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AMD64 Windows vs. Fedora vs. SuSE benchmarks

Posted by Hemos on from the testing-them-all-out dept.

Illissius writes "AnandTech just posted a review comparing 32- and 64-bit performance on both Linux and Windows. They focused on what is available out of the box without having to compile anything seperately - unfortunately, 64-bit binaries weren't available for most of the Windows benchmarks. To save people the pain of RTFA, there's a very tangible gain moving to 64-bitness, Linux wins some (MySQL, UT2004), and Windows wins some (rendering, RtCW)."

12 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. How can you compare if binaries not avail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is the point if the same tasks cant be carried out?

    1. Re:How can you compare if binaries not avail by trashme · · Score: 5, Informative
      While I'm no fan of windows, much like others here, I do see the need to have a *fair* test, and at *many* points through the tests, I saw this: "Again, we had to use 32-bit binaries for the Win-64 beta"
      Maybe he was doing his best to test the different 64-bit operating system performance as it stands today. Part of the drawback of Windows is that right now it seems to be pretty hard to get your hands on 64-bit applications.
      Oh, and one last part. The writer of the article doesn't quite get that 64bit binarys *should* be faster than 32bit ones, with this little gem:"Here shows another case of 64-bit optimized binaries working faster than 32-bit binaries"
      Why?

      Why is it so obvious 64-bit is faster than 32-bit? Just because the word size is doubled? For many applications that doesn't help at all. FYI, one of the big advantages of the amd64 instruction set is a larger (than ia32) set of registers for the compiler to work with. That is where the speed boost is most likely coming from. Only certain applications truly benefit from a 64-bit word size.
    2. Re:How can you compare if binaries not avail by NeoThermic · · Score: 5, Informative

      >>HHooww iiss iitt ""bblleeeeddiinngg oobbvviioouuss??""

      I'ld check the repeate rate on that keyboard. Seems a bit out of sync if you ask me.

      In all seriousness, 64-bit computing by itself means that the General Purpose Registers are 64-bits wide. That means increased dynamic range. Using base 2, a 32-bit processor gives you 4,294,967,296 possible values. (which is where the 4 GB RAM limit of 32-bit processors comes from.) That is it's dynamic range.

      A 64-bit processor's dynamic range is approximately 4.3 billion times greater than a 32-bit processor, which simply means, it can work with much larger numbers. Thats Important in applications like rendering, mathmatical calculations, and even database servers .

      64-bit computing also allows for more RAM than a 32-bit processor because of it's increased dynamic range. As shown, a 32-bit processor can only handle about 4.3 billion values, which roughly works out to about 4 GB of memory. A 64-bit processor has an upper limit of about 18 million terabytes... (32-bit = 0.0043 terabytes... 64-bit = 18,000,000 terabytes), something that I don't see anyone quite needing, but it does mean that your 64bits will go further :)

      AMD changed some more things when they designed the Athlon-64.

      To start with they used a 40-bit memory address rather than 64-bit since we're not going to need 18 million terabytes of memory anytime soon. Therefore a 40-bit address allows up to 1 terabyte of memory. Thats enough, considering that you won't find a motherboard with support for 1024 sticks of 1GB ram anytime soon.

      Then they doubled the amount of General Purpose Registers so there is now 16. So not only have we doubled the number of addresses, we then make them twice as big again. But they can only be used by 64-bit software, so the benefit of extra registers isn't realized with 32-bit software, which is my point. A 32bit app isn't going to excell on a 64bit processor, hence why benching it isn't fair.

      After that they lengthened the pipeline by a few stages. In short, you basically make it so higher clock speeds are easier to reach without having to change the format of the processor.

      AMD have also built the memory controller into the core, which eliminates almost all latency issues from the CPU to the memory controller. Basically the memory is now just connected to the CPU by wires, whereas the CPU was connected to the northbridge, and so was the RAM. So the northbridge sat between the RAM and the CPU.

      Then you have added support for SSE2, so applications designed to take advantage of Intel's SSE2 instructions can now also take advantage of those instructions on an Athlon-64. So now Intel isn't holding the upper hand again.

      Finally they are using SOI, which in short, reduces current leakage within the processor, making switching of the transistors more efficent, which means faster speeds and less power consumption.

      They've made other changes as well, quite alot more than listed here, but those are the main ones that effect performance.

