar of 'Intel BIAS!' type of comments. ;-)
Don't get me wrong, Opteron/A64 is an impressive processor, but the review would've been much more credible had Anandtech reviewed a stock 2GHz Opteron vs a 3.2GHz P4, instead of an overclocked Opteron 1.8GHz @ 2GHz with faster HT bus and RAM, compared to a 3GHz P4, which isn't even the fastest available.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
I'm a noob and I have a question. I'm not understanding how us gamers will be able to play our games (like bf1942) when these processors come out if there isn't a 64 bit OS out for us to run. Can anyone clear this up for me?Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
Considering this was testing its performance on a 32bit OS, I cannot wait to see how well it fairs in a true 64bit enviroment!I say....each to their own preference. Be glad you have the option to choose Intel or AMD and that their competion produces a less noticable strain on our pockets!
**Ignorance is the weapon weilded by the man with closed eyes!**
Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
#18, some Xeon's (not XeNon) have 1 meg L3, as well as 512 K L2 like any nortwhood. The L3 is inclusive however, which basically means that data stored in L2 is also duplicated in L3 to allow faster chaches. This results in a "net" cache size of 1 Mb, not 1.5.