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EM64T Xeon vs. Athlon 64 under Linux (AMD64)
legrimpeur writes "Anandtech has a nice performance comparison under Linux (AMD64) between the recently introduced 3.6GHz EM64T Xeon processor and an Athlon 64 3500+. It is disappointing to see how the Athlon gets trounced in FPU intensive benchmarks. No memory-bound benchmarks (where the Athlon is supposed to have an edge) are presented, though." Update: 08/09 23:34 GMT by T : As the Inquirer reports, many Anandtech readers take issue with the comparison.
i almost cared just then, for a second
The editors of Slashdot seem to love posting articles whose sole purpose is to evoke flame wars between Intel fans and AMD fans.
For what it's worth, I read the article and the processors seemed pretty well matched except for some "synthetic" benchmarks. I don't know much about the synthetic benchmarks that they used, but I have found that synthetic benchmarks are almost always biased in Intel's favor. Do synthetic benchmark writers optimize for Intel accidentally or is there some kind of conspiracy going on here? You be the judge.
Finally, to try to balance out the article submitter's inflammatory comments about the Athlon being "trounced in FPU intensive benchmarks", here is a nice paragraph from the article summary:
"That's not to say that the Xeon CPU necessarily deserves excessive praise just yet. At time of publication, our Xeon processor retails for $850 and the Athlon 3500+ retails for about $500 less. Also, keep in mind that the AMD processor is clocked 1400MHz slower than the 3.6GHz Xeon. With only a few exceptions, the 3.6GHz Xeon outperformed our Athlon 64 3500+, whether or not the cost and thermal issues between these two processors are justifiable."
Obviously they are not comparing processors which have price parity, so one could spin this either as "look at how slow the Athlon is", or "look at how much money you have to spend to get an Intel chip that is faster than an Athlon", depending upon your bias.
I'm all for the best processor out there. If it is made by Intel, then so be it. This will just give AMD more reason to compete for my dollar.
Wouldn't the larger cahced Opteron, the product actually positioned by AMD to compete with the Xeon series processors, have been a better comparison?
Back in the days of 386 and 486 processor, Intel made a math coprocessor to supplement calculations of the cpu to enhance performance. When Intel made the co-processor, they did a good job of embedded calculation in such a way to make them very good in math so good so that Intel decided to patent the idea.
Zip forward to 2000. Now AMD is a formidable threat to Intel's desktop market; however, Intel has a patent on the math calculations piece of the processors limiting AMD's usage of it. I imagine that AMD could license the Math processor circuitry and embed it on the chip at a hefty price but for business reasons didn't or Intel may have declined licensing the Math part.
I wish I had a link to the patent and when it expires but alas... If AMD can get a new FPU technology than AMD will be the front runner
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Athlon64 are for desktop markets, Xeon are for server markets
for this comparison to be fair, Xeon should be compared to Opteron!
So should I save up for an Intel processor or buy 2 AMD machines?
Omnis amans amens
for this, but:
"..No memory-bound benchmarks (where the Athlon is supposed to have an edge) are presented, though."
Why oh why do we continually have "reviews" posted that aren't comprehensive? Hell, i hardly even click on any of the posted reviews anymore...just read the comments later and find out what was missed or just plain wrong in the review.
Where does one go to get the real, straight scoop other than buying both, testing all products involved?
Yeah, i'm a little grouchy this morning...had to get that one out.
What you're looking for is value as well as how much power you need. When your computer is sitting most of the time, hardly doing anything, is dropping $500 on a faster processor really worth it. The human eye pretty much stops distinguishing framerate past 30fps, so, unless your hosting an intensive server or work platform, ensuring a non idle CPU, getting the Intel is just a matter of bragging rights.
Seriously, Anandtech should just never compare widely available hardware with totally unavailable hardware. And what's with using a 512KB cache, second-rank Athlon64 to compare with Intel's flagship worstation processor? How 'bout the 1MB-equipped Athlon64 FX, or more appropriately an Opteron 150 (in stock at online retailers for $600-$650).
