Slashdot Mirror
Intel 6xx Series Reviewed and Benchmarked
sebFlyte writes "It's been a long time coming, but Intel's first 64-bit desktop chip (the 6xx series) is here now, and thanks to ZDNet it has been thoroughly tested. The article has the full specs of the new family, explains the benefits of the changes, and also the results of tests on the new chips to establish perfomance boosts for games, photo manipulation and video work, among other things."
Looks like Intel's really moving away from marketing its GHz. Its Pentium M has been using 7xx, and this 64bit is on 6xx.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Intel has fallen behind as the mainstream CPU manufacterer. I wonder how long consumer will pay a premium for slower Intel CPUs
y _title= Analysts--AMD-Beating-Intel-in-Chip-Design&story_i d=27767&category=hardware
Analysts' assessments came after Intel announced last week that it was scrapping plans to develop a 4-gigahertz version of its Pentium 4 chip. On Tuesday, AMD unveiled a pair of advanced new chips, the Athlon 64 FX-55 and the Athlon 64 4000-plus, which analysts believe will be more appealing at the high end of the PC market.
more here:
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?stor
From the article
{
Pentium 4 660 3.6GHz 2MB yes / yes / yes $605
Pentium 4 650 3.4GHz 2MB yes / yes / yes $401
Pentium 4 640 3.2GHz 2MB yes / yes / yes $273
Pentium 4 630 3.0GHz 2MB yes / yes / yes $224
}
You can buy a well-built complete DEC Alpha computer on eBay for the cost of the cheapest single Intel 64bit CPU. And worse, same on eBay you can somtimes buy a API Networks 1U CS Dual 800MHz Alpha system for the most expense single Intel 64bit CPU. And Alpha 21264 still outperforms Intel per watt. I'm not impressed.
without prejudice
Just hope they'll discontinnue the Pentium 4 series.
Bits of News Giving you the latest bits.
Ha, like Microsoft will leave that called AMD64. Expect some diplomacy and a renaming. Not that anyone but techies care.
How has Intel sold more 64bit chips, unless you count the d00med itaniums.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
how is the heating? have things gotten better, or can i still cook an egg on my box?
i couldn't find any references in the article.
maximum power consumption: 230W vs AMD's 64 4000+ of 203W
isn't really a complete indication of heat though
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
From TFA: he new chips also offer improved [...] memory overflow protection (XD bit).
I think they should call it the XP bit instead: it'd be an accurate description of the problem, and it would ring a bell immediately in consumers' mind...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What intel needs to do is license IBM's Power5 technology and Sony/Toshiba/IBM's Cell to come up with a super Cell architecture. Of course, this would be economic suicide, as it would be an admission of deficient engineering, but wouldn't it be cool?
After all, I am strangely colored.
On most of the benchmarks, AMD seemed to perform a little better. On a side note,
"Intel's EM64T architecture can implement Windows' x86-64 mode"
I thought this was called amd64.
I'm not impressed. All those 32-bit benchmarks to benchmark their 64-bit CPU. Last week Linux Hardware benched the new Pentium against Opteron with real 64-bit apps on a real 64-bit OS.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
How does it compare percentage-wise vs. the 3.2GHz P4 2.4C I've been using since mid-2003?
Consumers are ignorant. They'll swoon to some cute, award winning advertising campaign designed to make them loved Intel and wonder who that other AMD company is.
Among those who want to be on the cutting edge, fastest speed, overclocking, etc. they'll know which way to go. AMD has a nice lead, but don't expect that to last as they're still relatively unknown and Dell, one of the largest PC sellers continues to snub them.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"...although there is, as yet, no shipping 64-bit Windows operating system, which is necessary to make the most of a 64-bit CPU."
I've been using 64 bit Gentoo for like a year now, but I guess that doesn't count.
The trouble with Intel products is trying to know what they're good for. In the rush to be something for everybody, they have saturated their own market and it is very difficult to tell the real benefits of one processor over another.
Why would I want a 540 over a 530 over a 520 ? I assume price, but is there something else? And the same goes for the Centrino and other lines. Not that they are useless, but there is no clear statement, "you need an M processor for that problem".
AMD has been better about this, trying to clearly differentiate AMD 64 from the FX line. And they named Opteron a whole new name, even though the 1xx is very similar to the FX line. Good move on all counts. And when AMD gets their version of hyperthreading working, it will be better yet.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
I personaly thought all the 12 year olds would follow that market plan alot better than their new one... "Well actualy MHZ doesn't really matter when you have a more efficient Processor that doesn't cost as much."
