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AMD Takes Opteron To 2.4GHz

Posted by timothy on from the zhoooooommmm dept.

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."

53 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. 2.4ghz? by p00p+at+instable.net · · Score: 3, Funny

    So what is that, 4000+?

    1. Re:2.4ghz? by Skater · · Score: 3, Funny

      Prepare for ... ludicrous speed!

      --RJ

  2. The Conclusion... by Mz6 · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the article to save everyone the 16 pages of boring charts and graphs.. Conclusions "If I were building (or, implausibly perhaps, buying) my ultimate workstation right now, I'd want a pair of Opteron 250s beating at the heart of it. The benchmarks speak volumes. For single-processor systems, the Opteron 150 looks like the fastest x86 CPU on the planet. In a multiprocessor configuration, the Opteron 250 scales up very well, even without the benefit of an optimal memory configuration, a NUMA-aware OS, or 64-bit extensions. By contrast, Intel's dual Xeons are a little bit disappointing. They perform relatively well in CPU-bound apps like 3D rendering programs, which are also largely well optimized for SSE2. But in memory-bound applications where dual Xeons ought to do well, like video encoding, the Xeons' slow bus and RAM hold them back. One has to wonder what Intel is hoping to accomplish by saddling its workstation-class processors with older, slower technology. Even a single Pentium 4 benefits greatly from additional bus and memory bandwidth. Surely a pair of Xeons on shared bus ought to have this same advantage. Intel's apparent willingness to forego such enhancements in favor of adding ever-larger on-chip caches to the Xeon is puzzling"

    --
    Hmmm.
    1. Re:The Conclusion... by Timesprout · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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
    2. Re:The Conclusion... by ishark · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Thanks for the summary. I quickly browsed the article looking at some graphs, and I'm suprised by the bad performance of the Athlon 64s compared to the Athlon XPs in many of the tests.... Is any of those programs running in 64 bit mode, or it's just a test of 32-bit applications running on 64-bit CPUS?

    3. Re:The Conclusion... by bhtooefr · · Score: 2, Informative

      BTW, the 150 is a top-locked AFX53 (or, the AFX53 is an unlocked 150). Also, EconolineCrush's comment about the K8 core just now hitting 2.4GHz is wrong - the FX53's been out about a month, I think.

    4. Re:The Conclusion... by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The reason is that a three-drop bus used for Xeon DP (533MHz bus), five-drop for Xeon MP (400MHz bus), can't operate as fast signalling-wise as a point-to-point bus used for Pentium 4 and all Athlon systems, 1 and 2 processor. Terminmation was just too difficult, I think. Before Hypertransport, the wiring for multiprocessing with only a point-to-point bus was rediculously expensive, particularly on the chip that connects the CPUs to the rest of the system.

      AMD got a little unconventional and this time it paid off on Opteron. It didn't work so well with the Athlon MP because of this wiring problem, too many wires, too expensive of a core chip, it was 1000+ pins when 600 pins was thought to be expensive.

  3. AMD are back by RoderickMcDougall · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They were lagging there for a while but the benchmarks depict a good story. Looks like the opteron is going to be yet another AMD chip that is great for gaming (and most other things). Hopefully a cheaper price than the p4's will really contribute to yet another dominating year for AMD.

    1. Re:AMD are back by dealsites · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      New deal processing engine online: http://www.dealsites.net/livedeals.html

    2. Re:AMD are back by Gr8Apes · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.
  4. 2.4 Rates as around PR3900+ by �nertia · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have been running my Opteron 248 at 2400Mhz. Sisoft seems to equate this to a PR rating of 3900+. I have no idea how it calculates this so please take that with a measure of salt.

    --

    AEnertia
    Witty, tag line goes here

  5. I don't think it is puzzling at all by peterdaly · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Intel's apparent willingness to forego such enhancements in favor of adding ever-larger on-chip caches to the Xeon is puzzling"

    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.

    It's not until recently that AMD has starting "schooling them" on what improvement really means. Just look at how Intel is going to use the AMD x86-64 method in the upcoming Intel 64bit platform. And now "If I were building (or, implausibly perhaps, buying) my ultimate workstation right now, I'd want a pair of Opteron 250s beating at the heart of it. The benchmarks speak volumes. For single-processor systems, the Opteron 150 looks like the fastest x86 CPU on the planet..." And this is at much lower mhz!

    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.

