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AMD Dual-Core Performance Revealed

Posted by Zonk on from the hard-core-number-crunching dept.

Timmus writes "In two separate articles, FiringSquad takes a look at the performance of AMD's dual-core Opteron CPU. The first article examines the performance of dual-core in scientific computing applications (MATLAB and LS-DYNA) as well as digital photography, while the second story focuses on the performance of dual-core Opteron paired against Intel's dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition in video encoding, Cinebench, and a few other applications. The performance improvements are pretty impressive in multi-threaded applications that take advantage of the technology."

74 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. YESSSS by sehryan · · Score: 4, Funny

    I am running one right now, which is why I got first post!

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    1. Re:YESSSS by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Funny

      Unfortunately, it looks like the GNAA has a beowulf cluster of these and beat you to it.....

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      Monstar L
  2. full article mirrors by winkydink · · Score: 5, Interesting

    here and here.

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  3. OK then. by millennial · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So we have:
    scientific computing applications (MATLAB and LS-DYNA)
    digital photography
    video encoding
    Cinebench and
    "a few other applications".
    So what about the average user? Will the college kid who just needs to type their papers, the parents who want to do their taxes, the gamers who want to play high-end stuff, etc. get any sort of boost from this?

    --
    I am scientifically inaccurate.
    1. Re:OK then. by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why would they need a "boost"? These are expensive and obviously aimed at high end users. You can already get sub $1k laptops that really do all the stuff you described, so why would they buy a dual core desktop system?
      If you are using a dual core system to run word either a) you have WAY too much money, or b) the code bloat at Microsoft has REALLY gotten out of hand......

      --
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    2. Re:OK then. by millermj · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The people who want to do all of that at once, maybe? Honestly, ever tried to MD5SUM your CD1 ISO at the same time as you were encoding your MP3s for CD2? Dual-core processors would make multitasking much smoother.

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    3. Re:OK then. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So what about the average user? Will the college kid who just needs to type their papers, the parents who want to do their taxes, the gamers who want to play high-end stuff, etc. get any sort of boost from this?

      Here's a clue: The Bottleneck Ain't The Processor.

    4. Re:OK then. by nmg196 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > the code bloat at Microsoft has REALLY gotten out of hand......

      I wish people would stop talking about Microsoft code bloat when nobody else does any better.

      Currently, 50 processes. The two highest (memory and VM wise) are Thunderbird which is using (60mb of main memory) and Firefox which is using 55mb of main memory. All the microsoft products I'm running like Visual Studio.NET 2003 are WAY down the list as none are using more than 10-15mb of main memory.

      Nearly all popular linux distributions now come on more than one CD (even if you ignore the source code) and the default installations are WAY bigger than that of Windows XP.

    5. Re:OK then. by NanoGator · · Score: 2, Informative

      "So what about the average user?"

      Windows is multi-threaded and behaves better in a multi-processor environment. Even the average user will notice this.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    6. Re:OK then. by masklinn · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Dude, Opterons are server-oriented processors, they're absolutely not geared towards regular boxes (much like Xeons). The people using this won't be playing and won't be typing text in their word processors either. The soon-to-be-released dual core A64 will more than likely be much much cheaper, but they won't come out right now. Please wait a few months

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    7. Re:OK then. by Bwian_of_Nazareth · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Oh my, here it comes again. Comparing pears to apples. If I install MS Windows, what do I get? Operating system with a few (let me say - lousy) applications. If I install Linux distro of my choice, what do I get? Depending on my choice, it can be a full blown suite of application ranging from development to office apps to video processing.
      And further more, e.g. KDE has been quite successfull at speeding up between 3.2 and 3.4. I am not so sure about the memory print, but that is no concern for me today (RAM is abundant).

    8. Re:OK then. by Otter · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I don't know much about memory usage under Windows, but here on Linux I am running X with KDE 3.3.2, Firefox AND Konqueror, Citrix, Konsole and some other stuff, and my total actual RAM in use is about 165MB.

      I've never used Citrix, so don't know how heavy that is, but -- 165 megs for the OS, desktop, file browser, web browser and a terminal isn't exactly what I'd call svelte. Open a GNOME app, dragging in a whole other suite of libraries, and you'll be pushing 200 megs without doing anything heavy.