Bleh... Typical SUV buyer's mentality: "you should buy it cuz it's safer, more beautifully designed, ergonomical, got better brakes, cheaper... but mostly, it's got MORE POWAAAH". Nevermind that it weighs 3 tons and accelerates like a pig anyway...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Now, I have no doubt that Intel's 64-bit offerings will fall behind their AMD equivalents when it comes to bang-per-buck but that conclusion seems to suggest that Intel's chips will still have plenty of bang, as much as if not more than AMD's chips.
Remember, Intel's chips are just getting to market, whereas AMD's have been out there for at least 12 months. Who's to know who'll be lording it over who in a year or two when the 64-bit market is finally more than a tiny subset of the market as a whole? It might be AMD, it might be Intel, or it might be neither.
And before the accusations start, no, I'm not an Intel fanboy or shill who's interested only in running down AMD: this post is being typed on a AMD Athlon-based PC, my last PC had an AMD CPU, and my next one almost definitely will too. What I am interested in is a fair and accurate comparisons of the processors of the future, regardless of who they are made by.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
ZDNet tries to be slick about it, but there's no mistaking who has influence at Ziff-Davis.
When AMD comes out with something, it usually doesn't make the news or is seriously downplayed. However when Intel fires back a few months later, it's suddenly big news, worthy of headlines.
When Intel releases a CPU that is faster than any of AMD's offerings, there is usually a big story that accompanies the event, praising Intel and their engineering prowess. However, when AMD releases a CPU that outpaces the Intel offerings, the fact is heavily downplayed. You can tell there's some damage control going on at this "objective" media outlet.
Did you read the article?
All cpus are tested with both 32bit and 64bit code.
From the article:
The Intel chip performs particularly well if several tasks are running at the same time; under these circumstances, the Pentium 4 can outpace its AMD rival even if the latter is quicker at performing the tasks on their own. Thanks to HyperThreading (HT), the Pentium 4 distributes processing tasks across two virtual cores, resulting in more efficient utilisation of CPU resources. Such scenarios are found ever more frequently in the real world. For example, no-one should venture onto the Internet without firewall, antivirus and anti-spyware protection. These services are constantly active and need appropriate resources. Likewise, operations such as data encryption or hard disk defragmentation can load the processor, while the user compresses streaming video or audio data. Under such usage patterns, the advantage of HT is particularly apparent.
Why is it necessary to do this at the hardware level? Shouldn't a multitasking OS like linux or OS/2 or in theory NT/XP make us of processing power to make this reasonable efficient for something like running a virus scanner while surfing the Internet?
I've been circling, waiting to update my box. I waited for the 939 boards to show up - finally they did, but the CPU's were priced in the same range as my PII 400 was in the day. No worries, with a few processors out there 3500+ and better, it was just a matter of time before the costs dropped back down to what I expect to pay.
A year later a 3500 is only marginally cheaper....
They added a few slower processors to cover cheap skates like myself rather than change any of the higher end prices. I am so looking forward to Intel finally releasing some reasonably fast x86-64 chips so these CPU's return back to what I'm willing to pay. God help us all if they ever works out there is only one vendor option.
Course the real price drop is probably waiting for only one thing - that I buy my kit today.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
What people also fail to grasp is that MHz make very little difference at all in most applications. My current machine has a 1.8GHz CPU (AMD if you must know) and beats the latest 3.6GHz into the ground. Why? Because the mobo is high quality, I've got oodles of fast RAM (God bless Crucial), my HDDs are fast...
Your processor can be as fast as you like but without the supporting hardware it does nothing special.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
it's because they are becoming a bit more vector-like (the SSE sets et al.?) and they are working on those front-side buses and L1/L2/etc. caches to get the instructions in and out of the procs quicker...but I'm no expert on los procesadores.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
OK, nobody's perfect... Intel saturates their own product lines, AMD murders theirs.\
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Uh? Did I read well?
Quoting from http://news.com.com/IBM+extends+lead+in+server+ma
AMD pioneered the addition of 64-bit extensions to x86 in 2003 with its Opteron. Intel followed suit halfway through 2004. Despite AMD's earlier arrival, more revenue came from servers using Intel's 64-bit Xeon chips, McLaughlin said: $1.3 billion for Xeon servers, compared with $838 million for Opteron servers.
And the situation is not better in the desktop world. Intel has only lost a 2% with the "Opteron effect" - from 82% to 80% of market share. As soon as intel starts selling 64-bit enabled CPUs (ie: now), most of the x86 desktop boxes with 64 bit extensions will be the ones from intel, not AMD.