    -Pete

    --
    Soccer Goal Plans
    1. Re:I don't think it is puzzling at all by Yartrebo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:I don't think it is puzzling at all by ivan256 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The sentence before your quoted line there speaks volumes to the issue.

      Surely a pair of Xeons on shared bus ought to have this same advantage.

      It's way easier to ramp up the bus speed for a single processor, since it only has to interact with one other device. It's considerably harder to increase the speed when there are three devices on the bus instead of only two. Since the Opteron uses point to point connections they don't have this same problem. In that sense it's not really puzzling at all. They probably just can't get it to work.

    3. Re:I don't think it is puzzling at all by Vaystrem · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "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...

    4. Re:I don't think it is puzzling at all by Michael+Spencer+Jr. · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I hate to sound like I'm being contrary, but I don't really know enough about the subject:

      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.

      I just finished a Computer Architecture class at the local university. While I'll probably forget 90% of what we learned in that class in another year, I'll ask while it's fresh on my mind:

      What does a long pipeline have to do with the cache hit/miss ratio?

      We learned about some hypothetical five-stage-pipeline CPU in class, which is childs' play compared to the superpipelined monsters of today. However, if the same concepts still hold, a longer pipeline just increases the stall penalty.

      For those who haven't yet had their heads pumped full of Computer Architecture trivia, I'll recap what little I learned in class, so the question makes sense:

      A CPU is like a big assembly line. Its job is to read a bunch of instructions and execute them in order as they come down the assembly line. In an ideal world, with a program that never loops and never branches, it works JUST LIKE an assembly line, munching on instruction after instruction.

      CPUs operate at a clock speed, and receive a clock pulse at regular intervals. They are supposed to be able to complete whatever work they're working on each clock cycle, so a really simple one-stage CPU would need to have a clock speed slow enough that any instruction can be completed in that length of time.

      People figured out that instructions can be split into little pieces, such that these little pieces are each simpler than the whole instruction. That lets them build faster but more complex pipelined CPUs. Each pipeline stage might have some work to work on, but all pipeline stages can work at the same time.

      So this means that if the pipeline is full of instructions, and every instruction uses every stage, then the CPU is performing one instruction per clock cycle. This is better than before though: these clock cycles are tiny because they just have to be big enough for these tiny fractions of an instruction. So we get the speed benefit of quick clockcycles, but we're still performing a full instruction each cycle. That's something like a 5x speedup if you have five pipeline stages!

      It doesn't always really work this way though. See, instructions can depend on each other, and that causes problems. There can be dependencies like Read-After-Write, where instruction 100 does some math and puts the result in a register, like A, and instruction 101 uses the result (in A) in its own calculation. Normally that would be fine, but a pipelined CPU tries to do things at the same time.

      For CPUs as simple as we talked about in class, there are two solutions: stalling and forwarding.

      In forwarding, the CPU is smart and looks ahead and figures out "this instruction needs something that the previous instruction is providing", and just short-circuits the whole formal writing and reading process, and just kinda passes the answer under the table between pipeline stages. "Psst, hey M-stage, this is E-stage. I've got the answer to A if you want it..."

      In stalling, the CPU realizes it NEEDS the answer to one instruction before it can do the next, so it starts wasting work units. Stages start getting commands saying "do nothing", which wastes CPU cycles. So in the example above, where instruction 101 needs something instruction 100 is still creating...suppose instruction 100 is multiplying two 256-bit floating point numbers together. Instruction 100 is going to take TONS of time to finish, so instruction 101 just gets stuck at the decode pipeline stage, sitting there tapping its feet and executing an "are we there yet" check every clock cycle. The rest of the pipeline goes unused.

      For my next trick, I'll tie

  6. Glad to see AMD coming to the party. by WordODD · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  7. Compiling by IceFox · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?
    1. Re:Compiling by Illissius · · Score: 3, Informative

      AnandTech usually does them in their processor reviews, lemme dig one up.
      Here's one, for example.
      (Of note, the Athlon FX-51 and -53 are identical to Opteron 148 and 150 processors, respectively. The Athlon 64s are similar as well, difference is they use a different socket, have only single-channel memory controllers, and use unbuffered/unregistered memory.)

      Basically, the Hammers are godlike at compilation.
      The lowest-rated (at the time; a 2800+ has since been released) A64 3000+ beats the fastest P4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition.

