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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JohanAnandtech - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
well said. I don't think AMD will have that advantage for a long time in 2P space :-)JackPack - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
The problem is, 45nm Harpertown and 1600 MHz FSB will be rolling in soon.Barcelona would have looked great 6 or 9 months ago. But today, it's a little weak unless they can raise the frequency fast.
Viditor - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
True, but so will HT 3.0 and the newer mem controller for the Barcelonas...
jones377 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
You got your work cut out for you now :)IntelUser2000 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
AMD won't compete against Intel's Tulsa chips anymore. They will have to compete against Tigerton Xeon MP and the newly introduced Clarksbro chipset.On the DP server platform, Intel will introduce Harpertown and Seaburg chipset. Seaburg chipset features 1600MHz bus with significantly improved memory controller performance. We'll see how it all turns out but as of now, Barcelona is a bit late to be competitive.
wegra - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
You should not forget the Penryn. 2.5Ghz Barcelona will face to 3.1+Ghz Penryn. According to result from this article, I expect the performance of 2.5Ghz Barcelona will reach between 2.8 ~ 2.9Ghz Penryn. So wait till (hopefully) next year to see that AMD becomes the performance king. BTW, talking about the multi-processor servers, AMD will lead w/o much difficulties, I expect, thanks to the scalable architecture.