Linux and EM64T; Intel's 64-bit Suggestion
by Kristopher Kubicki on August 9, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Audio Encoding
Lame was compiled from source without optimizations. We only ran ./configure and make, without any flags. We realize that some people would like to verify our binaries and sample files for their own benchmarks. In order to save bandwidth and prevent copyright infractions, we will provide our test files and binaries under limited circumstances to serious inquiries. We ran lame on a 700MB .wav file using the command equivalent to the one below:# lame sample.wav -b 192 -m s -h >/dev/null
Encoding time, lower is better.
POV-RAY
Although POV-RAY is limited in application (particularly when compared against Mental Ray), it does provide a free open source solution for basic rendering. POV-Ray 3.50c was our choice of render engine for this benchmark. For benchmark specifics, we run the exact benchmark as specified by the POV-Ray official site. We use the precompiled RPM for this test.Render Time in Seconds, less is better.
POV-Ray does not have multithread support, so we were not surprised to see the HyperThreading configuration slowing down to the configuration without HT. We see the Athlon 64 processor pull way ahead; render tasks are extremely CPU and memory dependant. With the memory controller on the CPU, Athlon 64 becomes the stronger offering in this situation.
GZip
To throw in some rudimentary tests for GZip, we used the included GZip 1.3.5 to compress the .wav file from the benchmark above. We do not want to limit our I/O on writing to the hard drive, so the operation is performed as below:# time gzip -c sample.wav > /dev/null
Intel wins their first bout of the analysis, albeit not by much. We will find a recurring pattern later on with integer based calculations and the Nocona Xeon processor. The entire Prescott family of Intel CPUs received a dedicated integer multiplier rather than continually using the floating point multiplier. This becomes extremely useful in some of our other benchmarks.
Database Performance
We will run the standard SQL-bench suite included with RPM MySQL 4.0.20d.
Of all our benchmarks, the SQL-bench becomes the most baffling. The extremely threaded database application performs particularly poorly with HyperThreading enabled. The Althon 64 outperforms Intel again in this benchmark, and a lot of it is almost certainly accredited to the on die memory controller again.
Update: We copied the 32-bit marks from our benchmark in previous testing instead of the 64-bit. You can view the previous articles here from a month ago. The graphs have also been updated.
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T8000 - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
I think it is justified to put the 3500+ in its place here. Either it is overrated or its 64 bit support is more of a marketing statement.For those wanting an 3800+ in the review, just add a little under 10% to the 3500+, since the 3800+ has about 10% more clockspeed and it usually scales close to that. Not that it would change that much, it would only make things worse for AMD fanboys, seeing the 3800+ unable to hold its own against a real 3.6 Ghz CPU.
Besides, you are welcome to try these tests at home with your FX53 or Opteron x50 and submit some scores. Don't have one? Don't worry, AMD hardly sells them anyway, especially to home users, since most users that can afford them do not buy AMD.
matman326 - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Very disappointing.... thats all i'm gonna say.wildguy2k - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
"Even a intel fanyboy has to laugh at how off sided this failure of a "review" was.Come on anandtech, if we wanted to read stuff like this we go to tom's"
Exactly. Also, to all those who say that 200MHz & 512KB of cache don't really make much difference, there's an article on this same site that may point out the very difference they provide. Now, I know it's not utilizing the 64bit extensions, but this image
(http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/athlon%2064%203... DOES show a 10% difference between the FX-53 & the 3500+ while compiling...
rocketbuddha - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
AlexWade - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Okay, deep breath ...Obviously, the Prescott does some nice math work. I'll keep that in mind. But, most of us, and I'll tend to believe most servers, don't crunch numbers all day. I wanted to see more benchmarks on stuff that is more likely to get done, not finding prime numbers. More encoding, more games, more SQL, more compiling, only one or two math benchmarks.
It is NOT a fair comparision of A64's weakness vs. Prescott's new strength on 60%+ benchmarks.
It is a fair comparision of CPU's. Although, not the best. The Opteron and Athlon64 come from the same mold. Variations aren't going to be that minor.
Please, next benchmark, make it more well-rounded. I could give a flip about Super Pi .
classy - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
I see no basis at all for this article. If you only had benchmarks for the 3500+ you should have even written this article. In all the years on Anandtech, I don't ever recall an article as uninformative as this one. Its nice to see the Athlon win a couple of benchmarks, but this is a very needless comparison.Marlin1975 - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Even a intel fanyboy has to laugh at how off sided this failure of a "review" was.Come on anandtech, if we wanted to read stuff like this we go to tom's
Pollock - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
I just want to throw my comment in here that I agree with most of the other people here. The conclusion is what I find most ridiculous."Without a doubt, the 3.6GHz Xeon trounces over the Athlon 64 in math-intensive benchmarks."
Like many other people said, I find that statement very unfair, again considering it wasn't against a similar chip.
bhtooefr - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
OK, I posted that last comment in reply to one on the previous page, and didn't realize that some of the benchmarks were 32-bit ones, either by accident, or to make the AMD smearing more obvious...bhtooefr - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
All of the benchmarks were 64-bit. They couldn't have thrown in a regular Xeon 3.6, because it wouldn't be able to run the OS or the benchmarking apps.They should be testing chips against others in their price range and PR rating range. So, here's what they should have tested (I noticed further down why they used the 3500+ ($346):
Pentium 4 560 EM64T (3.6GHz, $637)
Pentium 4 550 EM64T (3.4GHz, $417)
Pentium 4 540 EM64T (3.2GHz, $278)
I obtained these P4 prices from Intel's price list. While these prices are for the NON-EM64T chips, I read in a press release that Intel isn't charging any more for EM64T.
If they did it right, with the Xeon DP 3.6, here are the CPUs:
Xeon DP 3.6 EM64T ($851)
Opteron 250 ($851 - looks like it's aligned EXACTLY against the DP 3.6)