      --
      Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
    2. Re:Compiling by KirkH · · Score: 2, Informative

      He was addressing the compilation test specifically, which is the one he linked to and the one where the slowest Athlon does indeed beat out the fastest P4.

      So, yes, I would say his post was informative.

  8. Waste of time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Waste of time... by ValourX · · Score: 3, Informative

      64-bit vs. 32 bit using FreeBSD

      Don't you ever read the BSD section?

      -Jem

    2. Re:Waste of time... by phoxix · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Can somebody please benchmark a dual AMD opteron against a dual PPC 970 (MAC G5)

      Not so fast, a significant problem in such a comparison is that gcc has *much* better support for x86-64 than it does for PPC64. If there was even a chance that a dual PPC970 machine was faster than a dual x86-64 machine, the likes of Yellow Dog, and Momentum Computer would have been all over it.

      Sunny Dubey

  9. A word of caution by GigsVT · · Score: 5, Informative

    I had an AMD64 chip with the heat spreader.

    I went to take the heat sink off the other day, and the vacuum that formed between the heat spreader and heat sink caused the chip to get yanked right out of the closed ZIF socket when I tried to get the heat sink off.

    Then, after reinstalling the chip, apparently the heat spreader has become disconnected from the core internally, because the CMOS reports rising temperature up to 120C, but even the heat spreader isn't warm if I turn the system off and get the heat sink off again.

    So be very careful. It takes about 10 minutes to take the heat sink off the heat spreader if you used a coating of grease that covers the whole top of the chip, even if you used a thin coat. You have to wiggle the heat sink and gently pull up for quite a while before that vacuum is broken. It doesn't help that the heat sink design makes it impossible to see the chip or slide the heat sink to the side.

    And be aware that it doesn't take a whole lot of force to yank the chip right from the ZIF, possibly damaging things in the process.

    --
    I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    1. Re:A word of caution by MoronGames · · Score: 5, Informative

      The problem is that you're using too much thermal compound. Generally, you use no more than an amount the size of a grain of rice, and spread it out to cover the entire heatspreader, and the bottom of the heatsink. Not only will this give a lower chance of damaging something, but it will also get better heat transfer and drop your temperatures.

      --
      hey!
    2. Re:A word of caution by clacke · · Score: 2, Funny

      And be aware that it doesn't take a whole lot of force to yank the chip right from the ZIF, possibly damaging things in the process.


      I see. So it doubles as a ZEF, then?
    3. Re:A word of caution by delus10n0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Guess next time you'll buy RETAIL instead of OEM?

      --
      Not All Who Wander Are Lost
    4. Re:A word of caution by Anarke_Incarnate · · Score: 2, Informative

      Mirror finishes are bad. You need something with minute pockets (because even your mirror finish will have them) to retain the thermal compound. The purpose of lapping is not to cause the surface to be perfectly smooth, but rather to make the surfaces flat and allow for them to rest on each other so as to not have any gaps due to uneven layers.

  10. AMD's Cool 'n Quiet by niko9 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...the Opteron 150 looks like the fastest x86 CPU on the planet.

    I know I might be nitpicking here, but I really wish the Opteron series of chips incorporated AMD's Cool 'n Quite technology.
    From what I read on their website, with a supporting motherboard and driver (2.6.5 has a native driver) the Athlon 64 can scale down to 800Mhz, cool enough for the system to shut the HSF and case fans completely offoff.

    One demo I saw online had a Athlon 64 SFF computer playing a DVD while the AMD cool 'n quite app was shoing the the CPU at 80hz and the system was totally silent.

    Coudn't server rooms benfit from the reduced electricuty bill also?

  11. Great, but how fast can they compile the kernel? by freelunch · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nice article, but we need more Linux-centric bench and test sites.

  12. Hmm.. Pushing the top end... by Forge · · Score: 3, Insightful

    .. 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 ?
  13. Re:Think it's time to seriously consider AMD by frozenray · · Score: 5, Informative
    Indeed, the outlook for AMD looks good given their roadmap and Intel's problems:
    • The "Prescott" P4 got mostly negative reviews, c't Magazine mentions in their current issue that Tejas (Prescott's planned successor) is being scrapped
    • For all the money they invested into Itanium, they seem to be lacking a coherent strategy for the architecture (or if they have one, they're not talking about it)
    • Their new processor rating and the power requirements of the Prescott line may be an indication that they cannot continue to crank up the clock on the CPUs any longer (GHz being the primary sales generator) without running into major problems with leak currents
    • AMD has processors which are looking more interesting to businesses than the previous CPUs, plus they have taken the lead in 64-bit processors for desktops and have dual core CPUs in the pipeline (heh)

    It will be interesting to see how Intel responds to these challenges - c't speculates that the future Pentiums will use the architecture they have in the Pentium M line (developed in Israel). If they're smart they'll introduce a dual core CPU based on the Pentium M architecture, if AMD is smart they'll modify their existing designs and beat intel to the punch again.