The slowest Socket 939 Athlon versus the fastest Xeon available. PLus the SQL test of the Athlon were in 32bit, not 64 bit (which would have resulted in a win for the athlon).
Some of the other synthetic benchmarks also show slighly suspicious anomalies.
Plus were are the Nocoma 32bit benches? How are we supposed to see how performance improved in 64bit mode without comparison?
A good review would have pitched the 3.6Ghz nacoma vs an Opteron 150, would have tested both in 32 and 64 bit and tried to use some application benchmarks.
Not just picking some old scores out of the datadump to create a "shootout"
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
For one the Xeon has more L2 cache and for another most of the math benchmarks looked to be integer based. The Xeon gets beat in POVray wich is FPU intensive if im am not much mistaken... I think it is unfair to say the FPU on the Xeon is better...
I would be nice to see more non-synthetic benchmarks.
Okay, this is a case where Slashdot readers are unduly cheering for the "underdog".
Case in point: It is disappointing to see how the Athlon gets trounced in FPU intensive benchmarks.
Why exactly is this disappointing? I mean, Intel released a faster chip. It may be more expensive than AMD's offering, but it will: (a) foster more competition, and (b) offer you a product (if you have to buy a computer right now) which appears to be faster in synthetic benchmark tests (whatever significance that may mean to you).
This isn't "disappointing". It's capitalism.
That's not to say that the Xeon CPU necessarily deserves excessive praise just yet. At time of publication, our Xeon processor retails for $850 and the Athlon 3500+ retails for about $500 less. Also, keep in mind that the AMD processor is clocked 1400MHz slower than the 3.6GHz Xeon.
I think this sums it up (besides the fact Intel kicked their pants). The AMD is running at 2.2 ghz, and retails $500 less. To me this says AMD is working smarter and Intel is working harder. Intel is reaching a (transient) ceiling with their clockspeeds and one day AMD will catch up to it. It will be interesting to see if Intel's multicore plan kicks as much ass as they are presently hoping. It'll also be interesting to see AMDs attempt at the same.
Personally I'm rooting for both. If either company gets screwed, we're all screwed.
Where are the FPU intensive benchmarks that the Athlon is trounced in?
Under normal circumstances a prime finder application does not use the FPU. And I also doubt that the super_pi application uses the FPU. However the powray benchmark (which actually uses the FPU), is one of the benchmarks where the Athlon wins.
So it would seem that it is the Integer benchmarks where the Athlon looses, instead. This also corresponds with how the normal Athlon fares against the normal Pentium.
It is disappointing to see how the Athlon gets trounced in FPU intensive benchmarks.
Unless you're a major AMD stockholder (which you should state), stuff it. They're both corporations. AMD isn't a "good" corporation and Intel isn't a "bad corporation" so quit your partisan whinings.
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
Why not spell fare correctly?
So you compare a highend server/workstation proc to a highend desktop proc. Sure the server chip will win the majority of the benchmarks.
Where are the 64bit benchmarks? They really didn't do any comparision to 32bit, so you can't say for sure if Intel implementation is good or not. Get the Opteron in there, do the same benchmarks in 32 and 64 modes and see if there is a difference. Also throw say 5 gigs of memory in the machines, that will see how each proc handles addressing above the 4gig limit.
That's right. You'd only say it's "dissappointing" if you're talking to a supposedly pro-AMD audience and you're trying to sell some pro-Intel FUD , because as mentioned before, those processors don't run at the same speed, and there is a huge price difference so you're comparing a high-end chip to a medium-end chip.
This article should not have been posted here, or on Anandtech for that matter. It has already caused a riot over there, both in the comments section of the article, and the forums. This article was grotesquely sub-par for Anandtech, and should have been removed immediately. Several of us avid AT readers have spotted discrepencies in the charts, stats that are totally bogus in comparison to previous AT articles. Particularly the MySql chart. To put it simply, there is absolutely no way to compare those two chips, as someone in the forums put it, "It's like comparing apples to a slab of meat." The Xeon has double the cache, is double the price, and isa top end server chip, being compared to a midrange desktop chip. The two simply cannot be compared. The article should have included an FX chip and/or an Opteron 150. Discount the article entirely. Hardcore Intel fanboys have spoken out against this article, that should really tell you something.