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    9. Re:OK then. by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Currently, 50 processes. The two highest (memory and VM wise) are Thunderbird which is using (60mb of main memory) and Firefox which is using 55mb of main memory.

      Point conceeded. Some OSS software chews up the memory, and FireFoo are major culprits.

      Though I'd hope to hell Visual Studio is way down the list. It's just an IDE! It has a GUI and a text editor. All the memory-chewing hard work is done in the compiler back end. With that comparison, my Emacs session is 6MB.

      Nearly all popular linux distributions now come on more than one CD (even if you ignore the source code) and the default installations are WAY bigger than that of Windows XP.

      Of course they are -- they include reams of free software! Nobody would complain about the large size of Windows installations if that installation came with practically every piece of software you would ever need! Even a 'default' install that doesn't install everything still has vast swaths of software from compilers to office suites to web browsers to web servers to image manipulation to whatever.

      Who could possibly complain about getting more free stuff, even if it takes another CD or two or three to fit it? Consuming disk space for useful things is fine. Windows installs are considered bloated because the size increases but the perception is that you're not actually getting more stuff. Honestly -- what comes with the XP install these days?

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    10. Re:OK then. by alecks · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Meanwhile, everyone's complaining that MS is bundling a friggin media player and internet browser with THEIR OWN OS!!! I've always wondered, and i'm sure (err hope) there's a good explanation... Why doesn't Apple get sued for packaging everything with their OS?

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    11. Re:OK then. by r_naked · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As for the "more than one CD" complaint, Linux distributions these days come bundled with about all the software there is. Windows XP doesn't even include a C compiler as far as I know.

      I am sure Microsoft would love to include a stripped down version of VS.NET with XP. With all the grief they are given for including a web browser, what kinda headaches do you think they would get if they started shipping a compiler?
      I hear compliants on here all the time about how you get so many more applications with a Linux distribution, and in the same breath how Microsoft should remove things from their OS.
      I would LOVE to see Microsoft be allowed to ship more software with the OS. A compiler, an office suite (not just wordpad and Outlook Express), a decent DVD authoring package, something better than MSPaint etc...etc... but people would scream UNFAIR!
      To me unfair is Microsoft trying to compete with free when the free side of things doesn't have the same restrictions. Hell even Apple ships most of the popular GNU software with OSX.
      Please, someone tell me how that is fair. Did anyone stop and think that maybe if Microsoft didn't have to keep hacking their OS to make various groups / government bodies happy that the OS might be more secure? I mean they already use BSDs ftp (and probably several other BSD utils), it would be real nice if they could have thrown pf in instead of developing their own (potentially less secure / less configurable) firewall.

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    12. Re:OK then. by Mycroft_VIII · · Score: 3, Informative

      The reason Microsoft gets so much more scrutiny and leagle flack on the bundling issue is because they have been found (leagly) to be a monopoly. This changes the rules for them so as to prevent them from locking out any future competition or taking over related/inlinked markets by virtue of thier having a near captive audience.
      Apple with it's small slice of the market is very unlikely to say put opera out of bussiness by shipping thier own browser for free with thier operating system like Microsoft did to Netscape(I know that's a simplification of ie/netscape history, but it serves to illistrate my point I hope).
      In short Microsoft is a victim of thier own success here.

      Mycroft

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    13. Re:OK then. by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2, Interesting
      My system becomes very sluggish if I do something like md5sum an ISO. However, my CPU utilization is not maxed, and lowering the process priority doesn't seem to help. If I let it run by itself and then come back to the machine when it's done, I see all of the apps and window manager have been totally swapped out and will take many seconds just to repaint the first time I clear the screensaver.

      This tells me that the sluggishness is due to the interaction between virtual memory and heavy I/O activity, not CPU load. Another CPU probably isn't going to help at all in this situation.

    14. Re:OK then. by Jim_Maryland · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have to admit, XP doesn't crash very often compared to previous MS releases. I have had it crash/lockup though due to applications and the only thing to do is power it down. I can't recall seeing a BSOD with it yet. On the other hand, my Solaris systems for the last 7 years and the DEC Ultrix systems for 3 years prior to that have had better reliability with zero OS freezes/crashes. I have had applications hang, but they haven't hung the OS in the least.