    Speaking as a business user, I'd welcome an emphasis on ergonomics and environmental concerns over raw speed. I'd rather have silent systems that do not overload the air conditioning with enormous amounts of heat than screamers which spend 99.9 % of their time waiting for the user to press a key anyway.
    --
    "There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
  14. Re:Ho Hum by digitalunity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  15. Re:Ho Hum by 10Ghz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  16. Re:Ho Hum by _|()|\| · · Score: 2, Insightful
    take this register-starved, CISC-mired turkey out back and give it a proper burial

    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.

  17. Re:Ho Hum by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  18. Re:Think it's time to seriously consider AMD by wolf31o2 · · Score: 2, Informative

    It will be interesting to see how Intel responds to these challenges - c't speculates that the future Pentiums will use the architecture they have in the Pentium M line (developed in Israel). If they're smart they'll introduce a dual core CPU based on the Pentium M architecture, if AMD is smart they'll modify their existing designs and beat intel to the punch again.

    Funny enough, that is exactly what Intel has planned. They will also be shooting for dual-core, and then quad-core CPUs in the next 2-3 years. On the flip side, AMD has announced that they are already capable of producing dual-core Opterons, and are simply waiting for the market demand to meet their capabilities. After all, it doesn't make much sense to introduce something now that can wait until later. It extends the life of the current line and increases the return on R&D.

  19. Maple/Mathematica benchies while at it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://smc.vnet.net/timings50.html is a start.

    Sad times when a

    Dell Precision 650, 4X3.06GHz Xeon, 512KB L2, 4GB, Win XP Pro V5.1 [35]:

    is slower than a

    Athlon 2800+, 512 KB cache, 333 MHz FSB, Win XP Pro

  20. Question about itanium2 - Opteron by cazzazullu · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Here at the physics lab we are doing research about neural networks. This involves simulations that require a lot of memory and cpu-cycles. A problem we have encountered numerous times when building phase-diagrams is that the mathematical routines chrash when we reach critical parametervalues. This is caused by the fact that certain matrices become 'singular'. This problem does not arise however when we use 'double long' formats, or 64-bit floats, because these are way more precise and still can go a long way when 32-bit doubles already jump to zero, thus causing the problems.

    We have decided to buy/construct a fast 64-bit workstation where we can run our simulations without chrashes. Now my question to you fellow slashdotters is:

    The budget is a few thousand euros, not over 10 000 (this is comparable in dollars). What would the best bang-for-the-euro be? Single-Dual? Xeon-Opteron-Itanium2? It must at least contain 4 gig of RAM.

    Thanks for your suggestions, looking at several "comparison-websites" has only made us more confused.

    --
    int main(void) {while(1) fork(); return 0;}
    1. Re:Question about itanium2 - Opteron by mjuarez · · Score: 4, Informative

      The budget is a few thousand euros, not over 10 000 (this is comparable in dollars). What would the best bang-for-the-euro be? Single-Dual? Xeon-Opteron-Itanium2? It must at least contain 4 gig of RAM.

      Itanium servers are out of your league. A decent 1.5Ghz Itanium chip with 3Mb of on-die cache will set you back around $3,000. Not including memory, hard disks, etc. Just for ONE chip.

      Xeon are way cheaper, but in most cases are more expensive than Opterons, do not scale very well when used in 2-way or higher configurations, and can only use 4Gb in flat mode. To access above 4Gb, you need to use PAE, which greatly hampers the performance (PAE is akin to the "high-memory" window trick they used back in the DOS days).

      Opterons, on the other hand, are usually cheaper than Xeons, much cheaper than Itanium, almost always have better performance that Xeons, scale much better (in fact, a 2-way server performs better than a 1-way times 2!) and are only beat by Itanium in floating point performance, and then only barely.