Please, try not to sound so stupid...
I am always disappointed in these reviews because they alway address gaming and multimedia (which I understand are most important to the greatest amount of readers) but rarely address scientific computing. I am most interested in how fast my FORTRAN/C math-intensive code will run (I have seen examples where AMD gets beat soundly in the "FPU" benchmark, but kicks ass in ScienceMark).
AMD has been consistently good at scientific computing, but I haven't seen any performance specs for the 64-bit ones. Has anyone else?
Ed.
Why not RTFA... especially the Conclusions section...
From the article: "That's not to say that the Xeon CPU necessarily deserves excessive praise just yet. At time of publication, our Xeon processor retails for $850 and the Athlon 3500+ retails for about $500 less"
In other news, a Corvette just smooooookkkked a Ford Taurus.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
And the 3500+ and the Xeon are in the same processor class how?
The 3500+ is a mainstream, desktop processor. For a more accurate comparison, the FX series, and the opteron line should have been used.
The high priced server processor beats the more affordable desktop processor. These two processors aren't even competing for the same market share, so why even make the comparison?
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
My guess is that if these same benchmarks had been run on any Athlon vs. the equivalent P4 throughout history, the outcome would've been similar. But the results would also have been as irrelevant yesterday as they are today, since we all know the Xeon isn't 40% faster than the A64 in anything like real-world usage.
This is the real compairson. Overclock the AMD to 3.6GHz and see who wins. As soon as AMD gets tthe 90nm process perfected I think we will see a huge boost in AMDs clockspeed.
Zoid.com
While the Intel chip performed well against the AMD one, hyperthreading appeared to perform badly (i.e. the Intel chip without hyperthreading enabled tended to beat the same chip with it enabled).
It would however be interesting to see a test that somehow say ran two of these benchmarks at the same time to see whether hyperthreading had an effect in such a case. Presumably most of the synthetic benchmarks especially don't really favour hyperthreading.
Hate me!
Finally Linux benchmarks :). They are sooo hard to find and finally they are being used.
Xeon = 3.6 GHz, A64 = PR 3500
Xeon = Server, A64 = desktop
Xeon = L3 cache 1MB, A64 = L3 Cache 512K
Xeon = $??? (probably > 800 when available), A64 = $345 (pricewatch)
Xeon = fastest of Intel's 64-bit chips, A64 = slowest of AMD's 64-bit chips
Anandtech = sold down the river? What the hell?
The reason our eyes don't have a problem with 24 fps film is because movies have lots of motion blur! Video games have no motion blur at all, unless you're playing a PS2, in which case everything is blurry.
Different architectures. Overclocking the Athlon to 3.6 would not result in a valid comparison, produce A LOT of heat, and require a 666 Watt PSU. So far 90nm for Intel processors only increased heat and power consumption.
Taken from here
17 - Posted on Aug 9, 2004 at 5:32 AM by KristopherKubicki
The only reason we even put the 3500+ in there is cause we already had benchmarks for it.
Relax, its just a primer for future articles. A 3.6F is supposed to compare with a "3600+" rated Athlon 64 isnt it? Since we dont have a 3600+ the 3500+ should perform slightly lower? Isnt this what we expected? And for those of you who dont believe me, a 3.6GHz 1MB EM64T Nocona is *exactly* like a 3.6F.
I thougth the AMD chip did pretty damn good for costing $500 less!
Kristopher
With that in mind I find these flamewars very annoying since I don't care what you think is the best chip based on 'performance', since honestly there aint much difference between the two as far as how quickly my programs load, or how well my games look(dependent mainly on video card, which i do care alot about performance benchmarks). Id much rather have a comp that doesnt act like a noisy space heater. Which is why I'll go with intel from now on. Once AMD produces chips that don't require as much cooling as they do I'll consider them again.
