Conroe Performance Preview Follow-Up
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 9, 2006 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
The BIOS Issue
The one item that a number of you pointed out was that the BIOS used on the DFI LANPARTY UT RDX200 (RD480) motherboard was in fact the first version released for this particular motherboard. Intel told us that the motherboard was purchased a little over two weeks ago and the BIOS used on it was what came with the motherboard, but we still agreed with you all that the system should be tested with the latest BIOS to remove all doubt of wrong doing.
There are only two BIOS files publicly available for this motherboard, one being the first release that was loaded on the system and the other being a file dated 12/23/2005. The 12/23 BIOS offers the following fixes according to DFI:
1. Fix memory Set 2-1-1-1-1 and 4-1-1 mode wrong.
2. Set Cool'n'Quiet default disable.
3. Change the description of DQDRV.
4. Fix Read Preamble Table Error.
5. Shorten the delay time during clock programming loop.
6. Add over clocks step by step.
7. Fix fill 3114 SVID&SSID under Cross fire mode.
8. Fix soft-reset hang on POST code F2h if enable USB mouse support.
9. Change CMOS used to fix some control item can’t save.
10. Add support K8 FX60 CPU.
11. Update SiI3112 Raid ROM.
12. Fix some SATA(DiamondMax 10 (6B160M0) HDD ) HDD detect fail at first time cool boot.
That’s a pretty long list of changes, which could definitely be responsible for a change in performance. We were able to test the impact of the new BIOS, and our results are below:
DFI LANPARTY UT RDX200 |
10/11/2005 BIOS |
12/23/2005 BIOS |
| Quake 4 - 1280 x 960 (Avg Frame Rate) | 207.5 fps |
207.6 fps |
| F.E.A.R. - 1024 x 768 (Avg Frame Rate) | 151.0 fps |
158.0 fps |
| Windows Media Encoder 9 (Encode Time) | 75 seconds |
75 seconds |
| DivX 6.1 (Encode Time) | 44 seconds |
44 seconds |
| iTunes 6.0.1.3 (Encode Time) | 73 seconds |
72 seconds |
UT2004 and Half Life 2 were absent from our testing, simply because we didn’t have the time to get them installed, but the rest of the scores here should be indicative of the full impact of the BIOS update. In the media encoding tests we saw absolutely no performance impact other than a 1 second reduction in iTunes encoding time. F.E.AR. at 1024 x 768 saw a reasonable gain of 4%. Quake 4 remained virtually unchanged.
With the new BIOS installed we confirmed that Cool’n’Quiet was disabled, so that was not impacting the performance results at all. The new BIOS also correctly identified the Athlon 64 FX-60 processor, although as you can see from the results above, the proper detection of the CPU didn’t translate into greater performance.
The new BIOS in action
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theteamaqua - Friday, March 10, 2006 - link
actually its FX 60, sorryBeenthere - Friday, March 10, 2006 - link
Well the Intel Desperation Forum is just about complete and as usual it's just another Dog and Phony show where the naive get manipulated by Intel. And the media will be hyping the Intel gospel now with FUD beyond compare until the next Intel Desperation Forum. It's pretty amazing the FUD Intel can produce but they can't produce quality CPUs. Shows where their interest is focused.stopkidding - Friday, March 10, 2006 - link
Ok, I have always been a passive reader to these forums. I read more out of curiosity about user perceptions to technology than to engage in some mindless ranting with arrogant arm chair scientists and geeks who have no better use of their time than to seek validation from fellow lifeless nerds! having said that, here is my message to AMD fanboys.I value competition, and admire what AMD have done with their limited resources and creative use of new technology. So they have had their fair share of the spotlight. A pat on AMD's back. Good job. Having said that, it really pisses me off when people take this to be a free for all Intel bashing event. Most people have no idea, how great the contributions of Intel have been to advance the state of art in the world of computing. While the nerds are busy talking about giga this and mega that, Intel is quietly investing billions of dollars into research that is fundamental to the core of all forms of computing, be it hardware, software or the cutting edge manufacturing processes. Intel invented the whole performance game, took it to the next level and AMD has always had a free ride on countless technologies that Intel gives away for free to the computing world. Be it investing money into standards are USB, PCI, Wifi, Wimax, the open source community, compiler research, etc to advancing the lives people around the world my investing tons of money in technology education programs around the world (Intel has trained 3 million teachers world wide and plans to train another 10 million). The list and contributions are endless.
So the point its, which i hope your turd filled brains will get it at some point, Intel is why we have what we have today. While a fair and balanced critisism of products and technology misteps is required, it is ultimately competetion and the market that decides the victor, and trust me kiddos, most of you here haven't got a clue about what you are talking about.....geez people grow up!!
PS: Neither AMD64 nor EM64T technologies are true 64 bit processors, there are merely extensions to 32 bit processors that allow them access 64 bit memory! ARGGHH!!!
dysonlu - Sunday, March 12, 2006 - link
While I agree that huge corporations such as Intel do contribute to the world with technology advancements. Please don't make it sound like they are doing it out of pure love ("give away for free")! Big companies develop stuff to create new markets with which they can grow their overall business and make more money. Intel had no other choice than to co-operate with others and share technologies for a given new market to be viable.stopkidding - Monday, March 13, 2006 - link
I totally agree with you, Intel invests in the ecosystem to grow the market, no charity here. My point was the relentless, meritless bashing of Intel, making it seem like a company that is upto no good. I was merely listing the accomplishments that matter to the industry. what forums like this do is reduce all of that to a few fps on a game to decide who is great and who is not. as the saying goes, "the 0.1 % of the market makes 99.9% of the thrashy noise". the gamers are self aborbed pretentios hacks who know nothing......Cerb - Saturday, March 11, 2006 - link
PS: Neither AMD64 nor EM64T technologies are true 64 bit processors, there are merely extensions to 32 bit processors that allow them access 64 bit memory! ARGGHH!!!How are they not? 64-bit registers makes...64-bit CPU.
The extensions make mostly wider and longer sets of registers. AFAIK, they are at 40/48-bit memory access. They are as much 64-bit processors as any others; they're just not compeltely redesigned from the ground up, because consumers and businesses that are used to using binary apps hate that.
stopkidding - Monday, March 13, 2006 - link
modern 32 bit processors for a long time have had 128 bit registers for floating point operations. the conroe as 128 bit instruction sets and registers for SSE instructions and 128 bit for fp. does that make it a 128 bit processor?Cerb - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
For marketting weenies, it does :). Like many other things, being x-bit is not any great and useful metric, except to differentiate it from its past (IA32, now x86-64).smut - Friday, March 10, 2006 - link
Get with reality! People are always going to live by the mindset "What have you done for me lately" or "Your only as good as your last hit" Who cares what they did many years ago? This is not my point of view, just saying why you had to make that point, because no one cares about that stuff these days and thats the way fanbois will continue to think.Nighteye2 - Friday, March 10, 2006 - link
EM64T is an extension, yes, but AMD64? What is your source on that? From what I recall the AMD64 instruction are real 64-bit instructions, rather than 32-bit instructions with bigger memory adressing capabilities...