      There's another thing. Opterons are going to become dual-core in less than 2 years, with the same pinout as today. That means that if you have a lowly 2-way server that you're thinking about dumping, you can buy new dual-core Opterons and instantly get a 4-way out of your old 2-way server. Also, Opterons can access linearly up to 1Tb of physical RAM (that's 1,024 Gb), and up to 256Tb of virtual memory. And, finally, it's the only 64-bit processor you can get today that works with all your 32-bit x86 software. Finally, Opterons consume less energy than equivalent Xeons or Itaniums, and this becomes very important when thinking about A/C, UPS, standby power generators, etc.

      I'd recommend you go with Opteron. Check out some well known tier-2 vendors such as Angstrom, Appro or Verari. They all make excellent quality Opteron servers and workstations. If you want brand names (and are willing to pay for it), check out Sun, Hewlett Packard or IBM for 2-way servers, or HP for a 4-way. IBM even has a dual Opteron workstation, if that's what you want.

      Good Luck,

      Marcos

    2. Re:Question about itanium2 - Opteron by joib · · Score: 4, Informative


      This problem does not arise however when we use 'double long' formats, or 64-bit floats, because these are way more precise and still can go a long way when 32-bit doubles already jump to zero, thus causing the problems.

      On the x86 architecture, "long double" is 80-bit, and not 64-bit, which is plain "double". "float" is 32-bit.

      However, note that the x86 does all floating point operations with 80-bit precision. So you don't get any performance advantage from using only single precision variables (other than lower memory bandwidth usage). Thus, a good rule of thumb is to always use double (long double might be better but isn't portable, and SSE doesn't support it if you want to use that). Single precision is mainly useful when you want to store large amounts of data (remember to cast the part of the data you're working on to double before calculating).

      As others have pointed out, currently the Opteron is quite unbeatable in price/performance. 10000 EUR should certainly get you a 2 cpu system. Probably not 4 cpu:s though? Given that you need lots of memory, especially avoid the Xeon (or some other 32-bit architecture). Linux can only give 3 GB to one process with it's default configuration (I guess windows is similar?). With the so-called 4g/4g patch you can allow 4 GB for each process, but the price is lower performance. With a 64-bit architecture all those problems disappear.

    3. Re:Question about itanium2 - Opteron by Spoing · · Score: 4, Interesting
      1. There's another thing. Opterons are going to become dual-core in less than 2 years, with the same pinout as today. That means that if you have a lowly 2-way server that you're thinking about dumping, you can buy new dual-core Opterons and instantly get a 4-way out of your old 2-way server.

      Even if the pinouts stay the same, the system boards you can buy now might not support the processors being sold in 2 years.

      Why upgrade the CPU only in 2 years and skip the other improvements available at that time?

      I have very infrequently had a CPU upgrade that was worth it, while updating other components (disk, network, added RAM, video, ...) usually do give a reasonable boost. Most of the time the modest real performance increase from swapping in a new CPU -- one that is bound to the limits of the existing system board-bound -- isn't worth the time or money.

      The only exception I can think of is if you buy behind the bleeding edge and upgrade every 6-9 months to a processor that is substantially better (2x) but not bleading edge.

      To do this properly usually requires getting an advanced system board that can handle the higher end components and then turning around and being cheap on the CPU. While this can be a good idea, it usually isn't and the situation is very specific to the system board.

      1. IMNSHO:
      2. Always buy what you need today and do not look over 6-9 months in the future for upgrades.

      If you expect a payoff in a future upgrade, make sure that the hardware you buy now is also what you need today and do not depend on a future promise. If it works out, HOO-RA! If not, you haven't lost a thing.

      --
      A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
  21. 64bit AMD only benched with 32bit OS and software? by stock · · Score: 3, Insightful
    One shouldn't compare apple with pears. So a shootout between 32bit only Xeon's and 64bit AMD's (ok which do 32bit) is a weird exercise. The testers only ran a 32bit version of Windows XP. That should be obvious. Still the Opteron 150 and 250 seem to win many shooutouts.

    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.

  22. But the price... by Dezer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Has anyone actually checked on the price? Take a gander over at http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInforma tion/0,,30_118_609,00.html?redir=CPT301 The new 150/250/850 models are $637/$851/$1514 comparatively. Compare that to the *48 models, which are still expensive. Does AMDs increased market share herald a a new strategy from AMD? Back "in the day" we all used to love AMDs more than Intels because of the great performance/cost ratio. I would love to have a pair of opterons, but the prices are ridiculous. I miss the old AMD...

