AMD's dual core Opteron & Athlon 64 X2 - Server/Desktop Performance Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on April 21, 2005 9:25 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Multitasking Scenario 4: 3D Rendering
We received several requests for a 3D rendering multitasking test, so we put one together. For this test, we ran our SPECapc 3ds max 6 benchmark while we had iTunes, Firefox and Newsleecher all running like we have in previous tests. The application focus remained on Firefox to give it the highest scheduler priority, and the results are below: 
What's also interesting is that the performance of the Athlon 64 X2 4400+ is virtually identical with the Athlon 64 FX-55 from our standalone 3ds max test (1.65 vs 1.66). In this benchmark, the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 takes a pretty significant lead, thanks to HT. We see that even with a dual core CPU, there are still some issues to overcome with the OS' scheduler. So, we get an unusually large increase in performance due to HT due to the scheduler being tricked into sending more threads to the CPU rather than attempting to have them preempt one another for CPU time.
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patrick0 - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
If they would have the dual-core in stores in June, I would buy one, but this isn't the case, so I'll buy San-Diego 4000+.I'll upgrade when quad-core will be out.
Barneyk - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
oh, you cant edit your comments...Anyway, im really excited about this development of computing, not having good multitasking ability feels so outdated, i've been crying about that for years, and fianlly its here...
Well, almost, and its probably another year before i can afford it, but still... :)
Barneyk - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
testjvarszegi - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
Again, the lack of technical superiority of AT's "experts" is obvious. On SQL Server, you're not supposed to prepend stored-procedure names with "sp_", as it introduces a performance penalty. This is basic knowledge. Some have remarked before on how their .NET "experts" code like, um, transplanted ColdFusion "experts". :)Visual - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
a minor error: on page 12 right above the graph it says "The Dual Opteron 252's lead by 19% over the closest Xeon, which was the Quad Xeon 3.6 GHz 667MHz FSB" but the slowest xeon is the 3.3 GHz one.mechBgon - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
Zebo... hehe, yep :Djustly - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
An outstanding article about AMDs duel core, just what I would expect from Anandtech (to bad I had to go to techreport.com to read it).Zebo - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
Hahaha makes Chetta's drool: Looks just like you MECH.:)MACKTEK - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
I appreciate the article but am disappointed by the misleading title... AMD's dual core Opteron & Athlon 64 X2 - Server/Desktop Performance Preview. The 939 is not equal to 940. Also, the article clearly saysCOMPARE ATHLON 64 X2... right on the 1st page. In fact the article does not admit to "not having a real x2" until page 13. I love reading anandtech's articles and visit frequently... Perhaps a better title would have been... Preview of Athlon64 X2 using an Opteron CPU.
mechBgon - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/mechBgon/drool.jpg#82 says "and corporate PCs could work perfectly and more with a K5-K6/P2-P3."
Ahhh, this again. You obviously haven't worked with a fully-armed installation of McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i. *evil grin* Hope you enjoyed your stay in 1999... welcome to 2005.
;)