AMD's Quad-Core Barcelona: Defending New Territory
by Johan De Gelas on September 10, 2007 12:15 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
WinRAR 3.62
Many servers and workstations have to compress a lot of data. WinRAR is one of the most popular compression applications and now features a multi-threaded benchmark. Compression algorithms work on large streams of data, so fast memory access is important.
The "dual-core score" has been obtained by setting the affinity of WinRAR to only two adjacent cores. This might lower the score a bit, but it is the best we were able to do right now Looking at the curves, the real dual performance is probably about 10% higher in reality. Even then, it is clear that once again the AMD quad-core scales better than the other CPUs. It also beats a 3.2GHz Opteron 2224, which is quite impressive. The picture gets clearer as you compare the gains from extra cores in percentages.
While the quad versus dual percentage increase of the Barcelona core is somewhat exaggerated, it is pretty obvious that Barcelona scales better.
Many servers and workstations have to compress a lot of data. WinRAR is one of the most popular compression applications and now features a multi-threaded benchmark. Compression algorithms work on large streams of data, so fast memory access is important.
The "dual-core score" has been obtained by setting the affinity of WinRAR to only two adjacent cores. This might lower the score a bit, but it is the best we were able to do right now Looking at the curves, the real dual performance is probably about 10% higher in reality. Even then, it is clear that once again the AMD quad-core scales better than the other CPUs. It also beats a 3.2GHz Opteron 2224, which is quite impressive. The picture gets clearer as you compare the gains from extra cores in percentages.
| WinRAR Scaling | |||
| Core | Dual vs Single | Quad vs Dual | Octal vs Quad |
| Opteron 2350 2 GHz | 59% | 68% | 36% |
| Xeon 5345 2.3 GHz | 73% | 30% | 28% |
| Xeon 5160 3 GHz | 68% | 34% | N/A |
| Opteron 2224 SE 3.2 GHz | 81% | 32% | N/A |
| Opteron 8218HE 2.6 GHz | 85% | 40% | N/A |
While the quad versus dual percentage increase of the Barcelona core is somewhat exaggerated, it is pretty obvious that Barcelona scales better.
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Phynaz - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
Isn't this intentionally crippling the system?JohanAnandtech - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
No. Just check what Intel and other companies do when they submit Specjbb scores for example. With HW prefetch on, you get about 10% lower scores.nj2112 - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Was HW prefetching off for all tests ?lplatypus - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
I thought that 2x00 series CPUs only supported one coherent hypertransport link, so would this mean that the "Dual Link" feature involving two HT links would require 8300 series CPUs?mino - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Well, maybe the changed that and all links are active (to enable setups like this) and the CPU just refuses to comunicate more than one coherent hopa away..mino - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Well, maybe the changed that and all links are active (to enable setups like this) and the CPU just refuses to comunicate more than one coherent hopa away..MDme - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
Let the games begin!Viditor - Thursday, September 13, 2007 - link
Are you going to be re-doing the review with the shipping version (stepping BA) anytime soon?I'm most curious to see if the improvement of 5%+ claims are true...
MDme - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
I think Barcelona will be a success in the server world. It's performance is around 20% faster than equivalently clocked xeons with the exception of certain programs like fritz and the linpack intel library where it is around 5-10% slower. But since it scales better than the xeon chips it should negate that and increase it's lead on others as core/sockets increase. add to that it's power efficiency tweaks and aggressive pricing, AMD will be able to hold off intel in the server world.....maybe.With 2.5Ghz Barceys coming up that would be equivalent to around 3-3+ Ghz xeons. So AMD was right that they need to get to 2.6 Ghz....AMD needs to ramp up clock to get the highest-end performance crown, but for now, their offering offers a nice balance of performance and power efficiency for the price.
Now time for the Phenom to get it's act together.
TA152H - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
The article should have mentioned the performance penalty Intel chips are suffering from with regards to FB-DIMMS. While it's true they should be benchmarked in servers with with memory, it's also widely rumored that they are going to be offering choices in the near future. This memory has a really big impact on a lot of benchmarks, so when looking towards the future, or desktop, it's important to keep in mind the importance of Intel using different memory. I don't think even Intel is stubborn enough to stick with this seriously slow, and power hungry memory. Maybe as a choice it's fine, but it must be clear to them that offering something else as well as FB-DIMMs is very desirable in the server space. Then again, look at how long they stuck with Rambus.