AMD Carrizo Part 2: A Generational Deep Dive into the Athlon X4 845 at $70
by Ian Cutress on July 14, 2016 9:00 AM ESTStock Comparison: Linux Performance
Built around several freely available benchmarks for Linux, Linux-Bench is a project spearheaded by Patrick at ServeTheHome to streamline about a dozen of these tests in a single neat package run via a set of three commands using an Ubuntu 11.04 LiveCD. These tests include fluid dynamics used by NASA, ray-tracing, OpenSSL, molecular modeling, and a scalable data structure server for web deployments. We run Linux-Bench and have chosen to report a select few of the tests that rely on CPU and DRAM speed.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
C-Ray: link
C-Ray is a simple ray-tracing program that focuses almost exclusively on processor performance rather than DRAM access. The test in Linux-Bench renders a heavy complex scene offering a large scalable scenario.
When we push up to full speed, the X4 845 comes alive and beats all the other Athlon CPUs (which wasn't the case at 3 GHz). It also pushes above the Pentium.
NAMD, Scalable Molecular Dynamics: link
Developed by the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NAMD is a set of parallel molecular dynamics codes for extreme parallelization up to and beyond 200,000 cores. The reference paper detailing NAMD has over 4000 citations, and our testing runs a small simulation where the calculation steps per unit time is the output vector.
Similar things happen with NAMD.
NPB, Fluid Dynamics: link
Aside from LINPACK, there are many other ways to benchmark supercomputers in terms of how effective they are for various types of mathematical processes. The NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) are a set of small programs originally designed for NASA to test their supercomputers in terms of fluid dynamics simulations, useful for airflow reactions and design.
NPB seems more amenable with Intel CPUs in this case. I feel the cache arrangement in the X4 845 is the let down here again.
Redis: link
Many of the online applications rely on key-value caches and data structure servers to operate. Redis is an open-source, scalable web technology with a strong developer base, but also relies heavily on memory bandwidth as well as CPU performance.
Redis easily favors high speed caches, and the Pentium oozes performance in this case.
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owan - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
A nice little pop over the previous generation and its still woeful compared to its direct competition from intel. I wonder why AMD even bothered with this product, Intel has a complete stranglehold on the mobile market and AMD's design wins are few and far between. Surely some of the architectural changes could have been rolled into a replacement for their incredibly stale AM3+ products, which have by now become completely irrelevant. I mean, we all know Zen is coming (and I hope its good) but something in the meantime would probably have done more for their mind share than a mobile part.AndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
"I wonder why AMD even bothered with this product"Yeah, pretty much what I've been thinking with AMD's CPU launches for a while now. *Surely* they can't be making money on their CPUs compared to how much they spend on researching, testing, producing and then marketing them?
(Unless there's a market that's low-profile in the media but is lucrative for AMD - perhaps the low budget market in Asia?)
patel21 - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
I'm from Asia, India. And here too people are smart enough to ignore AMD even in really low budget systems. And really we still have a complete PC with P4 or C2D easily available around 100$jospoortvliet - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
Compared to a p4 these amd cpu's are amazing... remember that in the time of the P4, amd made the faster more power efficient cpu's.mr_tawan - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
P4 or C2D are worse than every current AMD cpus on the market .... in one or another aspect.BlueBlazer - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
It is called "progress". Both Intel Pentium4 and Intel Core 2 Duo are already out of production years ago. Also it was Intel's Core 2 Duo that blew away AMD back into the stone age a decade ago, and since then AMD has never recovered. AMD's QuadFather FX and Barcelona (especially the TLB bugged ones) are the worst CPUs of their era (quite often was much slower than previous generation overall).bananaforscale - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
P4? Ew. :P (I have a P4D in the other room, it's not really preferable to anything. That if anything is a dead end.)nandnandnand - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
AMD is good in laptops. It will be better when Zen is out. Zen on the desktop may be good depending on the benchmarks and price.mr_tawan - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
I'm from Asia, Thailand. AFAIK AMD is pretty popular among internet cafe' (or should I say... game center instead ?).BlueBlazer - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
Over here, hardly see AMD being used in internet cafes.