"Math intensive" means floating point intensive, because that is all the math normal people do with their machines. Calculating Pi to a billion digits is not floating point math, it is integer math.
The "math intensive" benchmark in this setup was Povray, and there the Athlon 64 shined. A lot. lame is also a floating point heavy application, and both CPUs are close there.
gzip measure memory performance. Apparently, the dictionary fit completely into the cache of the Xeon. Not a fair test.
I cannot comment on MySQL performance. It should measure integer and memory performance, I would wildly guess.
Bernstein's prime sieve is also integer arithmetic . If you have a prime with 100 million digits, the action is mostly in the CPU caches. Again, no fair test.
The unfairness of the benchmark setup becomes particularly obvious when you look at the chess benchmark. Chess (and other game AI type problems) do a lot of unpredictable jumps. That's the weak side of Pentium 4, and that's why Athlon 64 has historically outperformed Pentium 4s by a WIDE margin. Look at the hardware used by the PC chess tournaments and the chess grandmasters and you see Athlon and Athlon 64 all the time. If Anand now measures that Athlon 64 is outperformed by a Xeon, then the test setup can not have been fair.
I don't know about ubench, never heard of it before.
Password cracking and encryption is 100% integer arithmetic. And it is one of the mainstays of Opterons from the beginning. Anands measurement flies in the face of that.
I call bullshit.
So same old story, Intel scores at the top end if you got money to burn. AMD provides the best bang for your buck.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No it's not. There are different engineering trade-offs that were made. P4 traded IPC for clock-speed. AMD traded clock-speed for IPC. All that matters is what performs the best at the retail clock-speed.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
So depending on the amount of motion your eyes will notice that you are looking at a computer screen updating too slowly.
The old 30fps is from the tv era. It doesn't account for people being able to see flickering tv monitors or lights.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I hate this garbage! What a worthless review. Comparing a $350 processor to an $850 processor....of course the $850 one is going to be better. Most of you ignoramuses are going to look at this and think "Wow, Intel sure got ahead of AMD again!" without a second thought. Let's see an FX-53 go against it, or an Opteron 250 or two.
This was a 64 bit test, and we really don't know how cache sizes affect 64-bit operations yet, in real world tests. Since they compared the slowest dual-memory 64, with the smallest cache, against the fastest 64-bit Xeon, with a bigger cache, I think these benchmarks may be valid. They just shouldn't have been placed together and alone on one graph.
-Dan
I think that the article demonstrates the effectiveness of cache for some applications. How much would you like to bet that the Xeon was able to run pretty much everything in cache where it won, and the Athlon 64 wasn't?
Very poor comparo.
Jonathan
It's already been said several times, but I'll say it again, in a top-level thread.
Why the hell did they compare an Athlon 64 to a Xeon?
Either compare an Opteron, or an Athlon FX.
This is not a straight comparison.
The Athlon FX is significantly faster than its cheaper Athlon 64 brethren.
Either compare chips on a fair 'cost' basis, or compare chips on a fair 'market-segment' basis.
Might as well have compared the celeron to an opteron.
Look! The Opteron TROUNCES the Celeron!!
WoW!
Note: I'm not saying this Xeon won't beat the Opteron, or the Athlon FX.
Just that the comparison between the Athlon 64 and the Xeon is stupid.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
As part of a larger project I've recently had to evaluate these two chips technologies. I've been benchmarking the AMD Opteron 246 (2.0 Ghz) against a 3.0Ghz Xeon with 64bit and hyperthreading extensions, using the the same top end memory config, same hard drives, etc.
With the overwhelming majority of our real-world custom application performance numbers, the Opteron system was the better performer by a wide margin.
I'd suggest if anyone is making a real decision about these chips, to test them out yourself under actual-use conditions.
We will? None of the other manufacturers appear to have. Intel have gotten very little extra clock speed so far (the fastest released Northwood -- 130nm process -- was 3.4GHz I believe) and whilst the PowerPC 970 series went from 2.0GHz to 2.5GHz, I suspect that the 130nm chip could run a lot faster than 2.0GHz if the 2.5GHz G5 Mac's water cooling system were to be used on it...