      Microsoft has to overcome years poor stability reputation among IT professionals. Linux will likely face the same issue. The major difference I see though between the MS and Linux systems is that when I pay for the OS, I'd expect better quality, just because I'm paying for it. I'm probably a bit more forgiving to the Linux system crashing than a Microsoft OS.

      As for the hardware comments, vendor support for the dominant desktop OS makes sense. Unless the hardware vendor sees a particular reason to release drivers simultaneously for multiple operating systems, I would expect MS to be the first driver released.

      If you're looking for hardware to install into your PC, then how about showing me where I can get MS Win32 drivers for Sun GigaSwift PCI Ethernet Card. Likely this piece of hardware will only provide Solaris drivers. Note: I'm only showing this as an example to disprove your statement. Generally speaking though, you are correct about the hardware.

  4. Chance for someone to karma whore... by Amiga+Lover · · Score: 5, Interesting

    OK. Anyone have a quick simple explanation of why Dual Core over Dual CPU motherboard? are there inherent advantages to dual CPUs so close together?

    1. Re:Chance for someone to karma whore... by BlueCodeWarrior · · Score: 5, Funny

      Imagine two dual core CPUs plugged into a dual CPU mobo.

      Pop an erection yet?

    2. Re:Chance for someone to karma whore... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      It cuts down the wait time of communication between the CPUs as the dual core chips don't need to travel on any sort of MOBO bus to communicate thus effectively giving a clock speed bus of inter CPU communication.

    3. Re:Chance for someone to karma whore... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Less heat, less space, less energy requirements, eventually less money because there is only one chip.

    4. Re:Chance for someone to karma whore... by Moraelin · · Score: 4, Informative

      Probably the biggest advantage is that it's cheaper. (Although if by much, that remains to be seen.)

      Plus, AMD's promise was something like being able to double the number of CPUs without having to buy a new motherboard. Though how much saving that will be (I expect AMD to price these pretty high), and whether it will mean that you're stuck with much slower cores to keep the TDP limits, that remains to be seen.

      There are other possibilities for improvement, such as using a shared cache and IMC instead of just throwing two cores together and going over HT like on a dual CPU system. But AMD hasn't yet done that.

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    5. Re:Chance for someone to karma whore... by shawnce · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes.

      One example... dual core (true dual core) CPU have the ability to exchange data between the cores at faster rates and more importantly with less latency then when having to exchange data between CPUs on a dual CPU system. This can improve SMP flow.

      Another example... good dual core implementations will utilize some form of cache unification to allow better bulk sharing of data between cores while still allow high-levels of independent cache activity (the IBM's Power5 is a good example of this).

    6. Re:Chance for someone to karma whore... by hobuddy · · Score: 5, Informative

      1) Cost.
      Since there need only be half as many sockets, the motherboard can be smaller, less complicated, and therefore less expensive. This is especially true in the case of single-socket motherboards, which are usually 50-60% as expensive as their dual-socket brethren. AMD has sweetened the cost savings even further by arranging it so that most single-socket motherboards already in use with a single-core CPU can accomodate a dual-core CPU after just a BIOS flash.

      2) More efficient interconnection between the cores.
      This advantage currently applies to AMD's design but not Intel's. As explained here, "As you can see, AMD didn't simply glue a pair of K8 cores together on a single piece of silicon. They've actually done some integration work at a very basic level, so that the two CPU cores can act together more effectively. Each of the K8 cores has its own, independent L2 cache onboard, but the two cores share a common system request queue. They also share a dual-channel DDR memory controller and a set of HyperTransport links to the outside world."

      After reading the TechReport article I linked to above, it looks to me like AMD is way ahead in the dual core market in all of the areas that count: better backward-compatibility, better cache coherency, and lower heat.

      --
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    7. Re:Chance for someone to karma whore... by interiot · · Score: 3, Informative

      The biggest advantage is it's the only way to get a faster processor. You won't see a 4GHz processor in production soon. It's a matter of physics. So instead, you'll wait for applications to better support parallel processing, and then get a dual-core CPU at that point.

    8. Re:Chance for someone to karma whore... by CompVisGuy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not sure if anyone answered this properly yet...