      NeoThermic

      --
      Use my link above, or to view my server, NeoThermic.com
    3. Re:How can you compare if binaries not avail by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Insightful
      A 64-bit processor's dynamic range is approximately 4.3 billion times greater than a 32-bit processor, which simply means, it can work with much larger numbers. Thats Important in applications like rendering, mathmatical calculations, and even database servers .

      PCs have supported 64-bit and 80-bit floating point numbers since the early 1980s. You're talking about 64-bit integers, which are extremely rarely used in mainstream apps; I've probably used them less than a dozen times in 20 years of programming. Rendering and mathematical apps usually use floating point for any number where dynamic range would be an issue. Databases may use long integers, but I/O is probably a far greater bottleneck for a database server than long integer math. It takes orders of magnitude longer to read a long integer field out of the table than it does to add it, even if you split the addition into two 32-bit steps.

      You also didn't mention that all of the larger 64-bit pointers come at a cost: increased pressure on your cache resources. This would tend to decrease performance unless you really need 64-bit addressing.

      The main reason that AMDs chips are faster on desktop apps are more registers, faster memory controller, and cache architecture. None of those features has anything to do with 64-bitness.

  2. They should have used Gentoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    As a Gentoo user what really stands out to me is that this test was clearly biased away from Linux. If the reviewers had been serious they would have used an optimised distributions such as Gentoo, which would have taken far fuller advantage of the extra 32bits in each register to provide a much fuller experience, more than any current Linux distribution possibly could.

    It really saddens me to see that people go out of their way to spend so much money on such expensive hardware and then squander their investment by running barely suitable software on it. To me, an extra 0.1% performance increase, even if I am only imagining it to be faster, is certainly worth one day a week recompiling all of the latest packages from source code. Even if I do occasionally get my CFLAGS in a muddle!

    I think I speak for Slashdot when I say that Gentoo is the only sane option for getting the most from your hardware!

    1. Re:They should have used Gentoo by fireman+sam · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You should have read the article...
      "Unfortunately, we had difficulties running our new hardware platform on Gentoo and Debian"

      --
      it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
    2. Re:They should have used Gentoo by molarmass192 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If the reviewers had been serious they would have used an optimised distributions such as Gentoo, which would have taken far fuller advantage of the extra 32bits in each register to provide a much fuller experience, more than any current Linux distribution possibly could.

      You mean like SuSE 9.1 64-bit edition that comes fully optimized and ready to run on a single DVD? Look, not to be a dick or anything, but Gentoo is in no way the "only sane" option for getting the most from your hardware. Yeah, it's far more oriented towrds optimizing for hardware than any other distro, but for me "sanity" means pop a DVD in, install, configure, and get to leave in under 60 minutes. That doesn't mean Gentoo is bad, it's a fun hacking distro and you can learn a hell of a lot more from using it than any binary distro, but it's certainly not a PHB compatible distro.

      --

      Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  3. Note that PostgreSQL has also been optimized... by tcopeland · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...to work with AMD's 64 bit Opteron. And that was last November, so I daresay it's even better now... check it out here.

    PLUG: Good tools, too!

    --
    The Army reading list
  4. Speed Is Relative by rute_1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just the fact that you're running a 64 bit system gives you the sense that everything is faster.

    Besides, 64 being twice 32 justifies the upgrade cost...

  5. Better article by ValourX · · Score: 5, Informative

    I did a 64/32-bit comparison on FreeBSD a while ago, and then did some comparisons in SuSE 9.1.

    I haven't gotten around to 3D benchmarking yet, but soon...

    -Jem

  6. uhm, what's the point by Vacuous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They are using a 64-bit processor, on 64-bit enabled Operating systems, and benchmarking using 32-bit code, which in most cases is going to be slower on the 64-bit platform. On top of that, they aren't even using any of the 64-bit memory addressing so what is the freaking point of any of it. On top of that they are benchmarking in incomplete version of Windows, which a previous poster pointed out probably still has a bunch of debuig code/optimizing to be done.

  7. Biased, as usual by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "SuSE comes out ahead of Fedora consistently - but more importantly, both Linux distributions also lay waste to the 64-bit and 32-bit editions of Windows XP"

    Huh? This was in the conclusion of the article. Close results, but I wouldn't call it "laying waste" to anything.

    And maybe I'm dumb or just a fanboy, but weren't they using 32 bit binaries on alot of the Windows tests? With Linux programs that had been ported to Windows, not vice-versa? I don't know much, but I know that most ports are certainly not uniformly well writen accross platforms, especially when done by other developers or as an afterthought. Not to mention this was all on a beta version of Windows?

    Just some things to think about. Not that many think on their own here.