Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part II: A Deeper Look
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 6, 2005 12:23 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Multitasking Performance
As we discovered in the first article, multitasking performance requires a slightly different approach to benchmarking methodology. While for single application performance in which we test with a system that's in a very clean state with nothing but the benchmark and drivers loaded, for our multitasking tests, we have the system configured as what a real system would be. That means tons of programs and lot's of tasks running in the background. If you missed Part I, here's a quick recap of what our system configuration is like for our multitasking tests; the following applications were installed:
Daemon Tools
Norton AntiVirus 2004 (with latest updates)
Firefox 1.02
DVD Shrink 3.2
Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta 1.0
Newsleecher 2.0
Visual Studio .NET 2003
Macromedia Flash Player 7
Adobe Photoshop CS
Microsoft Office 2003
3ds max 7
iTunes 4.7.1
Trillian 3.1
DivX 5.2.1
AutoGK 1.60
Norton Ghost 2003
Adobe Reader 7
What's important about that list is that a handful of those programs were running in the background at all times, primarily Microsoft's AntiSpyware Beta and Norton AntiVirus 2004. Both the AntiSpyware Beta and NAV 2004 were running with their real-time protection modes enabled, to make things even more real world.
Multitasking Scenario 1: DVD Shrink
For this test, we used DVD Shrink, one of the simplest applications available to compress and re-encode a DVD to fit on a single 4.5GB disc. We ran DVD Decrypt on the Star Wars Episode VI DVD so that we had a local copy of the DVD on our test bed hard drive (in a future version of the test, we may try to include DVD Decrypt performance in our benchmark as well). All of the DVD Shrink settings were left at default, including telling the program to assume a low priority, a setting that many users check in order to be able to do other things while DVD Shrink is working.
Next, we did the following:
1) Open Firefox and load the following web pages in tabs (we used local copies of all of the web pages):
We kept the browser on the AT front page.
2) Open iTunes and start playing the latest album of avid AnandTech reader 50 Cent on repeat all.
3) Open Newsleecher.
4) Open DVD Shrink.
5) Login to our news server and start downloading headers for our subscribed news groups.
6) Start backup of Star Wars Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. All default settings, including low priority.
DVD Shrink was the application in focus. This matters because by default, Windows gives special scheduling priority to the application currently in the foreground (we will test what happens when it's not in the foreground later in this article). We waited until the DVD Shrink operation was complete and recorded its completion time. Below are the results:
The results here aren't too surprising. With dual core, you can get a lot more done at once, so the Pentium D 2.8 cuts the DVD Shrink encode time by about half when compared to the Athlon 64 3500+.
There is one element that caught us off guard, however. When looking at these numbers, we noticed that they were unusually high compared to the numbers from our first article. Yet, we ran and re-ran the numbers and had fairly consistent results. Even running the CPUs at the same speeds as in our first article yielded lower performance than what we saw in that piece. Comparatively, the processors all performed the same with reference to each other, but the DVD Shrink times were all noticeably higher. So, we started digging, and what we uncovered was truly interesting.
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segagenesis - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#30 - Excuse me for trying to save money also. Last I checked Intel was still more expensive. Not to mention Extremely Expensive edition.rqle - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
All i know is that i alt-tab / alt-enter to the desktop running general apps all the time while gaming. I bought two system so i can download while gaming on the other system for this very reason. To do both at the same time would cause the ftp software to go into idle state with the fastest download speed at only 8-10kb/s. I can set the ftp software at a higher priority but then it would just cripple my gaming. These dual core look very promising, but ill hold out for amd dual core.GentleStream - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
I'm interested in benchmarks that would be relevant to scientific computing and software development.How about benchmarking a parallel compile of some non-trivial software package such as building the
gcc compiler. That takes quite a long time on my 4 year old laptop.
danidentity - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
So when are the Pentium D and the new chipsets being released?Spill it Anand. ;)
Turnip - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#23What about the fourth option? That by the time AMD's desktop dual core processor is available, Intel will have a new dual core processor available. Now, whether we're talking more than "two cores bunged on a chip", or whether we're simply talking a jacked up FSB (which has, remember, always given Intel a hefty jump in the encoding arena), I don't know. But I do know one thing...
Intel is a very big company and Intel has very big sleeves. ;)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
SpearhawkGood catch, the graphing engine didn't regenerate those graphs properly. Fixed now.
Take care,
Anand
Questar - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
I love this, all the AMD fanboys having seizures over that fact that an Intel CPU can actually have some benefits.It's been a blast reading all these posts the last two days.
Spearhawk - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
He said that a 2.2 GHz dualcore Athlon 64 wouldn't compete with the 2.8 GHz Pentium D at encoding. Notice the encoding part, he said nothing about other stuff.I'm guessing one can know that by looking at dual CPU Opteron systems, the dualcore A64 won't beat them, and if they can't beat a 2.8 Pentium D then the dualcore A64 won't be able to either.
Is there something wrong with the graphs in the DVD Shrink/Game test? The comments doesn't seem to match them (especialy the part about the minimum frame rate being equal)
PorBleemo - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
How do you calculate the system wattages like that? I have been attempting to find detailed information on how to do this but have turned up nothing yet.Thanks!
Illissius - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#10 - you are quite correct. anyone who games with a processor-intensive background task running at the same time _on a single core processor_ is insane. the reason I wanted to see benchmarks is to see whether dual core changes that.theoretically, I don't see why it wouldn't work:
- you only have one GPU, and only the game is using it
- you have two processor intensive tasks - the game and the background task, and two cores, one for each
hence, no conflict. whether that actually holds up in the real world is/was the question (if the background task is multithreaded, or heavily uses reasources other than just the processor, then naturally the above doesn't hold true).