Rendering: 3ds Max 2008
Operating System: Windows 2008 Enterprise RTM (64 bit)
Software: 3ds Max 2008
Benchmark software: Build in timer
Typical error margin: 1-2%
We used the "architecture" scene which is included in the SPEC APC 3DS Max test. All tests were done with 3ds max's default scanline renderer, SSE enabled and we rendered at HD 720p (1280x720) resolution. We measured the time it takes to render 10 frames from 20 to 29 with SSE enabled. We recorded the time and then calculated (3600 seconds * 10 frames / time recorded) how many frames a certain CPU configuration could render in one hour. All results are reported as rendered images per hour, higher is thus better.
We used the 32-bit version of 3ds Max 2008 on 64-bit Windows 2008 RTM. The 64-bit version of 3ds Max was a bit slower (especially when we used the Scanline Renderer). All CPU configurations are dual, unless when we indicate otherwise.
We wrote “Some applications do not like core counts that are not a power of 2”. Well, here you have another example. The extra cores of AMD “Istanbul” are close to useless. The Xeon x55xx series outperform the hex-core by almost 50%. The 3DS Max scanline render simply does not know what do with the 12 cores presented. CPU usage went from 50 to 80%:
We are sure that there are probably more efficient render engines out there, but it is simply not a market the AMD six-core should cater to. Nehalem-based Xeons are simply way too powerful for this kind of application. Render engines scale almost perfectly with clockspeed. So if cost is your main concern, consider the Xeon E5520 at 2.26 GHz, the cheapest CPU that still supports HT. We will test this one soon, but we expect it to deliver 67 frames per hour, which is still more than 20% better than any Opteron.
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iocedmyself - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - link
Well something that was failed to be mentioned was that the 2P opteron machine costs about $6700, where as the nehalem 2p machine is very near to $16,000.as for power consumption a straight up comparison would be HP380 Xeon and HP 385 Opteron. At idle, both are 140W. With 100% CPU / Ram, 385 is around 300W, 380 (Xeon) is about 450W.
another thing not discussed here - 4P Istanbul is 70-80% faster than 2P Nehalem, and there is no 4P Nehalem. 8P Istanbul is over 3 times as fast as 2P Nehalem. so until next gen Nehalem, there is no competition in the high end which probably has something to do with istanbul orders being through the roof.
I also have to wonder if these benchmarks were conducted using one of Intel's little helpful optimized compilers.
yasbane - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
would be nice to see some unix or linux benchmarks...riskyburden - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
I might be naive here but surely the majority of these applications are favouring clock speed and no more than two cores, should there not be a bench for those companies that run multiple apps such as SQL and AD or IPFX etc all from one server and make a comparison there. I don't suggest it to be good network practice but that would interest me more.mino - Friday, June 5, 2009 - link
For this part of SMB market pretty much any dual core CPU will do.Their bottleneck is almost allways on the storage side, sometimes with insufficient memory.
And most also run default install where basic SW tweaks would make 100's percents in performance.
befair - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
Johan never proves me wrong. Even an article meant to talk about AMD Opteron starts with a good deal of "Intel is the king!" stuff, as usual.alpha754293 - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
What happened to them?I would have to loved to have seen what the new 6-core AMDs would be able to do in this arena since it is (presumably) a much more competitive offering than the fastest Xeons all around.
lopri - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
A Question: Is the 'snoop-filter' a hardware-based? I read that it can be enabled/disabled via BIOS, and since the cores are same as Shanghai cores.. But my question is, whether it's hardware-based or software-based (BIOS), shouldn't this work for inter-core communication as well if AMD decides to implement it?JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
I have to check, but I am pretty sure it is both. The "uncore" part has changed somewhat on Istanbul."shouldn't this work for inter-core communication as well if AMD decides to implement it"
Since the L3-cache keeps copies of shared L2-cachelines, I don't think that will help. There is already a very fast way of communicating with little overhead.
tygrus - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
I would like to know the performance difference when using a cell size of 3 not 6 on the 6-core units or of 8 not 4 on Xeon 4Core8Thread ?Will have to wait for latter for more raw performance numbers (eg. memory local/system, SPEC CPU, task switching, OS/IO task servicing).
How long before they update the boards for DDR3 based memory and better IO onboard ?
It's a pity the ESX 4.0 update hasn't helped AMD .. are the improvements only available for Intel or was it to correct a previous Intel only problem ? What can AMD/partners do to improve performance ?
JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
"I would like to know the performance difference when using a cell size of 3 not 6 on the 6-core units?"A cell size of 3 will not do any good if your VMs are MP. Eventhough ESX features "relaxed co-scheduling", there might quite a few cases where the Scheduler is not able to use all "slots" as some of vCPUs of the VMs might be behind. From the momemt you use more than 2 vCPUs, you will get situations where only one VM with 2 CPUs is scheduled on a cell of 3 CPUs. 8-cell: I have to try it.
"How long before they update the boards for DDR3 based memory and better IO onboard ? "
The AMD's Fiorano platform that will be available in a few weeks should have better I/O (PCIe gen 2) but will still be DDR-2 based.
DDR-3 CPUs are scheduled for 2010.
"It's a pity the ESX 4.0 update hasn't helped AMD .. are the improvements only available for Intel or was it to correct a previous Intel only problem ? "
VMware's docs tell us they that CPU locking goes more quickly and that the scheduler is "cache aware", but most of the biggest improvements are EPT and better support for Hyperthreading.