      The main advantage of dual core over dual processor (where the processors are not in the same CPU package) is that it should be possible to allow the two CPUs to communicate at very high speed.

      Inside a single CPU, data is moved around at, or very close to, the clock speed of the CPU (e.g. 2.7GHz). Outside of the chip, the longer distances signals need to travel mean that it is more difficult to run data busses at high speeds. So talking to a hard disk or other peripheral component is slower (e.g. 166Mhz).

      If you had two separate CPUs (i.e. not in the same package), then they would be limited to the 166MHz buz (or whatever). However, if you have two CPUs in the same package (and ideally on the same piece of silicon), they can communicate at or close to the clock speed of the 'package' (i.e. 2.7GHz). The CPUs can then work co-operatively more efficiently.

      The main drawback to putting one or more CPUs on a single piece of silicon is the cost of doing so. CPUs are etched onto silicon wafers. These CPUs are then physically cut out (e.g. with a diamond circular saw) and then packaged. If the wafer has a local imperfection, any chip that intersects with that imperfection is likely to be faulty, so you have to throw it away. If the cutting process damages a chip, it must be discarded. The smaller the CPUs, the less likely a particular one will be damaged. The larger they are, the higher the probability. As the chips get bigger (e.g. if you bolt two CPUs together into a single chip), the yield goes down, and the cost of an individual chip increases.

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    9. Re:Chance for someone to karma whore... by karnal · · Score: 2, Funny

      Man, you can't even copy and paste correctly.

      Maybe you need a dual core athlon to do that...?

      --
      Karnal
    10. Re:Chance for someone to karma whore... by fitten · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's not cheaper initially, that's for sure for AMD parts :( Check out AnandTech's review. Dual core Opterons cost 3.5X as much as single cores at the same speed. Dual core A64s are going to cost 2X as much as the single core speed equivalents. Intel's parts costs 1.5X as much (at the entry level) as the single core speed equivalents.

  5. one step closer to the day by Prince+Vegeta+SSJ4 · · Score: 5, Funny

    where I can encode mpeg2 DVD (maybe it will be HD-DVD by then), rip & copy a DVD, Download a huge torrent, and Play UT with a respectable framerate.

    1. Re:one step closer to the day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Bah, there's no use bragging about your multitasking abilities here on Slashdot, where 98% of the user population has learned to surf the web with only one hand!

    2. Re:one step closer to the day by advocate_one · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Pah... I can do that already... I've got 4 linux boxes networked and three of them are being driven using X over ethernet... so basically, yes, I am doing all four tasks at once on the same display... however, they are being done on four separate computers...

      --
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  6. 1 Dual Core vs Dual CPUs? by uofitorn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wouldn't a better benchmark be to compare a dual core setup to a similarly configured dual processor workstation?

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    1. Re:1 Dual Core vs Dual CPUs? by timeOday · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I think the benchmark for comparison should be whatever else you can get at a similar price.

      Dual processor motherboards and CPUs were never priced to make them attractive for widespread use, whereas dual core chips supposedly will be. We shall see.

  7. The simple future by caryw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why stop at dual core?
    Once a way to link multiple cores of a CPU is firmly implemented scaling the chip to 4, 8, or even 32768 cores should be relatively easy.
    With chip dies getting smaller and smaller the only real reasons not to continue this multi-core scaling would be physical space and power usage.
    Perhaps they could scale multiple cores vertically instead of just making the chip wider and longer.
    And perhaps the cores could only be "turned on" when called for instead of using up juice all the time.

    Interesting look at the future of chips.
    Sony's Playstation 3 is using a "cell processor" or similar multi-core design that has already been covered here in the past.

    Arstechnica article on the cell processor here.
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    1. Re:The simple future by Detritus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It wouldn't work. Why do you think we have processors with two or three levels of cache? There is a serious speed/bandwidth mismatch between the processor and the main memory system. There are ways of increasing main memory bandwidth, but they are very expensive. There's no point in adding more processors if they are going to spend 95% of their time stalled, waiting for cache lines to be filled.