    1. Re:But the price... by Illissius · · Score: 2, Informative

      The Opteron 1xx-s cost very nearly the same as an Athlon 64 of the same speed (which in turn cost the same as a Pentium 4 with MHz equal to the A64's rating), so those are fairly priced. The 2xx-s naturally cost somewhat more, while the 8xx-s cost a /lot/ more, which is reasonable seeing as only enterprise customers would think of wanting them, and iirc they're still a lot cheaper than Xeon MPs.

      --
      Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
    2. Re:But the price... by ducomputergeek · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Opterons are designed to be a server/high end work station chip. You need to comapare its price with like typed chips like the Xeon and SPARC from SUN.

      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.
  23. Power, Heat, Noise by timeOday · · Score: 2, Informative

    I wish reviewers would start including a section on how much power the systems take. I'd like to replace my home server box and would like to minimze power consumption since it runs 24/7. I'd also like to replace my 'desktop' PC and would like to minimize fans because I like to listen to music on it.

    1. Re:Power, Heat, Noise by alienw · · Score: 2, Informative

      I have a much lower-end Opteron 140 in my box, and for all I know, it runs about 50% cooler than a comparable Athlon XP. I wouldn't worry too much about cooling them, just don't go for the super-high-end stuff. If you are looking for low power consumption, get the slowest chip that's made with the smallest process size.

  24. Re:Ho Hum by flex941 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is it possible for Intel/AMD to make those chips so I can turn off the x86 emulation crap and use internal RISC directly ... so everyone could slowly migrate away from x86 and CISC?

  25. Go back... by Kjella · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...and read some of the papers on x86-64. AMD has a lot more than 16 registers *internally*. But it turned out the performance got WORSE when they were exposed to the compiler, instead of managed internally. If they can't even manage such a trivial change well, it's likely the RISC compilers would do worse than a CISC-RISC decoder stage.

    If you want to make a computer performing anything close to modern standards, you're going to have to deal with interdependency of the RISC instructions anyway (pipelining, hyperthreading, multiple cores etc.) Don't you think Intel or AMD would provide a "native" interface if the decoder stage was really holding them back?

    In short, I'm sure the engineers at AMD and Intel have picked apart x86 code and said "With perfect compilation to our internal structure, how much faster would it be?" and found that it simply isn't the way you describe it.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  26. Re:Ho Hum by Glock27 · · Score: 2, Informative
    AS for cache, I don't know about the 8Mb for the Opteron, but the G5 has 512k of L2 and 64Kb of L1. I guess that with 8Mb it might improve a lot also.

    The Opterons have 1 MB (8 Mb) L2 cache where the G5 has .5 MB (4 Mb) L2.

    At similar clockspeeds I think the performance is fairly similar, though the Opterons may do better in a dual-CPU configuration since they have on-chip memory controllers and thus more total memory bandwidth.

    I'd like to see a head-to-head shootout using top compilers (an often overlooked issue) for both.

    --
    Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
    Score: -1 100% Flamebait
  27. Quad Opterons? by ele7ven · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seldom do you get to see the performance of quad opterons in benchmarks. With amd's hypertransport technology, the 800 series decimates even the newest 4mb L3 cache xeons. Perhaps, however, it's that reviewers realize they don't need to show the complete scaling potential of the opteron to make the point that it's a superior workstation cpu.

  28. Intel is competing as best they can (ie., poorly) by branchingfactor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I respectfully disagree that Intel was ever competing with itself. They've been competing with AMD in the desktop/workgroup market for a long time now, and with Sparc/MIPS/Alpha in the enterprise market as well. Intel developed the high-clock rate Pentium 4 to compete directly with AMD's Athlon, after the Athlon whooped the Pentium 3. The Intel marketing people saw how much leverage AMD got from being the first to 1GHz with their Athlon and they didn't want that to happen again. Intel was *severely* embarrassed by loosing the race to 1Ghz. The Intel marketing people incorrectly concluded that the market was buying clock rate rather than performance. So they mandated a CPU that would have the highest possible clock rate, irrespective of performance. That's the P4/Netburst. Now they are getting burned on performance because AMD has shifted the dialog from clock rate to benchmarks. Intel also saw with the success of the Pentium M that benchmarks can triumph over clock rate. So now Intel has finally realized that they misread the market and they have to change their entire product strategy.