This review is BS. Any running program which would not fit into the Athlon 64's 512KB cache but fit into the Xeon's 1MB cache would have much better performance. Case in point, I downloaded the Windows version of the tspc181 chess program used in the article, and it showed 644KB memory usage in Task Manager. This would explain the much better score of the Xeon, as the Athlon 64 would have to be constantly swapping with main memory while the Xeon ran from the cache. Any test like this will significantly skewer the results. A fairer comparision would be a 1 MB cache Opteron or FX vs the 1MB cache Xeon.
As almost any tech reviewer would have been aware of this, one can only wonder if some money changed hands, as this article seems to be intentionally slanted to make the Xeon look better then the Athlon 64. Also synthetic benchmarks in general tend to be very unreliable, and sometimes worthless, often slanted in design to favor one CPU or another, usually Intels, since they have the most money to throw around.
This ad space for rent.
Here's the Intel® Logic®:
Well if we had a desktop chip this fast and if it was 64bit, we'd position it in the market against the Athlon64 3500+ by promoting benchmarks of the two just like this. Then everybody'd see how good Intel is.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Right. No kidding this benchmarks sucks. :-)
./configure and make with no optimizations."
Seriously, it makes a great difference what version of GCC they use.
I saw a great boost in benchmarks when I switched from gcc 3.3 to 3.4 on my AMD64.
-O3 -pipe -march=k8 -fomit-frame-pointer -ftracer
That's the way to go!
"We compiled the program using
1. Find poorly thought-out review which doesn't favor the underdog
2. Paste link to it in slashdot with inflammatory tagline
3. Watch a bunch of lame nerds flame each other
4. ???
5. Profit!
With progress and competitive improvements. Just think about the intel effort that would have been put into IA64 if AMD had not been so good. The reverse will be better too when AMD counters with another round.
There will be another (hopefully better) IE too, all thanks to some very good competition from Mozilla and Opera and others.
I mean, sure, it's good to know what's coming down the pipe from companies like AMD and Intel. But I just can't stand these stupid review sites that never seem to get shit right.
They compare an Intel Xeon top-of-the-line brand new chip with a desktop Athlon 64 - and not even the lastest incarnation. They should have reviewed a brand new Opteron chip in order to get the "state of the art."
But no. Instead, they compare these two things, and then say things like "for sure, the Intel chip pounced on the AMD one.." and go on and on about how the Intel chip is faster, with a small footnote "well, these chips aren't realy equal.. but INTEL SMASHED AMD!!!" Well, okay that's not word for word, but that was what I got out of it.
I have nothing against Intel. I've used their chips for years. I've also used AMD's chips for years. I love them both. But lately, I've been liking the AMD stuff more - because AMD is pushing the market *forward* with new technology that works well, instead of feeding us 50Mhz incriments every 90 days.
Like AMD or not - without them we'd still be using 500Mhz Pentium III's and paying $600 for each one. Instead, we have almost 4Ghz chips, massive amounts of speed, they are cheap as hell, and we're all going to be using 64-bit workstations soon! Who would have thought that AMD could do that much, being like.. 10% the size of Intel.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I'd like to see a dual Opteron/ Athlon 64/ Pentium 4EE/ Dual Xeon 3.6GHz shootout for gaming. I would think a dual 3.6GHz Xeon would be able to beat an Athlon FX64, but I'm not sure about a dual Opteron. I know most games aren't written to take advantage of SMP, except for Quake 3, but you do see *some* performance increase when one processor can take over menial system tasks and audio processing, leaving the other to play the game.
:)
So how about it Anand (Or Tom, or ars) High end workstation game shootout! If you want a baseline I'll give you VNC to my dual Xeon 1.7 box
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Anandtech will be benching a 'disappointing' GeForce 4mx against the somewhat superior Nvidia 6800.
Polish up the irons boys, there's gonna be a SHOOTOUT! Yee HAW!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
> The same thing with ATi/nVidia. Two players means they each get half the market.
