Motherboards Memory Storage Cases/Cooling/PSUs IT Computing Displays Mobile Mac CPUs & Chipsets Video Digital Cameras Linux Gadgets Systems Trade Shows Guides Home Increase Font Size Decrease Font Size Change Page Size
Linux Shootout: Opteron 150 vs. Xeon 3.6 Nocona
Linux Shootout: Opteron 150 vs. Xeon 3.6 Nocona
Date: August 12th, 2004
Topic: Linux
Manufacturer: Various
Author: Kristopher Kubicki
Buy the Intel BX80574E5450A Xeon DP E5450
Blank
 Newegg $986.99
 Amazon $986.99
 Buy.com $972.99
 
 

John The Ripper

We are using John the Ripper 1.6.37 in this portion of the benchmark.  As a few extremely knowledgeable readers pointed out, the "stable" 1.6 branch of code relies heavily on hand coded ASM which by today's standards is fairly ancient anyway.  Using the "development" branch, we are able to tweak the options enough to get away from any ASM. 

However, if our chess benchmarks were any indicator, optimization flags tend to skew the results dramatically.  As a result, we run three trials of the John the Ripper (JTR) benchmark each using different compile flags.  Configuration 1 is in the standard "make linux-x86-64" target.

  • Configuration 1.) -O2

  • Configuration 2.) -O3

  • Configuration 3.) -O3 - march=k8 or - march=nocona
John The Ripper 1.6.37 - DES [64/64 BS]
John The Ripper 1.6.37 - Blowfish (x32) [32/64]
John The Ripper 1.6.37 - MD5 [32/64 X2]

From looking at the graphs, it becomes easy to see why JTR makes a difficult program to use as a benchmark.  Pay careful attention to each benchmark, particularly in between the -O2 and -O3 compile options. 

OpenSSL

We couldn't think of a good way to post the OpenSSL benchmarks, so we just put both comparisons into text files which you may download here (AMD) and here (Intel). The reader is left to draw their own conclusions.

Final Thoughts   Next Page

 
  Index

Tools Share
Find lowest prices Find the lowest prices
Digg   del.icio.us   E-mail  
Print This Article Print this article  

92 Comments - Last by , 108 days ago
Username:
Password:
No Subject by thatsright, 2007 days ago
Now will all of you A-Holes get off KrizK's & AT editorial staff's back!!

Reply
No Subject by JGunther, 2007 days ago
Yeah... this reivew (to me) proves that Kris is a good, well-intentioned guy, as he put aside his own personal time to re-do these benchmarks. But the results within also prove how utterly inaccurate the first review was, thus justifying (some of) the criticism he recieved.

I can see that you did learn at least one lesson, Kris; there are no claims in the conclusion of the Opteron "trouncing" the Xeon this time (even though such a remark may be justified now). :)

Reply
No Subject by sprockkets, 2007 days ago
At the end of page 5, the last paragraph is worded weird. Page 6 graph at the top, "Opteron 250"?

I realize that you probably were sleeping when you did this :).

The only thing else I don't like and I know it's out of your control is those stupid "get the facts" propaganda from Micro losers.

Reply
No Subject by TotalImmortal, 2007 days ago
thanks to all you guys at anandtech, never let it be said that you don't listen to your readership!


Reply
No Subject by Carfax, 2007 days ago
This review is MUCH better.. But still, WHY aren't there reference 32 bit scores for the Noconca, so we can see how much of a difference between 32 and 64 bit performance there is?

Reply
No Subject by KristopherKubicki, 2007 days ago
Carfax:

I will address that in a future review. I just didnt have the time to do it all over again :'(

Kristopher

Reply
No Subject by datacipher, 2007 days ago
Sorry for the empty posts, I just signed up to say this....

I think I can speak from a different perspective as I am not a techhead. I do keep a casual eye on hardware and have done extensive programming so I would not classify myself as computer illiterate.

Still I WOULD not have noticeed the rediculous choice of cpu's used in the 1st article. I would have just skimmed the article and assumed that a reasonable choice of benchmark material was used. I would not have known about any of the flaws in the benchmarks. I WOULD have accepted and given weight to the conclusion...which was clearly unwarranted given this second review.

I would like to thank all the posters who criticized that review because without you watchdogs, I would have blindly accepted the article as I used to do with Anandtech which I always though was a reliable source.

Kristopher, it's good you posted a new article, but honestly, your first article was extremely misleading...almost fraudulent...it really changes the nature of Anandtech in my mind...I thought I could rely on you fellows...

If you had initially even written of your reasoning as to why you were using such an uncomparable processor and then properly framed your conclusions it would have been fine....but in the article itself you seemed to be saying that it was a reasonable comparision and the conclusions were not given proper reference.

I'm really disappointed.

Reply
No Subject by KristopherKubicki, 2007 days ago
datacipher: The 3.6F will still be marketed against the 3500+/3800+ dual channel AMD CPUs. The benchmarks were messed up in that article, not our processor choice. This was addressed at the beginning of both articles/

Kristopher

Reply
No Subject by Carfax, 2007 days ago
Kris, that's fine man.. Good work on this review, and I look forward to seeing the 32 and 64 bit Nocona benches in a future review!

Reply
No Subject by love4ever, 2007 days ago
thanks Kristopher.
very nice review.

Reply
Comments Page 1 of 10

Unlicensed Software at Your Last Company
Anonymously Report Unlicensed Software with Our Form Now. Get Up to $1 Million.
Special Offer from The Economist
Get 12 issues of The Economist for $12. US subscribers only.
MONITOR Your Virtual Infrastructure FREE
Prevent and Solve Problems with vWire. Download Your 30-Day FREE TRIAL Today!
Report Unlicensed Business Software Use
Earn Up to $1 Million by Reporting Unlicensed Software Use. Fill Out Our Form!
Microsoft Visual Studio ® Team System - Free Trial
Collaborate and Develop Apps Faster. Get the Tools & Processes That Help Teams Work Effectively.




Latest news by
DailyTech

 February 9, 2010

Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank

 February 8, 2010

Blank




pipeboost
Copyright © 1997-2010 AnandTech, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms, Conditions and Privacy Information.
Click Here for Advertising Information