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Dual-Core Shoot Out - Intel vs. AMD
sebFlyte writes "The Intel vs AMD battle of the benchmarks continues. ZDNet is running its rather comprehensive-looking guide to a side-by-side test of Intel and AMD's dual-core desktop chips, the Athlon 64 X2 3200+ and the Pentium D 820. They look at pure performance, as well as the difference it makes to apps you might use on the desktop. In the end, AMD comes out as the winner. From the article: 'AMD currently offers the most attractive dual core option. The Athlon 64 X2 3800+ may cost $87 more than its Intel counterpart, the Pentium D 820, but the AMD chip is a much better performer. It also uses considerably less power.'"
Or, put another way, the bottom-of-the-line AMD 3800+ is less than 1/3rd the price of the top-of-the-line Pentium 840 EE ($328 vs. $999), yet it still beats it in most of the benchmarks.
Too bad they didn't compare the Pentium D 830 in the benchmarks - this is closer in price to the AMD 3800+
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Like most people, I will wait it out until the dual-core chips / products are stable and less expensive.
Not everyone is playing Quake 4 and Half-Life 2 on a daily basis.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
What the hell is this doing in a discussion about processors?!
You don't get the joke. Re-read the message a few times slowly.
hint: try forming words out of every X letters. It's brilliant.
Trolling is a art,
"A kernel compiled for a single CPU is faster than a kernel compiled for multipe CPU's, even when you only have one CPU. This is why OpenBSD has two kernels: 1) one cpu and 2) multpiple CPU's. The main developer of DragonBSD said that his preference is single CPU, performance wise (I'll leave that as a Google exercise)."
Dillon said he felt FreeBSD's focus on many CPUs to the exclusion of single-CPU performance was a mistake, not that single CPUs are preferable.
Also, most desktop workloads benefit from having two CPUs, it helps responsiveness quite a bit (even on OSes with good schedulers like Linux). There is overhead for the locking in the kernel, but the benefit almost always outweighs the cost.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
The ultimate multi-core processor technology is VLIW (or EPIC as INTEL calls it). The cores are broken up into lots of tiny pieces, instructions are distributed through various pipes and run through whatever is available in parallel. The Itanium processor is Intel's EPIC problem child. Too complex, too much heat. Maybe it is just a bit too early for this technology. I think Intel could try to start a "mobile" Itanium project. They were quite successful with their Pentium M. Maybe that will give Intel an advantage. ;-)
Or, Intel designs a dual-Alpha processor to beat AMD, but that sounds not like Intel, does it? Someone at AMD who might like the idea?
Your PC may have Intel inside, but did you know that Intel's fabs have VMS and Alpha inside?
AMD-optimized compilers are available from PathScale and AMD, but AMD processors will run Intel-optimized code pretty well anyway.
Call me old school, but back in the day when 283, 386, 486, Pentium, P2, and P3, I always praised Intel for their products over AMD in regards to performance and stability. Of course, nothing lasts forever. Which is really sad when you think about it. Nothing hurts an Intel Fanboy like myself then to see lackluster performace and innovation from the the very company that started the x86 momentum in the industry.
Times have changed. It's time I started drop my "trust" and "faith" and start going with AMD this time around. Clearly, they are the leaders in innovation this time.
Life is not for the lazy.
By my calculations, the power difference between the Intel and AMD will make up the difference in the chip prices in about a month of continuous operation, at lease for Seattle electric rates (~$0.06/kWh)...
Okay. According to this page, at full-tilt the Pentium D 820 consumes 130.6W, while this page says the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ consumes 89W. So, how long would the Opteron have to run at full blast to make up the difference in cost of $87? Last month I paid $0.078 per kilowatt-hour. This seems to be reasonably average for the United States. 130.6W - 89W = 41.6W difference between the two. Some back of the Google-calculator math reveals: (US$ 87) / (41.6 W * ((US$ 0.078) / (kW * Hr))) = 3.05871582 years. A not-insignifigant amount of time. If you're in an area where electricity is more expensive like New York or California, the amount of time is even less!
