Linux Shootout: Opteron 150 vs. Xeon 3.6GHz Nocona

danalien writes "Anandtech with their previous review have stirred up a bit of controversy, and they've released their follow-up review where they pit AMD's Opteron 150 vs Intel's Xeon 3.6 Nocona (on linux)."

Comments

Re:Lame conclusion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who in his/her right mind would not use proper optimizations??

Good question. So, by visiting SPEC, where _AMD_ could choose the optimizations on the Opteron, and _Intel_ could choose the optimizations on the Xeon, and BOTH companies had to play by SPEC's result reporting rules (available on their website for you to read in detail), HERE ARE THE CRAFTY SCORES:

Opteron 150: 63.8 seconds
Xeon: 74.9 second

This makes the Opteron 17% faster, not 70% faster.

Conclusion: ANANDTECH is a piece of shit website staffed by fucking morons like you.

Proof: figures are from HERE:

http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2004q 3/ cpu2000-20040727-03285.html
and HERE:
http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res 2004q2/ cpu2000-20040503-03003.html

Re:Difficult to trust?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

This review struck me as a bit clueless, or unfinished.

Unfortunately, that is the case with so many of these "review" sites like anandtech and tom's hardware. For the most part, they are all just a bunch of kids or hobbiests with little to no industry experience. If they are lucky, they've got a CS degree but that's a bare minimum requirement not a qualification. More often than not the people writing these "reviews" are the same guys wearing the blue shirts down at the local best buy smurf cave.

If you think about it, it isn't too surprising. People with a real understanding of modern cpu architecture and system design are still rare enough, even in this depressed and outsourced micro-economy, that they can earn one or two orders of magnitude more money working in the labs of the big boys like Intel, AMD, HP, IBM, etc. Thus there is very little incentive for them to go do evaluations and write meaningful reports for hobbiest websites. The end result is you've got the blind leading the blind and at the same time these hobbiest websites are able to generate a hugely loyal following (whenever I post a critical message like this, there is usually at least on adherent to a website who replies with vitriolic denial).

That is not to say that there are no good sources of discussuion of modern computer architecture - the comp.arch usenet group has a few distinguished regulars like Andy Glew, a cpu architect who has worked on Intel and AMD microprocessors, for example. Though comp.arch has apparently become populare enough over the last year or so that the signal-to-noise ratio has significantly decreased. As for websites, of those with any regular activity, I think realwordltech has the highest level of knowledgable articles and community discussion going on, although many of the participants are just comp.arch regulars in a different venue.