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AMD Takes Opteron To 2.4GHz
EconolineCrush writes "AMD has added a series of Opteron x50 processors to its workstation and server line that push the K8 core up to 2.4GHz. The Tech Report has tested the latest single and dual-processor Opterons against more than 20 other processors, including exotic Pentim 4 Extreme Edition chips, affordable Athlon 64s, and everything in between. Even if you have no interest in AMD's latest workstation chips, the review is worth checking out to see how two dozen of the fastest workstation and PC processors stack up in rendering, scientific computing, speech recognition, and even gaming tests."
From the article to save everyone the 16 pages of boring charts and graphs
Thanks for the summary but can I just say I appreciate the level of detail and information provided. Way too many 'benchmarks' these days, especially those dealing with language performance are from some loser with their crappy home PC which they usually dont even know how to configure properly.
Its a relief to see a benchmark from someone competent and aware of the various factors affecting the results obtained.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I agree. AMD has some really great products. We always hear about Intel's huge R&D budget. I'm not sure how much of that is alloted to processor design, but it doesn't seem like they've been able to outrun AMD. AMD might not always have the fastest chips at any given moment, but they are always close behind. Since I don't buy bleeding edge equipment due to the high cost premiums, AMD is always a solid choice for me.
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I work for a medium sized school divison and this year happens to be the year when my school will get new equipment. When the meetings about what to buy have occured every single time someone has mentioned getting AMD chips instead of Intel those in managerial positions have been quick to say, " No, AMD chips are slow and run very hot. They wouldn't be a good choice for what we are looking for." Now this insight is coming from people who..
A. Are mainly concerned about the bottom line as far as price goes.
Which makes zero sense being AMD chips are more then competitivly priced compared to Intel.
B. Are supposedly in the know about technology.
Which is obviously not the case as many of them still think AMDs have the same cooling problems they did 5 years ago.
These chips are cheaper now then their Intel conterparts and from my experience run at the same speed if not faster. AMD is finally getting on the ball as far as putting the clock speed measured in Ghz to provide direct comparission which really needed to be done in order to compete. Combined with their dedication to inovation, i.e. the 64 bit processor that Intel has still yet to bring to market make me really suppport what the company is trying to do. I really hope to see more reviews like this that I can pass on to those in charge in hopes of getting away from an Intel only environment.
Just to clarify I do not hate Intel I just think that between the two there Intel does not always win outright and AMD should be considered before any purchases are ever made.
Please do not let scientific accuracy interfere with the intended humourous/interesting/insightful value of this comment
Has anyone done any compiling tests? If so PLEASE share! -Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
Can somebody please benchmark a dual AMD opteron against a dual PPC 970 (MAC G5), using Linux in 64bit mode. What is with all these kids benchmarking opterons in 32bit mode?
.. means cheaper CPUs at the bottom end.
My needs are simple, Most of my systems would do just fine with a Duron 800MHz or even slower CPUs. With the advent of new high end chips heralds lower prices at the low end.
It's gotten to the point where only a few popular niches need to even bother with anything but the absolute bottom end chips. I.e. Gaming, video encoding and servers (Faster chips mean more users on a server).
Scientific Computing clusters, Compiling lots of code everyday etc.. are other niches worth noteing. For Web browsing, Office productivity, educational apps and old games I advise you to buy the chip so far behind the curve it won't be available in a few weeks.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Adding a bigger cache is not only easy, but a cheap way to rake in more cash without doing much R&D work.
It's might be easy, but it isn't cheap to add more cache. Cache accounts for something like 50% of the die surface of a modern chip, and a larger die means a lower yield and less chips per wafer.
I'm sorry, but you do not truly understand how modern x86 chips work. You don't like them because they are 'CISC-mired'? The funny thing is, underneath they really aren't CISC. They are RISC to the bone. Each and every x86 instruction you feed a modern processor is deconstructed into many smaller RISC-like ops and they are processed independantly. Small register set you say? You don't get to address them directly, but both the Athlon and the P4 have had many more registers than the x86 ISA would lead one to believe for a really long time. The x86-64 is nice because now you get many more registers of larger size, directly addressable.
In a purely dollar/performance comparison, nothing beats x86.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
And still, that "technology of the 70's" is the fastest thing there is. Sure, you might have some CPU's that are even faster, but they are also alot more expensive. Those CPU's usually get better performance by adding lots and lots of cache to the CPU.
If PowerPC (for example) is SOOOO much better, why doesn't it wipe the floor with x86? Sure, it's competetive, but it does not annihilate x86
As to being register-starved... Again, that doesn't seem to hurt the performance of these chips that much. And if you use Opteron/Athlon64 with an 64bit OS, you get double the number of GP/SSE-registers (instead of 8, you get 16).