I had actually heard that Intel was the market leader (or close to it) with their amazingly poor, bug-ridden, "Extreme Graphics" integrated chip, largely due to their use in Dell (and other vendor) home machines.
--
-JC
http://www.jc-news.com/coding/freedom/
I though that these benchmarks looked a little strange when you're using Jack the Ripper as one of your major comparisons. There's a nice thread going on over at Ace's bashing the benchmarks, including a post from the author of the chess benchmark stating:
this test they did was flawed in all respects.
I think you just answered your own question. Do you think it is in Slashdot's best interest to have you read JUST the link, or to sort through the comments, moderate, or post replies?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This benchmark put up a server class CPU vs. a desktop class CPU. They should've put the Xeon up against an equivilant Opteron.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
BECAUSE there is no 64 bit P4 yet Mr. Smart@ss. What a bunch of whiners! Why Xeon performed better than Athlon? Why MS does not open Windows source? Why in the hell IE crashes? etc etc. Stop whining, and produce a better one and then talk...
No i didnt RTFA, i didnt have to:
so how did they expect a mid range athlon 64 chip to do agains a top end server chip from intel?
a more fair comparison would be with the FX51 or at least the fx53, or hell, even opteron.
If you had coded games or demos in the 80s you'd know what he was talking about. Try watching a scroller that shows the same frame twice and then moves it a few pixels. You'll find out that iitt''ss aa bbiitt jjeerrkkyy.
Change it so that every other frame is interpolated. It becomes blurry but is slightly better.
Now, blank every other frame. Magically, it becomes smooth and crispy, but this time it hurts to watch.
isnt the xeon dual channel as well? the desktop amd64 is only single.
the "review" was rather mystifying, since the tests prove mainly that if you compile some random code for the P5 (apparently all 32-bit, no use of SSE or
AMD-64 registers!), well, then the P4/3.6 runs it faster than a K8/2.4. wow! Occam would attribute this result to the difference in clocks, not chips.
...the "low end" intel or AMD cpu is about 10x faster than the VIA.
& a=2448&f= 1
5 524&f= 1
the via is like a 1ghz i386. very, very slow. the L2 cache is only 64kb compared to the 512kb of the p3 or xeon.
btw the p3/1g can be had for ~$60 street.
http://www.pricewatch.com/h/prc.aspx?i=3
even a xeon 1.5g is only $61!
http://www.pricewatch.com/h/prc.aspx?i=3&a=
the main attraction of the via is that it uses very little power. this makes it nice for embedded applications where raw cpu speed is not an issue.
but for desktop usage or server usage, the via is simply out of the question.
The chess-benchmark is ALSO flawed. He doesnt optimize compiling, only linking. With a normal -o2 compile, the athlon system gets more then 290 Knodes per second
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
read the article. this is the athlon64, the desktop chip. this is not the opteron. the athlon is a 3500+ rating and the Xeon is 3.6Ghz.
this is a horrible review. the a64 is not even close to direct competition with the Xeon, its the midrange desktop chip. where is the opteron 150 vs the Xeon review?
do notice that this desktop chip, the one that shouldn't compete with a server/high end workstation chip like the Xeon, does kick its ass in a couple of benchmarks.
also notice that their are very few examples of anything the a64 is marketed to run, like games. this is benchmarking the Xeon on home turf, and the a64 on foreign soil, playing soccer when it was meant to play american football. got it?
You can't compare amd64 and xeon. They are two different processors.
Nor parent nor sibling got this right. AMD's PR are not based on Intel's Xeons nor Pentium-4s, but a hypothetical Thunderbird.
m l
http://forums.ocfaq.com/archive/index.php/t-74.ht
well my AMD64 3200+ runs doom 3 better than most all P4s. and really, what could you possibly need to do that's more important than doom3?
The act of using a 3500+ instead of an Opteron 150 is a minor issue.
/dev/null, and retest both machines.
The major issue is that Anandtech does not know how to compile software.
The Makefile used for TSCP on the A64 is broken, and does not apply -O2 optimization at the right stage.
