AMD or Intel for the highest CPU-Memory Bandwidth?

[joelbaby]

Wow!

Thanks for all the answers guys.
Thought I had it worked out - and now I don't!

This question wan't intended to start a 'fanboy' war - it's about finding the fastest platform to perform a specific computational task.

I think I'll need to approach a supplier and ask them to lend me 2 machines.

Joel

 

[quartzlock]

As far as i know amd still offers higher memory bandwith than intel, not on the theoretical side but on the practical side.

And it is indeed that way, its just that for example, in a memcopy you just read 128 bits chunks and write them out and you see the amd system fly, no intel system can match that atm; but if you load the data and then you begin to make heavy calculations with this data by using sse2 eg you will loose the bandwidth gain in the alu operations because k8 doesnt work 128bit at once but divides it into 2 64bit ops. Thats why I mentioned the importance of knowing what the algo is doing and understand the real hotspot.

About the theoretic BW and the real one, AMD has a better practical or effective BW due to the IMC, so an intel system with FSB 1600 wouldn't beat an AMD k8 @ DDR2-800 because the latency of the intel NB realy hurts( p35 MBs seem to have a big improvement but it is still not IMC).

The issue is: where is the time being spent? ALU? or memory Stall cycles?
Knowing the ratio between these two will tell you if the ALU or the MemBW is what you must use as criteria to choose the platform you will run on.

 

[flasher702]

yes thats why C2D run faster then AMDlol. C2D are better then anyAMD right now. until AMD comes with somthing new

i was only refering to memory bandwith, not overall processing power. Right now for pure processing power C2 has the upper hand.

Yeah... except for float operations where AMD also still has the upper hand.

Don't let the C2D kiddies bully you like that. 😉 If all they understand is 3dMark scores either correct them or just ignore them. Don't agree with them when they bather on about "C2D rulez all OMGWTF". It's simply not true.

quarzlock is on the right track. High-end computing is complicated business.

Joel, if you really do get two machines plz post back and let us know how it went.

 

[antikristuseke]

okay then what would you do with memory bandwidth if your processor can't crunch the data

You are sort of missing the point of this thread, the OP asked which platform gave the highest practical memory bandwith and that would be AMD, regardless of having less processing power than C2D. Wether or not he should go with an AMD or Intel platform would depend on the particular app he/she needs to run, as it has allready been said in this thread.

yes thats why C2D run faster then AMDlol. C2D are better then anyAMD right now. until AMD comes with somthing new

i was only refering to memory bandwith, not overall processing power. Right now for pure processing power C2 has the upper hand.

Yeah... except for float operations where AMD also still has the upper hand.

Don't let the C2D kiddies bully you like that. 😉 If all they understand is 3dMark scores either correct them or just ignore them. Don't agree with them when they bather on about "C2D rulez all OMGWTF". It's simply not true.

quarzlock is on the right track. High-end computing is complicated business.

Joel, if you really do get two machines plz post back and let us know how it went.

True that, it was just a bit late here and i didnt feel like bothering to go into that much detail