Feel free to correct my math!
Um There is no good reason to buy intel over amd.
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Opteron(server):
"
The choice today is clear. In 2-way configurations, the Opteron is a much more powerful and capable web server than Intel?s Xeon. "
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=1935&p
"In a 4-way configuration AMD's Opteron cannot be beat, and thus it is our choice for the basis for our new Forums database server."
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=1982&p
Athlon 64/FX/X2 (Home/workstation):
"The choice is clear - the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is better in every way than the Pentium D 830. For Intel's sake in the enthusiast community, Conroe had better be very competitive next year - because ever since Prescott, the Pentium 4 has been an utter disappointment."
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx
"There may be some corporation or individual who absolutely must have single core performance at all costs. In that situation, the FX-57 is the fastest option and the best fit."
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx
AMD Turion 64 (mobile)
"In most categories, the Turion meets or exceeds Pentium M?s performance at a lower price point"
http://www.laptoplogic.com/resources/articles/42/
Whoa? What's that? EVIDENCE that shows it's not worth buying intel on the basis of performance ever. INTEL does not have the performance crown. AMD processors do perform better, at a lower price point, and do consume less power and thus cost less to own over time (important for the server space).
Intel desktop processors cost more money, are slower, and use more heat.
right now AMD > INTEL
It's also worth noting that Intel's marketing machine has been an enormous success. For many average-joe computer users, AMD is in the same category as Linux and Firefox -- something nerds get excited about, but (they think) will destroy their computer or break the intarnets.
Even some of the more tech-savvy people I've run into aren't aware that an AMD will be essentially transparent to the user, except in that it has historically been more bang for the buck, especially for the gamer. And even when you tell them of a personal preference for AMD, or certain AMD chips, for whatever reason, the vast majority will still assume that since everybody (even Apple, soon) has "Intel inside," Intel is the way to go. Even if you convince them that AMD is a processor and not some kind of nerd voodoo magic, they won't be compelled to switch unless a computer salesman tells them it's cheaper and better while they're at the store.
By way of analogy: Every time I see a Dodge commercial for some HEMI-powered truck, I think "Oooh, it's got a HEMI. That must mean it's better than my poor HEMI-less Chevy." Do I know what the hell HEMI even means? Not at all. Which is why I'll have to ask one of my car-nut friends if I ever (god forbid) truck shopping. It's pure marketing and name recognition. People trust Intel becuase they think it makes the world go round. AMD is some communist revolutionary nerd chip from hell. (OK, that's exagerrating. But you get the idea.)
That is sound reasoning, in theory. Your memory bus may be faster, but the 2 cores still have to share the same pipeline to the memory with the Intel chips, severely bottlenecking performance, whereas with the AMD chips, each core has its own direct channel to the memory, meaning no fighting for time in the fast lane...this is where the AMD chips shine.
I would be willing to bet that your system with its 8GB of 1044MHz memory would still get trounced by a similar AMD system with its 4GB of 400MHz memory because that extra speed and memory is close to worthless if the cores are continuously fighting over it and cannot get a steady stream of access.
With all this new hardware, the case is 10deg cooler than when I had a P4 in there, off the same 500W power supply. I was still buying P4s when all my buddies had screaming AMD boxes, and I could not keep up in either Battlefield 2 or just recently in Call of Duty 2. I wasted a lot of time (and watts) sticking with Intel trying to cool their CPUs, but never again unless they take back the power/performance/price curve from AMD.
I aint holding my breath for that to happen.
Unfortunately, it seems that AMD still has several stability issues to solve...
I have run both AMD and Intel for years. I have 2 dead Intel processor/mobo - one is even a Intel PERL mobo! I usually retire my AMD processors because they get old, not because they fail. In fact, I have yet to have one die prematurely.
