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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."

13 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. full article mirrors by winkydink · · Score: 5, Interesting

    here and here.

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  2. 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: 5, Informative

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

    3. 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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  3. 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.

  4. 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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  5. 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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  6. Anandtech article on same subject by bersl2 · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  7. 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!

  8. In other news ... by Luscious868 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  9. 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

  10. 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.

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