Intel Dual Core Xeon Benchmarked

An anonymous reader writes "A few weeks back, Intel launched a new dual core chip with little applause. It appears we know now why, as the chip has been benchmarked by the chaps at GamePC. In tests against the dual core AMD Opteron processor, Intel's new chip gets thoroughly thrashed, losing out in terms of raw performance while eating a lot more power. "

Comments

Stupid pre-retail release

[dada21]

This release seems dumb for Intel. No optimized motherboards, outrageous power requirements and a really inefficient core? It isn't even alpha-release worthy. Why would Intel release a product that is just waiting for a poor review? Is the high end market that hungry?

The article didn't need 15 pages to explain Intel's mistakes. Intel will lose more customers to AMD than if they had waited until they had a viable and competitive product.

400W while idling? For sub-standard performance? Yay.

Re:Stupid pre-retail release

[Ihlosi]

Is the high end market that hungry?

No, the high-end market is waiting for something that has "Intel" and "Dual Core" written all over it. Everything else is irrelevant.

Intel is all about the Mhz

[mahdi13]

Intel has been really slacking more and more since AMD beat them in the 1GHz race. After that Intel has seemingly been focusing on making the 'fastest processor' and not improving on the design much.

It seems to me that Intel procs these days are more of the same but overclocked; while AMD has been making their procs more efficient, by running cooler and streamlining the instructions.

Faster isn't better these days and Intel needs to realize this before it's too late.
I just picked up a +3200 AMD Sempron which is clocked at 1.8Ghz and compre that to the AthlonXP +1600 at 1.4Ghz I had before, it has well over double the perfomance in almost every application. From doubling the fps in Doom3 to cutting compile times down by half. For a 400Mhz difference there is a lot more going on then just 'speed'

Re:Intel is all about the Mhz

[dpilot]

Both parent post and grandparent post are making the mistake of assuming Intel's current problems are technical, and the result of engineering. That's utterly wrong, the problem is higher up - a product of corporate culture, management, and myopia.

Since you brought up IA64...
While I'd be one of the last to argue against the ugliness of the x86 instruction set, that does not mean that IA64 is necessarily better. From an instruction architecture point of view, IMHO IA64 looks like an academic exercise got sold to the executives well before it was really ready for prime time. Look at the sheer amount of money Intel and HP have dumped into IA64, Sure, they can get some impressive results, but I suspect that given THAT amount of cash, time, and engineering, x86, Alpha, Power, etc all could have reached at least the same performance level.

It's necessary to realize that the number 1 problem it was designed for had nothing whatsoever to do with performance. IMHO, the prime purpose of IA64 was to prevent cloning. Neither Intel nor HP hold any of the IP on IA64 - it's all held by a third company, and Intel and HP are the licensees. That's because both Intel and HP are extensively cross-licensed with others in the business, including AMD. Had Intel and HP owned the IP for IA64, it would have come in under those cross-licensing agreements. By setting up the third company, there is no cross-licensing involved, and ONLY Intel and HP can product IA64.

So IA64 is a product of "corporate myopia," of Intel being more concerned about it's internal problem of cloning than customers' external problems of power and performance, and I once heard it was another attempt by Carly Fiorina to "reset the clock" on her tenure by announcing a grand new strategy that needed her at the helm. Both are driven by internal politics, not the marketplace. It's a classic problem of big companies

HORUS

[Anonymous Coward]

These have been availible in Dell servers for a while now according to the online store. Intel are truly screwed for at least the next 6-12 months by the looks of things unless they are hiding something seriously good. I had thought that perhaps they had been based on Apple's decision to switch, it looks like they might just be pretending to be better than they really are though.

AMD looks like it's going to continue to be the winner on performance for the foreseeable future, especially with it's totally awesome HORUS chipset on the horizon which might just hail the beginning of commodity super computing.

For anyone wondering what HORUS is, it's an SMP system that can link 4 Opteron's together over HTT. The real killer is that it can it's self be linked to 4 other HORUS chips over InfiniBand. A HORUS SMP system appears as another Opteron chip to the other HORUS groups. AMDs current plans are for HORUS to scale to 32 CPUs in a hot swappable configuration. It's going to be great.

Re: $700 - correction

[Glock27]

I'm seeing Intel dual-core processors appearing in ~$700 PCs. From that angle Intel absolutely devastates AMD, as somehow their dual-cores are far less expensive.

You're talking about Pentium-D of course, not Xeon...

At any rate, that is actually bad for Intel. AMD brought out enterprise-class dual core CPUs that have obvious applications on workstations/servers, which run lots of tasks and threads, and can always use more horsepower for higher throughput. Intel brought out, at about the same time, the Pentium-D for consumers. Not only is it clocked at about 1 GHz. slower than the fastest single-core Pentium, but desktop PCs don't typically run large thread and process workloads like servers. In fact, the Pentium D runs games substantially slower than cheaper, single-core Pentia. So, I expect a lot of consumers are out there scratching there heads over whether or not to buy Pentium-D.

AMD's dual core chips, on the other hand, only run 200 MHz. slower than the corresponding single core chip. Game performance suffers hardly at all. AMD will ramp up production of dual-core consumer chips once it feels it has a firm hold on the workstation/server side. Then we'll see the prices drop, and dual core will become mainstream. Maybe game developers will even start programming multithreaded games. ;-)

In summary, AMD is laughing all the way to the bank, while Intel has to content itself with low consumer product profit margins. It seems this new Xeon won't change that dynamic much.