My A64 3200+ scores 290K n/s when -O2 is properly applied.
On "primegen" most of the time is spent in putchar(), instead of in computation, and they should comment out the putchar() loop instead of directing output to
Also, they should have edited conf-cc and turned on -O2 optimization.
ubench is known to be buggy, and the AMD64 results have been questioned on other sites as being implausibly bad.
They copied their data wrong on the first database test. The A64 3500+ times in at 215 in 64b mode, beating the 3.6 GHz Nocona.
Their encoding benchmarks are equally suspicious.
And gzip was a 32bit executable.
In short, this "review" is HORRENDOUS, and filled with errors. A64 3500+ vs. Opteron 150 is a distraction from the real problem:
These guys don't know how to compile, optimize, and benchmark software.
This is the real compairson. Overclock the AMD to 3.6GHz and see who wins. As soon as AMD gets tthe 90nm process perfected I think we will see a huge boost in AMDs clockspeed.
This always annoys me...
You see, you can't buy an AMD at 3.6 GHz because it wasn't designed to run that fast. The AMD does more work per clock so it CAN'T run at 3.6GHz in 90nm. It is simply not designed to do so. The laws of physics prevent this.
The Intel CPU CAN run at 3.6GHz because it was DESIGNED to run at 3.6GHz AT THE COST of doing LESS work per clock.
If I had a CPU that could execute 2 instructions per clock at 1 GHz and another CPU that could execute 1 instruction per clock at 2 GHz, they would have the exact same performance.
They are different design styles. Sometimes the high frequency, lower-IPC approach is better, sometimes the lower frequency, higher-IPC approach is better. You can see this in the discrepency in performance of 2 CPUs with vastly different design tradeoffs.
"Case in point??" Oh no... Intel beat AMD in a comparison. Are you going to go crying to mommy now? How on earth did you survive the 90's?
You don't pick a cache size because it exceeds the size of the application being run. You choose a cache size that runs the application well. You want the memory accessed most often to sit in the lowest-level cache possible. The stuff you rarely access can sit in main memory. Typically, the cache needs only be 6% or less of the image size in order to achieve well over 90% hit rates. You can't argue that the cache size was the primary difference here.
You don't actually think that when you ran tspc181 that it was the only thing in your cache, do you? Don't you think that some of your 20MB+ explorer image was taking up some of that space?
How do you explain many of the athlons in the past few years that have edged out P4s with higher cache sizes...?
You know, I'd rather see something about how we were working on moving the world away from dependence on petroleum. Just something a little more immediately useful than being able to play quake or watch Brittney Shpeers at a gazillion frames a second. If all the effort that has gone into making phenomenal processors would be shifted into energy independence, we'd breathe cleaner air and not support so much terrorism and war. Maybe Intel could build a couple plants to produce photovoltaics... we're CAPACITY LIMITED on panels now! Sure, it's different than a submicron CPU, and would require different techniques and thinking, but why not?? I think you could build a plant to make FREAKING DIODES for a couple billion dollars. Just my personal rant. I'm not the manufacturing/financing/business leader to do this, but I'd hope somebody is. Is American Industry lead by a bunch of risk averse, non innovative SISSYS now??? I also want a Moon Base. I'm serious.
I own an Opteron 246 based system (currently 1 CPU) with 1GB of 333MHz DDR SDRAM (Reg. ECC).
Scores for ubench on my system (with me being logged into gnome and with firefox open, nothing else happening):
ubench -c: 109318
ubench -s: 108116 (for single cpu)
ubench -m: 166149
Remember, this benchmark makes full use of SMP if available and this is (for now) a single cpu system. Also, the 246 Opteron runs at 2.0 GHz, not 2.2 as the amd64 3500+ does.
I'm fairly positive that a dual Opteron will score closer to the new Xeon. It already outperforms the old one (first hand experience here).
Oh, P.S.: I *heart* this machine! So far it cost me about 1450 euros, so before I'm done I'll have a dual rig for less than 2000 euros.
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Anand is dropping the ball like toms did a few years ago.