Note that in the x86 server world quoted above, intel's market share is even higher, more than 90% I think. Before opteron, the one serious x86 option was Intel. After Opteron, many people has switched to AMD (no suprise, opteron it's just faster and the individual memory bus for each CPU is great for SMP machines) but many people don't care for speed, they like being able to buy mainboards with a intel or serverworks chipset instead of a nvidia nforce crap. Many people cares about the "platform", they don't care if the CPU runs a ridiculous 10-20-percent slower or even single-number percentages.
Last time I looked (just now!), Intel processors are only $20-40 more expensive than comparable AMD processors. The big price difference isn't so big anymore.
I'm no Intel fan...I find it silly to be a "fan" of a corporation. In fact two of my three current systems are AMD based, including the one I'm writing this on. However, I must say that buying a machine with an Intel chipset is considerably more idiot proof than buying AMD - mostly because there are just too many AMD chipsets to choose from, many of which (esp. from VIA, SiS) turn out to be pretty quirky. I'm glad that I've found at least some consistancy from nVidia (nforce2 and >).
It's fun to hate Intel because they're the giant, but I for one still have not forgiven AMD for the K6-x processors and all their marketing BS that amounted to outright lies in my opinion. I also think they're stretching it a bit right now with their current "intel comparable" numbering scheme.
Good, fast, reliable systems can be made with both AMD and Intel at this point, and the total cost difference is really minimal. I certainly find strange that anyone would be bashing either company in this regard at this time.
No, trust me on this. I could do the same with a 1.8GHz P4 and a 3.6GHz AMD, and the 1.8 would still outperform the 3.6
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
I think right now there are plenty of folks who'd be fine with an AXE (Axis_omega eXecute Enable) bit to end the vomitous bitstream emanating from you.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Without a technology like hyper transport, Intel is always going to be behind.
TM2 is overheat protection, controlled by the processor's PROCHOT signal (processor hot). This signal is activated if the CPU's thermal diode detects critical temperature levels. TM2 will dynamically reduce core voltage and clock speed in order to cool down the CPU.
SpeedStep does exactly the same as TM2, with the difference that it is initiated by the operating system. Whenever the system load is low, Windows XP SP2 will cause the CPU to lower the clock speed in 200 MHz increments by using ACPI mechanisms. Again, this is performed dynamically, which means that executing a demanding application will cause the system to speed up again.
These sorts of protective mechanisms mean that your "3.6 Ghz" Intel processor might not be operating at either 3.6 Ghz or the core voltage that you have selected when either the motherboard or the Windows XP operating system determine that the thermal situation is getting out of hand. The original idea behind the early implementations of this stuff was to protect your cpu from catastrophic damage when the cooling fan failed, or some similar catastrophic event. Now, however, the stealthy way that Intel is implementing these mechanisms in both the hardware and the OS suggests that they have moved into the realm of selling performance that the system may not thermally be capable of delivering on a sustained basis. Will the user see any indication that their system is slowing down or that the voltage has been decreased? In effect, the Intel systems are becoming more like 'dragsters' that are capable of short periods of high acceleration and speed but perhaps unable to operate at speed on a sustained basis.
IMHO, the area in which AMD has really distinguished itself is in the power consumption of its desktop processors. Generally speaking, non-Intel x86 CPUs (from AMD and Cyrix) historically had a reputation for running extremely hot. The situation has been reversed in recent years, with Intel pushing the upper limits of power consumption with its Pentium 4 (especially with Prescott) while AMD was doing the exact opposite with its Athlon 64. This has resulted in a huge difference in power consumption between the two competitors. Consider the following CPUs which are basically direct competitors (roughly the same price):
Power consumption at idle
Athlon 64 3500+ (Winchester): 13.4W
Pentium IV 640 (Prescott 2M): 35.4W
Power consumption at full utilisation
Athlon 64 3500+ (Winchester): 47.5W
Pentium IV 640 (Prescott 2M): 129.4W
Source: 90nm Processors from AMD and Intel Pentium 4 6XX.
The often trivial differences in performance look rather insignificant in comparison. Also consider that these results come after Intel's best attempts at reducing the P4's power consumption (enhanced idle states in P4 5XX and SpeedStep in the 6XX) and you can see how inefficient the architecture is in this regard.
This of course applies to desktop CPUs. Intel redeems itself somewhat with its Pentium M in the notebook market.
Techreport's test is from feburary 20th, and shows somewhat the same - AMD64 is king of gaming, and doing one thing at a time - Intel is good at encoding etc, and thanks to HT, doing more than one thing at a time - I would prefer AMD for now (I got a Prescott 550 3.4GHz - I wish I had an AMD). :D
Ain't it great with competition?!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Actually, Microsoft has trademarked "Windows" by itself for many different uses. Check out uspto.gov sometime.
