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Opteron Benchmarked Against Xeon
jbmnuke writes "Tom's Hardware has posted a review of AMD's Opteron v. Intels Xeon." Nothing gets the blood pumping like a whole new generation of CPUs to compare numbers to, right? Update: 04/22 12:35 GMT by H : And there's the official benchmarks as well, with more coming - like Linux Magazine and Newsforge
but it reminds me of a benchmark performed between desktop x86's and a sun machine. Given the different architectures, it really didn't make sense. However, the benchmark was supposed to show price::performance. Is this what Pabst is trying to convey? I don't take much stock in benchmarks anyway, as I would rather get my hands on it and try to break it.
So you do not believe that Intel got where they got today becuase of competition and pressure? You sincerely believe that Intel wouldn't sit back on their lazy ass and inflate prices, if there were no copmetition?
Naivity ensues obviosuly.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
The dual Xeon has 512 MB RAM.
The dual Opteron has 2 GB RAM.
Pretty sloppy, if you ask me.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Considering how P4 3.06Ghz actually runs at 3Ghz and does much better at .....
/. readers seem to as well. Naive of me perhaps to think that /. readers would be more clued up, but hey.
Tell me, why is the fact it actually runs at 3Ghz important?
MHz is not a useful measure of performance.
Jesus. No wonder AMD implemented their 'marketing MHz' rating system - the average guy on the street thinks that's how you measure perfomance of CPUs, and even some
I'd love to see the MHz rating be completely scrapped from how we rate CPUs in stores. Yes, it's useful to see that an AMD 2000+ is faster than a 1800+, but it's not so great when comparing with Intel chips. The trouble is that since AMDs are better at some things, and Intels better at others, a number of figures would have to be provided to make a fair and useful comparison. Too many numbers though I'm sure might confuse people, so I guess we'll be stuck with the MHz wars for a while yet.
Opteron is a server/workstation CPU, thus 244 marking make sense. You usually do some research before purchasing $2000 workstation :)
Well, i haven't been able to read most of the article yet, but i think the difference is they only tested with 32 bit windows, where the opteron can't use it's extra registers etc.
And more: Opteron needs specifically compiled binaries to show its full power. Not that I think it's a bad thing. But it shows that OpenSource solution will be more easily available for Opterons than comercial specifically compiled and optimised software, thanks gcc. I don't think Intel C++ compiler will support Opteron's new registers.
How about these?
Stick Men
What they didn't say in their conclusion (but that I noticed) was that the main place where the Opteron didn't do well was Windows tests. Coincidently, most of the workstation tests were Windows. I can't help but wonder if the judgement (that the Opteron isn't for workstations) is a bit premature.
Don't most sites have some other server host the ad?
/. page is served by
/. on big server
Eg the ad at the top of this
images.slashdot.org [66.35.250.110]
and slashdot.org is 66.35.250.150
Your other point...
Let me make it simple..
other sites aren't.
I think a lot of people are getting hung up on the 64-bitness of the Hammer and failing to realize that it's much more than that. Extra registers, HyperTransport, integrated memory controller...these are the real killer features, IMO.
One of the reasons that I became a lawyer was to avoid ever having to hire one. -SPYvSPY
What the fuck are you talking about ? It takes no more cycles than it did to do 32-bit pointer math, because that's part of what being a 64 bit CPU means.
Programmers can be much more productive today because they don't have to waist as much time getting simple things done and if it is at the cost of some speed and bloat, I am just fine with that. If a program takes a month to slap together using (by your definition) inefficient tools but doing it the "right way" (by your definition) would take nine months- which way is better? In the past when machines were slow and short on resources, the extra eight months might have been the right solution. Thankfully today, in most cases, the one month solution is the better option and as a programmer (and user), I am happy with that. Faster computers allows for programmers and users be more prductive.
I miss the Karma Whores.
I think the point these folks are attempting to make is:
We've been doing the desktop dance for the last few years, IPCs fluctuating, but performance and power usage always rising.
Yet, a decade ago, Intel was strictly against this kind of practice. Intel chips for years were packaged in a big ceramic heat spreader, and could be run without a sink. There were no multipliers, memory ran at processor click speed, so there was little performance skew. Performance increased linearly with CPU clock speed. Even with the 486, Intel never released a chip with more than 2x multiplier, and purposefully never released a chip that required an active fan cooling the heatsink. It was only after the Pentium was released that they gave in to competition and pushed clock speeds, power disappation and multipliers.
What ever happened to the concept of the efficient computer? Sure, we've tackled the multiplier issues using multiple layers of efficient cache, paired with features like prefetch.
But what about power consumption?
RIGHT THIS MOMENT, we have laptop computers using the Centrino chip, AND THEY SPANK the P4 clock-for-clock.
RIGHT THIS MOMENT, we have laptops ion development using the extremely low power ATI Mobile DirectX 9 solution.
Both these chipsets are designed to maximize performance for power, and have the capability to shut down unused parts of the chip for maximum power efficiency.
AND NEITHER OF THEM ARE AVAILABLE FOR DESKTOP. NOR will they ever be. Nobody cares that desktop power consumption has quadrupled since the 486, and the processor's power consumption alone has increased by almost 10x.
We don't have to have windtunnel systems. We don't have to settle for VIA Epia boards with the horsepower of a 386. The sad fact is the perfect balance already exists, but you'll never see it except in an overpriced notebook.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Itanic does not emulate x86. There is a little tiny x86 core stuck on the die of the Itanic. It is a horribly inefficient and slow x86 core, but it is the real thing.
Notice, that Intel wants you to think the hammers are competition only for Xeons. But Xeon's don't do 64-bit and Itanics do. Thing is, an Itanic costs 5-10x more than a a hammer (and uses 2-3 times the watts). So, they may not be competition on a flops/hz level, but on a flops/dollar or integer-ops/dollar or even flops/watt, the hammer is very competitive. And Intel knows it, they just don't want you to.
Errr, because the 32 bit x86 mode in the Itanium makes the app run like it is on a pentium 100, whereas the 32bit x86 mode on the Opteron runs the app full speed?