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    2. Re:The simple future by danheskett · · Score: 2, Informative

      You are straight on. One of the major problems with large pipeline chips is that they fill the various cache slots with what is predicted to be needed. If you have a huge cache pipeline, and the CPU thinks its going to need certain commands in that pipeline, and it in fact doesn't, all those prefetched bits are wasted, and the CPU is suddenly memory bound for a huge number of cycles. On systems with tons of CPUs, this is a very large problem. If you have 32 CPUs, and 15 of them incorrectly predict which branch will be taken in a single cycle, suddenly all those CPUs are going to be choked.

    3. Re:The simple future by mobiux · · Score: 4, Funny

      I am waiting for intel's 32768 core processor.

      iirc, the p4ee dual core puts out 225 watts at full power.
      That would make the chip putting out roughly 3686400 watts, or 3.686 megawatts.

      It's too cold on this planet anyway.

    4. Re:The simple future by jd · · Score: 4, Interesting
      IIRC, the latest generation of Sun UltraSPARCs has 6 CPU cores. An alternative approach is to have "virtual" cores - have a stack of registers and pools of computational elements. This does require some extra element of sophistication, to share out resources, but if you have two programs with very different CPU needs, both programs should run faster. Also, if you have fewer programs than there are virtual cores, but instruction parallelization can be performed, you still get a speedup.


      The idea of turning off parts of the CPU would work, if you have a large enough cache. What you would need to do is prefetch all possible paths far enough ahead that you could turn on any deactivated part of the CPU before the instruction needed to be executed. You then have an independent "monitor" processor (an MPU?) which purely scans the cache and turns off all elements on the CPU that aren't needed within the lifetime of any of the contents of the cache.


      Another poster noted the bandwidth issue between processor and main memory. That is certainly a problem, but one that may be fixable. One way is to sped up memory (and the bus). The other is to look at ways of reducing the amount that needs to be transferred, by putting some of the CPU in memory. (The technique is called "Processor-In-Memory", and has been around for about 10-15 years.)

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  8. As for gamers (from TFA) by ahsile · · Score: 5, Informative

    Notice the lack of an Athlon 64 FX version of AMDs dual-core strategy. For the time being, its recognized that games are exclusively written for single-threaded operation and as such run better on single-threaded processors at elevated frequencies. Thus, the FX series marches on at 2.6GHz for now. ... so for games, keep to your single core CPU.

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    1. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by millennial · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I suppose that makes sense. The question this raises, though, is whether there are any games designed to work better on hyperthreaded/multiprocessor systems.

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    2. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by phoenix.bam! · · Score: 4, Informative

      Definitely not on the hyperthreaded system. Hyperthreading is only useful is you have 2 or more low demand threads. The benefit of hyperthreading disappears when 1 process needs 99% of the cpu, like many games. This can even be deterimental as your game will never be able to use the entire processor.

    3. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I suppose that makes sense. The question this raises, though, is whether there are any games designed to work better on hyperthreaded/multiprocessor systems.

      I very much doubt it. I've always thought of Blizzard as being one of the better companies when it came to "doing it right" with regard to coding their games. I know playing Warcraft III it always consumed 100% of one processor and did not put a dent in the other. I have not noticed any games that do a better job.

    4. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by DigitumDei · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Depends I guess. I know I don't have the luxury of keeping my gaming machine seperate from all other applications I use, so my gaming machine is also my work machine and it tends to have a lot of stuff running at any given time. Now when playing shooter games I often notice a sudden drop in fps when some service or other decides it needs to do something. A dual core machine would be a lot less prone to this I guess.

      Also, from the article. "And although the company says dual-core isn't for gamers quite yet, perhaps it is, only in a different usage model. Alan Dang and I were discussing processor benchmarking moving forward and he came up with the idea that we don't run compute-intensive tasks in the background today because we think they can't be done. However, if a dual-core processor enables a DVD encode while you're playing Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, there's a good chance that the way we think about demanding tasks may change. Even though games aren't currently threaded, the background processes a dual-core processor enables may very well catapult the technology into favor with game enthusiasts."

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    5. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by John+Courtland · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And then detrimental again because both processes share the L1 cache... I don't know if Intel fixed that problem yet, but the cache sharing actually decreased performance compared to a processor with HT disabled while running high-demand single-threaded applications (games).