They published far too little information about how they benchmarked these games. Just the resolution, and that's about it. No driver versions, game versions...and their so-called .NET version of Quake II is just the C version with the ability to use .NET managed C++ code...but unless they have some magical version nobody else has, it's just the plain C.
Didn't they think that they were getting low numbers for Quake II?! They were lower than HL2, Doom3...I don't trust any of the benchmarks with obviously incorrect results like they've posted.
If your SUV accellerates like a pig, it means you should have bought a larger engine :)
:)
I had assumed that I'd be buying an excursion or suburban (4 kids, and 7000 mile summer vacation drive), but the van made more sense. I wanted the smaller V8, but to get the option package I wanted (and the limited slip differential), I was stuck with the slightly bigger one. Acceleration is *not* a problem in this 2.5 (not 3) ton vehicle; it can do that faster than any resonable need.
but then, I bought the vechicle that did what I needed, rather than a trophy. This thing hs a lot more room than an SUV (though when the steep alley to get out of our places ices up, I do think about 4WD and a winch to attach to the telephone pole cross the street
hawk
Will save you $50. Reason enough for me.
Mind you, the new nvidia chipsets with the (rather basic) on-motherboard firewalls are nice.
Added bonus, a software firewall tells you when programs are phoning home, and lets you block it. Mine also tells me if a program I've been running has been changed, potentially useful if I get a virus. OK, the first is only relevant if you're using any closed-source software, and the second is only really important on windows, but that's 90% of systems out there...
Slashdot - Mutual Assured Discussion
-1 troll?
I have a 2Ghz system, with fairly decent parts, and it crushes much "faster" systems with slow, shitty parts (Dell, I'm looking at YOU). Anyway, all other things equal, I would expect a 3.6Ghz system to be faster.
Don't hold your breath. Several years ago, when the first chips with a 133Mhz bus were coming out, I saw that it was pretty obvious there wasd going to be a 666Mhz PIII (133Mhz x 5). I was extremely disappointed when Intel decided to call it a 667Mhz chip. Same thing with the 667Mhz Celeron that came out shortly thereafter.
Yeah, the text of the article seemed a tad bit biased.
The AMD64 chip beat out the Intel chip in almost EVERY benchmark, and then ZDNet goes on to praise the Intel for 'holding it's own' with the AMD64, making sure and point out the one or two benchmarks (done with Intel Optimized software) where the Intel edges out the AMD.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Can someone who knows these things better than me tell me what the difference is between XD/NX and the 'eXecute' flag available in MMUs since the dawn of time (or at least since 486, don't know if 386 had it too ...)?
Which is more than compensated for by the cheering of dribbling fanboys, who really care who makes their CPU on sites like this.
Yes, the fanboys pretty much threw all reason out the window already and will just cheer for their favorite team. But I'd expect a little bit more from a company that is supposed to have journalistic integrity.
Only idiots use 1280x1024x32 mode in CPU-benchmarks. Speacially in games like Far Cry and Doom 3, wich are pretty much GPU limited in that resolution.
;)
But hey, it makes them look even.
As much as we hate to admit it, Unix is still more of a server OS more than a workstation or PC OS.
Multitasking benchmarks with mysql, oracle, postgresql, jboss, apache, and Tomcat would be nice since that is what linux based computers typically run.
Of course Oracle is only 32 bits and the java is 32-bit as well since its closed source.
if you want to play doom3 or UT use Windows.
I noticed something also strange. Look at the sysperf benchmarks and cad/3d modeling? Intel smokes AMD. Why is that?
Is the code optimized only for Intel or does bandwith and not latency determine performance? I imagine for a server bandwith might be more important as well but I dont know.
http://saveie6.com/
Except that every other chip has been rounded down.
486-66
P5-166
P2-266
Celeron 266
Celeron 766
P3-866
etc.
I guess I do need to explain it. The reviewer made is sound as if you need to wait for Microsoft to produce their 64 bit operating system before you could take full advantage of 64 bit processors. I've been using a 64 bit operating system for over a year now, taking full advantage of 64 bitness, without having to wait for Microsoft to grace my computer with it's 64 bit blessing.
I hope that clarifies it a bit.
sometimes i don't understand slashdot algorithm for posting news but who does? , ....
linuxhardware's article is in my opinion better than this one
developer http://flamerobin.org
I would say the same also...
I have a slighlty O/C 2500+ XP-M (2.2) ghz on a custom built PC..
Pops has a Compaq 3.6 Ghz P4 and its slow as a snail compared to mine.. so slow its pathetic.
It IS a matter of the components that are working WITH the CPU.