Intel Harpertown (Penryn) Quad CPUs Benchmarked

unts writes "The Intel Developer Forum is currently running in San Francisco, and Intel is showing off the up-coming Harpertown processors based on the Penryn core. HEXUS got hands on with a test system and ran some performance tests: 'Harpertown is a better quad-core processor than Clovertown: it's as simple as that. More L2 cache will gobble-up larger application data-sets and a higher FSB, on select models, will ensure that per-CPU bandwidth is less of a concern.'"

Comments

New processor better than predecessor

[Anonymous Coward]

I am stunned.

Re:New processor better than predecessor

[Rob Simpson]

I dunno, the last time my cooking turned out like the Pentium 4, I had to use the fire extinguisher. :(

The competition is getting good

[downix]

While invariably the comparisons will bemade between this and AMD, let us not forget that Intel is getting stiff competition from left field as well. The arrival of the SPARC Niagra II processor is about to make the realm of high-end computing a lot more competitive than it has been in years. I, for one, can't wait to see a real head-to-head-to-head, AMD and Intel quads vs the 8-core monstrosty that is SPARC.

Re:The competition is getting good

[shawnce]

Don't ignore IBM's POWER processors (POWER7 is in the works) and of course Cell.

Nothing but a press release

[drspliff]

The article is extremely thin on the promised "benchmark" and looks like a fairly standard press release.

Information in real CPU benchmarks: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/
Information in the press release "benchmark": about:blank

Give me graphs, comparisons with other models in the same series & other CPUs, information about power draw & heat etc. Not adverts, details I can find out anyway and dont really care about etc.

Re:Nothing but a press release

[Fallen Kell]

Even more then that, give me graphs and benchmarks that actually verify what your conclusions are, or at least prove why you think things are the way they are. For all but one of the graphs Hexsus said that they expect different results due to limitations of the OS. HUH? Wait, this is the first time you have seen the chip, and yet because it benchmarked poorly, you state that it is due to the OS? How do you know? Did you put on a different OS to prove that? How do we know the values in Cinemark will be in the 20k range if a different OS was used when it only did 17k? How do we know floating point results were compromised by the OS? How do we know Pov-Ray will increase as well? The only benchmark that showed the CPU as being faster then the previous CPU was the SiSoftware Sandra processor arithmetic test, and even there only by 3.9% in INTs, and 14% in float.

Another interesting article on the IDF and Penryn

[Null Nihils]

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33929/135/
This article goes into some of the juicy technical details about Penryn/Nehalem and covers a lot of ground about what Intel had to show at the IDF.

The article is also relevant to this discussion, "End of Moore's Law in 10-15 years?". FTA:

Otellini provided an overview of the history of the insulating layer which, in modern CPUs, is only five molecular layers of silicon dioxide (SiO2) thick. He explained that as far back as 15 years ago, Intels engineers saw this layer as problematic. The continued scaling of the insulating layer could not continue forever. And, we found out later in the day with Dr. Gordon Moores keynote, that five molecular layers is about the lowest you can go in practice. Its a form of wall, and Intel was right up against it.

Much more detailed coverage available at TR

[EconolineCrush]

A much more in-depth review is available at The Tech Report: http://techreport.com/articles.x/13224

Depends what you mean by "high-end computing"

[vlad_petric]

The Niagra processor is a great idea for (web, db) server workloads, where you have a lot of inherent parallelism and very poor cache behavior. A while back, the Piranha research project figured out that for such types of applications, it's better to have many "wimpy", in-order cores than a few "beefy", out-of-order execution ones. Niagra is doing exactly this. However, outside this application realm Niagra doesn't do that well.

Bottomline: The Niagra microarchitecture is meant for a particular niche.

Re:cool I guess...

[LWATCDR]

"Damn it, I want my fast, multi-core, and CHEAP processors already ;-)"
Pick up an AMD 3800 X2 or 4400X2. Last time I checked they where the cost of a good meal.
People these cpus are still bloody fast for what most people use a PC for. Just about the only thing a home user would ever notice the difference is in video trans coding and or super high end gaming.
Get an X2, more ram, and a better video card for your best bang for the buck.

Eight cores

[Matt Perry]

I'm waiting on Intel to take me to Funkytown.

Aggregate RAM bandwidth is what Intel really needs

[Phatmanotoo]

Just look at thre STREAM benchmark numbers and you'll see clearly that AMD has been way ahead of Intel when it comes to RAM bandwidth. I just benchmarked a dual-Quad-Xeon myself (Dell 2900) and I could not believe the poor results I got. One app running in the system can get up to around 3,500 MB/s. Put just two tasks running together (taskset'ed to different chips), and they will each get around 2,600 MB/s. From there on, total aggregate bandwidth tops at 5,200 MB/s and stays there, no matter how many simultaneous tasks you run (it will of course degrade if you run more than eight tasks, you get the point).

Dual-socket Opteron machines from two years ago can get to 15,000 MB/s aggregate, easily.

So, I'd really like to know if Intel is planning to improve things in this department.