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    6. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by Mr.+Ghost · · Score: 3, Informative

      Galactic Civilizations from Stardock has a mode that can take advantage of hyperthreading. Of course it is a turn base strategy game and is able (I assume) to offload a lot of background processing to take advantage of it.

    7. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Informative
      Hyperthreading is only useful is you have 2 or more low demand threads.

      Not quite. SMT is useful if you have two threads which make mutually exclusive demands on the processor's execution units, for example one doing a lot of integer arithmetic and another doing a lot of floating point calculations. Additionally, SMT is marginally useful if you have two processor intensive threads, since the cost of a context switch between two threads is less on an SMT system than on a single context system (although the addition of a third thread can significantly reduce this benefit).

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    8. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by i.r.id10t · · Score: 2, Interesting

      IIRC Quake3 used separate threads for sound and video.

      In my own experience with both a dual P2-450 system and a dual AMD 1.2ghz system is that the game will run on one cpu and the OS will use the other... simply balancing the load between both processors. Quake2/3/UT/ET ran on the dual 450s with comparable oomph to a single 1ghz system.

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    9. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by Malc · · Score: 2, Informative

      So have there been any multi-threaded games since Quake 2? That was awesome on a dual proc machine. When things in the game got hectic, the framerates didn't drop in the same way they would on a single proc machine.

    10. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by Mancat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That just means that WC3 is not multithreaded.

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    11. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by tokabola · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The reason games are written without multithreading is because most games are written with consoles in mind. While the PS 2 has a type of parallel processing, neither XBox nor Nintendo support any kind of SMP.

      The next generation of consoles from Sony and MS are supposedly going to be fully SMP capable, so game developers will start taking advantage. That will make multithreaded ports to PC a no-brainer.

      There's nothing about gaming that makes multithreading less usefull - in fact the need to run a real time physics engine as well as an AI make most games excellent candidates for multithreading. The only reason it hasn't been done is because most hardware (console and PC) doesn't support it and it doesn't make sense (financially) to write a second version of the game that can, just for the 30 or so people who could actually use it. As dual core cpu's, along with the PS 3 and XBox 2, become more common, the software will begin taking advantage.

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    12. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by NanoGator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      " The question this raises, though, is whether there are any games designed to work better on hyperthreaded/multiprocessor systems."

      Why worry about the past? If these processors take off, new games will support them.

      --
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    13. Re:As for gamers (from TFA) by goates · · Score: 3, Informative

      Unreal 3 will use multiple threads.

      http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.asp x? i=2377&p=3

      goates

  9. full article coral cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    article 1
    article 2

  10. For the lazy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...and for those who don't want to flip through pages and pages of flash banner ads:

    Scientific Computing

    MATLAB: Though the script includes a moderate amount of matrix math, it doesn't seem like much of it is parallelized. Our recommendation from two years ago still stands - for most Matlab users, the fastest performance will come with a single Athlon64 line.

    LS-DYNA: I will bench the CPUs using two classic tests, a 3-vehicle collision and a single front-collision. The 3-vehicle collision takes more than 24 hours to complete - we do not have these numbers ready for this round of articles.

    Digital Imaging

    Capture One: With Capture One only supporting two CPU threads, the dual-core Opteron's lower clockspeed is a disadvantage.

    Bibble: It took only 4 minutes to complete with the 2x Dual Core Opteron 275. 4 minutes! That's 4.2MB/sec of processing time - a 2x Dual-Core Opteron 275 can process RAW images about as fast as it takes to copy them from to your computer using a standard-grade USB 2.0 CF card reader!

    Noise Ninja: On the slower Opteron 246, the fastest results were had with 4 threads, but on the faster CPUs, 8 threads was better.

    Video

    After Effects: Since the decoding of WMV-HD does not seem to take advantage of both CPUs, the performance gain from the Dual-Core AMD Opterons is virtually absent.

  11. Anandtech article on same subject by bersl2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397

  12. All I can say is... by FlyByPC · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...LONG LIVE COMPETITION!

    I wish both AMD and Intel well. All the better for us. Lower prices and better performance.

    --
    Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
  13. Wow! by truesaer · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This is pretty disasterous for Intel. The game benchmarks show significant performance penalties for dual core chips, as expected. Intel launched its dual core specifically as an Extreme Edition for games.


