Linux and EM64T; Intel's 64-bit Suggestion
by Kristopher Kubicki on August 9, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Conclusions
Although the Athlon 64 3500+ and the Xeon 3.6GHz EM64T processors were not necessarily designed to compete against each other, we found that comparing the two CPUs was more appropriate than anticipated, particularly in the light of Intel's newest move to bring EM64T to the Pentium 4 line. Once we obtain a sample of the Pentium 4 3.6F, we expect our benchmarks to produce very similar results to the 3.6 Xeon tested for this review.Without a doubt, the 3.6GHz Xeon trounces over the Athlon 64 3500+ in math-intensive synthetic benchmarks. Again, not that it is really a comparison between the two chips yet anyway, but perhaps something of a marker of things to come. However, real world benchmarks, with the exception of John the Ripper is where AMD came ahead instead. Even though John uses several different optimizations to generate hashes, in every case, the Athlon chip found itself at least 40% behind. Much of this is likely attributed to the additional math tweaking in the Prescott family core, and the lack of optimizations at compile time.
That's not to say that the Xeon CPU necessarily deserves excessive praise just yet. At time of publication, our Xeon processor retails for $850 and the Athlon 3500+ retails for about $500 less. The 3.6F processor the Xeon represents does not even exist in retail channels yet. Also, keep in mind that the AMD processor is clocked 1400MHz slower than the 3.6GHz Xeon. With only a few exceptions, synthetically the 3.6GHz Xeon outperformed our Athlon 64 3500+, whether or not the cost and thermal issues between these two processors are justifiable.
We will benchmark some SMP 3.6GHz Xeons against a pair of Opterons in the near future, so check back regularly for new benchmarks!
Update: We have addressed the issue with the -02 compile options in TSCP, the miscopy from previous benchmarks of the MySQL benchmark, and various other issues here and there in the testing of this processor. Expect a follow up article as soon as possible with an Opteron.
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TauCeti - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Hi Kristopher,the most disturbing thing for me about your comparisons is your selection of the benchmarks you did run. Some of them are simply not suited at all to run on modern 64-bit systems.
Some details:
Super-Pi:
If you did not get some 'special' version, you benched Super-PI 2.0 compiled with an ancient (GNU) 2.95.2 in late 1999. Purely 32-bit and the compiler blatantly unaware of modern microarchitectures.
TSCP 1.8.1:
You are joking. The TSCP-bench function does need way below 1Megabyte of memory in 32-bit. Totally in-Cache for the Xeon. Did you have a look at the source (it's small enough)? Why did you think that 64-bit could possibly increase performance? That uneccessarily increased mem-consumption and decreased performance.
BTW: TSCP scores about 420000 on my P4(3.0/875) and about 240000 on a Athlon XP2000+ in 32 bit. The latter value is included in the source code.
Tau
thatsright - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
WOW!!It is just absolutely mind boggling that AnandTech would run such a incompetent article. To compare a High end server chip, to a mainstream desktop chip, is utterly pointless. (And I am a proud owner of a P4c, not a hardcore AMD fanboi.) I would only expect this sort of incomplete and shoddy journalism from Tom's Hardware or the like.
This article should be pulled until a apt and completer comparison can be run with a Opteron chip. I'm getting a bit concerned with the writing of the last few stories here @ AnandTech.
Pjotr - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
"Relax, its just a primer for future articles. A 3.6F is supposed to compare with a "3600+" rated Athlon 64 isnt it?"No, it's not. They come from two separate market segments. The 3500+ is a desktop CPU. Opteron is AMDs server CPU. Server CPUs typically has more L2 than desktop CPUs, both for Intel and AMD. Also, the 3500+ rating is supposed to compare to Intel desktop CPUs, not server CPUs.
mrdoubleb - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
OFFSorry for the double post. The 1st one had some typos and I used the BACK button to correct them. Bad idea. :))
mrdoubleb - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Now, come on! Honestly, this was meant to be posted on April 1st, wasn't it?! Even in your own previous tests we see that (except for video encoding and a few synthetic tests) the 3500+ beats Prescott 3.6. Is a "Prescott B" coming out so shortly that we don't know of that you claim that the new Nocona 3.6 is exactly like the Prescott 3.6?! Why didn't you put up a similarly priced Opteron against this iAMD64 zombie?!My suggestion for a future test: Sempron 2000+ vs. Prescott 3.6. Title of review: "Both AMD and Intel have released 2 new processors recently. How do they perform against each other?".
mrdoubleb - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Now, come on! Honestly, this was meant to be posted on April 1st, wasn't it?! Even in your own previous tests we see that (except for video encoding and a few synthetic tests" we see that the 3500+ beats Prescott 3.6. Is a "Prescott B" coming out so shortly that we don't know fo that you claim that the new Nocona 3.6 is exactly like the Prescott 3.6?! Why didn't you put up a similarly priced Opteron against this iAMD64 zombie?!My suggestion for a future test: Sempron 2000+ vs. Prescott 3.6. Title of review: "Both AMD and Intel have released 2 new processors recently. How do they perform against each other?".
Carfax - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
To Locutus4657, apparently he used 32bit scores for the first MySQL benchmark on the 3500+ instead of 64bit scores..Had he used 64bit, the 3500+ would have won both benches instead of just one..
Locutus4657 - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Here's what I really don't get... Reviewing previous Prescott v. Northwood v. A64 server benchmarks the Prescott was trounced, not only by the A64 but by the Northwood as well (on Mysql Linux). So how the hell did a Prescott end up improving this much in mysql? Were there some core updates I'm not aware of?Fr0zeN2 - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Synthetic benchmarks are worthless. Show me some real numbers! I dont care who wins i just want to see real benchmarks!snorre - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
KristopherKubicki: Don't be stupid, you should always compare with the best possible alternative and in single processor systems that is AMD's Opteron 150 or Athlon 64 FX-53. And besides, AMD's rating has nothing to do with Intel's MHz...