Since my last P4 2.4 HT on a PERL mobo gave up working one month out of warranty I was well - now a AMD kind of person. (I admit, I don't know if it was proc or mobo, but both were Intel). Given AMD is less power and faster, an AMD 64 X2 is my primary consideration for my next PC.
Mind you, if you work for Dell that does not sell Linux or AMD in North America I can understand the bias.
Personally, I don't use dual cpus for servers because they are faster. As you say, they are not, kernel wise anyway. Dual CPUs do offer a higher availability, and the ability to crank the crud out of one cpu (compiling, etc.) while you can still get stuff done with the other.
Thats called scaling.
I would rather have dual 1gz than single 2.5ghz any day.
Me too. Personally and professionally I am simply able to do more when I have more processors available. In fact, a researcher friend of mine has a single CPU Intel machine with hyperthreading. His other researching buddies like to run CPU intensive programs wherever they can find a spare processor. It was irritating him that people were running programs on his box and it wasn't very responsive. He would renice the process, and that helped some. He then enabled hyperthreading, and then he didn't notice when people were running on his machine anymore.
I've done benchmarks with "normal" applications, and overall I get the best performance when doing X number of things in parallel where X == the number of processors, cores, or "hyper-whatevers". Its that simple. I'm saying "best performance" not a linear or superlinear performance, but oftentimes its at least I get 30% more out of enabling hyperthreading. It also just makes the machine more smooth and interactive.
I welcome the day when every computer has 30 or so processors. The more the better. Just so long as they go completely to sleep when not needed or in use. Someday.
Realize that all there will be left in 5 years is x86... everything else will be reduced to a niche market.
The promise of VLIW never materialized. Inherently, it was made to simplify CPU design and push off complexity into the compiler. Of course, it's really frickin' hard to make your compiler output really nice VLIW code. Itanium and other VLIW machines, rely on this to run well. It's not going to happen.
Intel's advantage is that is has superior manufacturing vs AMD (plus marketing). Intel will get it's advantage back once the Pentium M architecture is ported across their entire CPU line.
Its the ones who know a little too much who are stupid.
I've never had a problem recommending AMD systems to non-techies. All they want to know is whether it has Windows, so they usually buy the AMD system on my word with no guff.
OTOH the last programming job I had, I was given the task of shopping for all-new replacement systems for myself and 5 others. I was told I should stick with IBM because purchasing dept. does those in volume. So after shopping a while on IBMs site, I decided it would be nice to stop staring at bubble-screens and get the more costly Flat CRTs instead. (This was circa 1999.) Lo, IBM had some less-expensive Athlons that would fit the bill and let me stay within budget with the flat 19" screens we all desired.
Now get this: Two co-workers who comprised the VB/Access contingent asked me why "Intel" could not be found in the system description, and when I explained they said they would not agree to any system which might be 'incompatible' with Windows! And here was IBM itself, selling the system with Windows preinstalled! So because of two bozo 'programmers', who were being oh-so-discerning, we bought the Intel-with-bubble-srcreen setups and just lived with the eyestrain.
As it happens, I never saw fit to purchase Intel after that.
"He said something to the effect that he replaced multi CPU with singel CPU if he could. He wrote that in in the last year or so."
I couldn't find the quote, but if he's making the statement in general then he's simply wrong (since there's a demonstrable benefit more often than not), and if he's talking about the few cases where there's not a benefit and the overhead is a problem then it's not news because that's been known for a while. But I'd have to see the quote...
"It helps with responsiveness, not performance, in general. There are programs hogging the CPU, so there multi-core helps (I'm working on such a system daily as a developer). More precicely, we have two threads needing much CPU but part of the application needs more that their share (hello Sun Java) of resources."
a) Responsiveness is critical to a desktop system. You notice a few milliseconds of latency before you notice a batch job finishing a few seconds faster.
b) Raw performance does benefit pretty frequently, and when there's a detriment (at least with AMD CPUs) it's pretty small.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.