    On other benchmarks the AMD dual core gets 10-20% better performance! SiSoft Sandra is an exception, where there is a mixed bag between the two processors.


    This pretty much verifies for me that Intel did a seriously rushed cludge to get this thing out the door. The only reason I can think of to target this to gamers is that no OEMs would want to buy them for server or desktop use, so you have to target people who like the latest technology even if it isn't that great.


    AMD on the other hand seems to have a pretty good product here. I can't wait until the desktop versions come out.

    1. Re:Wow! by i41Overlord · · Score: 2, Informative

      On other benchmarks the AMD dual core gets 10-20% better performance! SiSoft Sandra is an exception, where there is a mixed bag between the two processors.

      In the article on Anandtech, they do a pretty good job of explaining this.

      Basically, in the past, programs that had multiple threads heavily favored Intel's Hyperthreading chips since they could handle multiple threads at once. AMD's chips lacked this capability. Intel's dual core chips did pick up a performance boost, but they didn't pick up the large boost that AMD's dual core chips did. AMD picked up such a large performance boost because their chips lacked hyperthreading, and now with two cores they're able to handle multiple threads at once whereas they couldn't before.

    2. Re:Wow! by t35t0r · · Score: 2, Insightful

      AMD single processors can't handle multiple threads at once? What planet do you live on? So you're saying I can't run multiple threads of the same application on an athlon and do it effectively? The CPU will automatically split prioritization and CPU processing power evenly between the two. While this may not be as effective as Intel's hyperthreading technology, I'd take an athlon64 3200+ 939 pin or athlon xp 3200+ over a pentium4 3.2ghz any day, simply because of the fact that I haven't noticed any difference with hyperthreading on or off on the intel systems. All it does is make a fake virtual cpu out of a single cpu and reduce the processing time given to a single thread.

  14. Anyone realize that suddenly all P4's disappear? by denominateur · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now, it's struck me as very peculiar that the benchmarks where the dual dual core setup from AMD really shines leave out any comparison whatsoever to the Intel dual-core offering. This begs the question whether the person doing this review is a journalist or a marketing represenatative of AMD.

    "We did not have time to evaluate the Intel platform with the Intel MKL, the P4 3.0GHz is an older reference measurement." is a very cheap excuse and indicates either lazyness or bribes on the side of AMD... I hate hardware review sites!

  15. Dr. Dobbs and Threading/Multi-Core by DanielMarkham · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Dr. Dobbs last month had an item regarding threading in real-world environments. The authur said that while multi-threaded applications run a lot faster than single-threaded applications, that always isn't so. In addition, there are some significant issues in running in a multi-tasking, multi-threaded environment, not solved with the use of mutexes and semaphores.

    Multi-threading and mult-cores are definitely the way the industry needs to go, but the current development methodologies and application architectures (as well as computing theory) may need to catch up a bit.

    1. Re:Dr. Dobbs and Threading/Multi-Core by zx75 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The computing theory and architectures are already there. Now that Java has finally jumped on the bandwagon of reliable multi-threading with v1.5 (or v5.0, or whatever the hell they're calling it today), chances are unless you're using really legacy code the language will have the appropriate system calls available to it.

      The difficulty is that in order for multi-threading to be worthwhile, a developer really needs to know their stuff. It is not easy, there are a number of things that must be taken into consideration that simply do not occur in single-threaded programming. A programmer who just picked up a 'C++ in 24 hours' book is most likely not going to have the tools available to them in order to handle or understand the complexities of multi-threaded programming.

      That being said, there are many situations where multi-threading is not appropriate, but if you think the theory needs to play catch-up, you might be surprised at how common it is in professional development.

      --
      This is not a sig.
  16. In other news ... by Luscious868 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Dell still won't sell servers with them ....

  17. Re:All windows, all the way. by bersl2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, at the very least, Anand put some Cygwin/gcc tests in there.

    Most Windows users don't know what it means to multitask. It's much harder to do when you don't have multiple desktops, virtual or otherwise.