As to CISC... Modern x86-CPU's are very much RISCue in the inside. And being RISC does not automatically mean that it's somehow better. You can have kick-ass CISC-CPU's, and you can have crappy RISC-CPU's.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
This aging architecture has maintained an incredible price/performance ratio. At this price level, the only thing that compares is the G5. A comparable UltraSPARC, Itanium, POWER, or PA-RISC system will cost much more.
As for registers, AMD64 doubled the number of general-purpose registers, which are already subject to register renaming.
x86-64 only doubles the number of registers.
Something tells me if the billions of dollars per year in R&D were spent on a fully-RISC system, externally and internally, it would be much faster, saving a stage or two of decoding and other internal mangagement, saving a lot of design and testing hassles.
For over half a decade, DEC held its own against Intel with $70M / year CPU development budget, when Intel was spending $2B. They only got tripped up with poor marketing and problems and delays in fabbing the EV6 and EV7.
For one, being fully RISC made it far easier to validate the chip design because it didn't involve lots of work disassembling instructions and keeping track of the results, predicting properly and so on.
I think that's an awesome strategic move! AMD had the insight to see that hey, here's a group of highly technical people that have some great ideas, and gee, we can hire them all.
Would rather have had AMD go "hmm, naaah, we don't need to hire guys with really creative and proven ideas, let's go reinvent the wheel"?
Thanks to their insight, hypertransport did not go the way of the dung heap, and superior processors design resulting in better performance, especially in multi-processor machines have resulted that are actually being accepted in the market place. They are also causing the former obvious monopoly to take notice. Note that the P4 will be no more, and the PIII core is coming back. Now that's eating some crow. If not for AMD, how likely would the retirement of the P4 have been in this time frame? I doubt it would have happened, because Intel would not have had to push their processors much and could probably have coasted for another 2 or 3 years with this chip.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Robert
For real 64bit performance visit VooDoo software tuning and download the 64bit 2004 Longsword Gamez Demo. The Download of UT2004 64-bit English Linux Demo is around 200Mb.
Am I the only one who finds it funny/intresting that they would think to include an XP-M overclocked to 2.4ghz in this test?
It's pretty funny that even on a benchmark like this, the mobile is known to be the best option for Athlon Barton XP's.
Anyone looking to spend $100 on a cpu the choice is clear. Pretty solid performance in comparison too. Usually fitting right in around the P4 3.4ghz level of performance. AND ONLY $300 cheaper haha.
"Why is it puzzling? In their historic "Intel Inside" world, they were basically competing against themselves. Adding a bigger cache is not only easy, but a cheap way to rake in more cash without doing much R&D work."
You are forgetting a key deficiency of the P4 "netburst" architecture. Its incredibly long pipeline which makes it very susceptable to cache misses. Therefore the larger the L2 cache the less of a performance hit the processor will take if it misses an instruction or two.
It is possible that adding a bigger cache is 'cheap' but if that were the case we'd see a dramatic reduction in the price of P4EEs as they are getting schooled by AMDs. L2 Cache is not cheap to implement. And significantly adds to the manufacturing cost of the processor.
Additionally the lack of a FSB upgrade on the Xeons is troubling, but that apparantly is coming later this year, and this may reduce the advantage of the Opteron's to SOME degree. However, in the current architecture the Xeon's FSB bandwidth will always be shared - while the Opteron's get dedicated bandwidth for every processor. This is really the most remarkable advantage of 'Hammer' family of AMD CPUs over the Netburst generation of P4s/Xeons.
"I believe Intel had thought they had reached monopoly status, which really they had, and the culture had become complacent. This did not happen at the underdog AMD, who has recently been able to quickly leapfrog Intel's offerings."
Intel put a lot of money and R&D into a product line (P4 NetBurst) and honestly - even with AMD making inroads - they still do not have that large a share of the CPU market. Intel has however observed their lead eroding and have canned Tejas - successor to the Prescott. So Intel is able to step up and make the big changes even when it has sacrificed large amounts of R&D money.
Intel to formally confirm Tejas canned
Intel may have canned Tejas...
Guess next time you'll buy RETAIL instead of OEM?
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
I've worked in the rendering graphics world where dropping $15k on an SGI, SUN, or ALPHA workstation in the past was nothing. The renderfarm alone was $3.2M of ALPHA servers back in the day.
Funny thing now is it was replaced last summer with $750k worth of IBM blade servers that nearly quadrupled the number of processors in half the space.
Anyway, AMD really isn't targeting gamers or the average users with these chips. If you want to compare price/performance, need to take the Athlon* series vs. the P4's.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.