This is sad becauze i liked anand's articles.
the doom crap was anoying but this is just sad.
So here's a question what is a decent hardware news site now.
Totally agreed.
Primegen comes with a 'count' function which does no output, that would entirely isolate the CPU-bound component.
However, chosing to not turn on any optimisation for some of those tests means that these benchmarks were the most "synthetic" I've every seen -- they certainly corresponded to nothing real.
FP.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
I've just benched my quad Opteron 850's running 64 bit fully-optimised Gentoo against a comparable Intel CPU, and the Opteron *smashes* the Intel.
I used a dual Pentium Pro 100MHz for comparison.
I took the latest CVS snapshot of CRAPbench and SPECrubbish. Both were compiled with GCC (3.4 for the Opterons, 1.25.12395a-alpha for the Intel) with 64 bit extensions. Surprisingly, the AMD chips scored nearly 3295869 Bogotrons more than the Intel machine!
Hoho, joke over. As the comments here and in the article point out, the "review" is based on the wrong methodology and shoddy execution - appallingly limited set of benchmarks, errors in makefiles, non-64bitness of GCC options, top-end server chip vs. medium-end desktop chip, the works. Anadtech used to be my premier visit for seemingly honest reviews, but this one is just utter garbage. Even more worryingly, it isn't even garbage that looks like it was produced by a bribe from Intel; it just looks like it was done by someone without much of a clue as to what the hell they're doing.
I'm a self confessed AMD fanboy, but anyone can tell that this review is, essentially, a crock of shit.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Anandtech screwed up his makefile on the TSCP benchmark. (It fails to apply the -O2 option during compile) The 3500+ should score about ~300K, not 150K, beating the Nocona by a significant margin.
He copied the wrong data over on the MySql test-- the 3500+ wins both.
It's unclear he built the other synthetic tests correctly.
Some of the other tests are 32bit, not 64bit.
ubench is known to be buggy, as explained at another site.
This "review" is pure garbage.
The fact that he used a 3500+ instead of an Opteron 150 is a minor issue. The major issue is that he doesn't know what he's doing when he attempts to build benchmarks from source.
Intel's x86-64 chips don't feature per-page execute bits, so that handy exploit protection that is in OpenBSD, and recently linux and XP SP2 doesn't work. AMD's chips are the fastest chips available with this feature.
If you're building a 5000$ server, chances are you're running 2-4 cpus. Getting four of those "Athlon-Trouncing" cpus will cost you 2000$ more. I doubt getting this CPU in any system will justify the price. Putting that 500$ in your HD/video card/RAM will probably yield you way more bang for your buck in a gaming rig.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Xeon is a 'server' market CPU and the AMD64 is a home market (i.e. 'gaming') CPU. Hence the difference in price, and to some extent performance. Some other poster mentioned that the reviewers promised a review with Opterons (server class) soon.
The point being that often price isn't a huge object in a high performance server that needs the biggest CPUs it can get and that's it, whereas (as you mentioned) gaming systems have different tradeoffs, and therefore different price points.
Seems to me that this review was heavily stacked against AMD from the get go.
Why not use the Athlon 64 FX-53 939 or an Opteron?
How about we start throwing some price, Clock vs Clock, or heat management comparisons out there? Just about anything that put the two on equal ground and you will see AMD come out the victor.
This review was completely worthless. Maybe it was posted just to start a flame war but what else is it good for?
Does that tell us something? That in all the benchmarks they selected those that are dependent on Mhz?
That says alot about their motive.
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
Other factors include the fact that the 3500+ got a bogus PR rating, it's clockspeed is 200mhz slower than the 3400+ on the 754 platform. thus the poor showing in mathmatical calculations.
The article, unfortunately is riddled with numerous flaws.
Please, try not to sound so stupid...
FUCK YOU FAGGOT!
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t_______/\_|___C_____)/______\_(_____>__|_/_____t
s______/_/\|___C_____)_______|__(___>___/__\____s
e_____|___(____C_____)\______/__//__/_/_____\___e
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t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t
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