  18. Anandtech has some cost comparisons/benchmarks by IronChefMorimoto · · Score: 5, Informative

    Anandtech has an AMD dual core Opteron and Athlon64 X2 article that might compliment the original poster's story pretty well. It has a sh*tload of benchmarks:

    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397

    I really wish they wouldn't do gaming benchmarks with an Opteron in stories like these. Just because the Opteron used has similar specs to the dekstop processor that hasn't been released doesn't necessarily mean that the gaming benchmarks are all that useful. Just my 2 cents.

    It'll be interesting to see how soon prices fall for these AMD processors (server and desktop) when they go mainstream. Read the cost comparisons for these badboys in the article.

    Finally, I'm glad that Anand decided to demonstrate that the new AMDs will be backwards compatible with Socket 939 motherboards WITH BIOS revisions. Intel's dual core processors don't offer that luxury, from what I read in the article.

    IronChefMorimoto

  19. there's no conspiracy. by i41Overlord · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Now, it's struck me as very peculiar that the benchmarks where the dual dual core setup from AMD really shines leave out any comparison whatsoever to the Intel dual-core offering.

    They couldn't test a dual core multiprocessor chip from Intel because one doesn't exist yet. They've only released single processor dual core chips so far.

    AMD introduced dual core on their multiprocessor server chips first, with desktop chips coming later on. Intel introduced dual core on their single CPU desktop chips first, with server chips coming later on this year, or in early 2006.

    The problem is that you can easily run a single multiprocessor-capable CPU in a system, while you cannot run two single-processor-only chips in a system since they lack that capability.

  20. I'll believe it when I see the BIOS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Given ASUS has not updated the socket 940 SK8V BIOS in over 6 months, and hasn't even had a new beta BIOS (yuck) since December, what are the odds of any motherboard really supporting these CPUs? How many companies rush to support the older boards?

    In fact, the SK8V is suddenly gone from both the motherboard page and the retired products page on the asus website. Hmmm...

  21. Is this article worth a darn? by GweeDo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    With comments like:
    "Even grandmothers own 8-megapixel consumer digital cameras now"

    I really have to question the intellegence of this poor guy. I don't know many grandma's that drop $700-$1000 on digital camera's.

    --
    Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
  22. Linux/GNU/Gnome memory usage by Zan+Lynx · · Score: 2, Funny

    On my Gentoo AMD64 -O3 compiled system, running Gnome, Rhythmbox, Evolution, Epiphany, Liferea and GAIM, it is using 365 MB of RAM, not including buffers or disk cache.

    In contrast, Windows XP running a similar set of applications was only using 230 MB.

  23. Re:HEAT by greenreaper · · Score: 2, Informative

    AMD ones appear to have the same Thermal Design Power (about 90W) as their single-core chips.

  24. Amateurs by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How can anyone take an article seriously when the very first sentence just screams, "AMATEUR!!" like this one does:

    Intel may very well go down in history as the first processor manufacturer with a dual-core solution, if only by three days.

    IBM Power4, Power5
    HP PA-8800
    Sun Sparc IV

    All full-fledged dual-core processors shipping long before Intel -- HP's been shipping for over a year and IBM's already well in to their 2nd generation of dual core processors with Power5.

    Sure, you can excuse the author with some hand-waving about x86 context only or whatever. But if they really knew what they were talking about, they would have said it that way - or at least a competent editor would have corrected it. If these guys can't even get the trivial stuff right, how can anyone trust them to get the real technical details right?

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    1. Re:Amateurs by leoc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Another thing that pisses me off is that he tests these 64 bit CPU's with 32 bit Windows, claiming that Linux is "hardly mainstream".

      What a load of crap.

      These dual core chips are PERFECT for high performance NON-GAMER Linux systems, and yet these guys disregard the most mature and stable 64 bit platform to run game benchmarks on 32 bit windows.

      --
      STFU about slashdot bias.
  25. Um, think again... by Svartalf · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just because it'll priortize, etc. doesn't mean that it's running the threads simultaneously which is what "at once" actually means. The only way is to have Hyperthreading or SMP for that. In the case of the SMP machine, it'll priortize the threads and divvy them up across the CPUs/Cores on the machine, to be executed as in-parallel as is possible.

    On a non-Hyperthreading, non-SMP machine, it's going to execute only as fast as the one-legged man is able to get to kicking asses...

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas