Dual AMD on 760MP could beat P4

[Guest]

I had an interesting thought (a first):

P4's are expensive. I noticed you could buy two 1.2GHz Athlons for the price of one P4 1.4GHz. Or, you could get two 1.0GHz Athlons for one P4 1.3GHz.

P4's shine in apps in which dual cpu systems are also fast (e.g. encoding). A dual Athlon system would beat a single P4 in any application benchmark, even those that don't use dual CPUs (cos the Athlon already wins in most of these).

Problem: no 760MP boards yet. Does anyone know when? Since RAMBUS is more expensive than DDR, the price of a 760MP mobo would prob keep within the price of the P4 system. This may work for a dual P3 as well, but it might be much more expensive.

I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on this. Maybe we'll see lots of dual systems on the market soon like this. Or maybe I'm a fool

~ I'm not AMD biased, I just think their chips are better. ~

 

[Guest]

I am waiting for the mp boards too. I've heard end of Q1 or beginning of Q2. I surprised amd is taking this long. I expected to see a dual amd system when the athlon was still slot A. I suspect the cost of the dual boards will be about the same as dual boards for intel chips but since DDR and athlons are cheaper so, like you said, it will be a good trade off. Many people want to use dual systems, many people don't care. I just wish amd would listen to the half that need it.

 

[Guest]

The Tyan 760MP board will be available pretty soon. AMD is rightfully taking their time on launching SMP because it's their first crack at it and they want to make sure there are no problems. As far as performance goes, there is no question it will outperform anything Inhell will have. Unlike Inhell and their crappy GTL+ shared bus, the 760MP will be using point-to-point for both processors so you get an 80-90% performance boost for the second processor. It will be worth the wait.

 

[Crashman]

Oh and two Ford F250's w/5.8L engines could outpull one Chevy C2500 with a 6.8L engine. Two oranges are more filling thatn one apple. Whatever. Oh wait, I can actually buy Ford F250's and Oranges, my mistake.

Suicide is painless...........

 

[TheAntipop]

you cant buy oranges, youre lieing, youre such a lier, why dont you quit lieing lier!!

My name is Mud.

 

[Guest]

Your crappy analogy doesn't work. It's a given that one AMD processor is better than one Intel processor, so two AMD processors in a true point-to-point topology are definetly better than two Intel processors using a shared bus. Does that make sense to you, nucklehead? Hey, if you don't believe me wait until you see the benchmarks.

 

[Guest]

AMD processors in a true point-to-point topology are definetly better than two Intel processors using a shared bus

I wonder how much the point-to-point bus will really matter in real world performance?

 

[Guest]

It will make a lot of difference. You get roughly 40% from adding a second processor in an Intel SMP setup, you'll get around 90% from the AMD setup. Take a look at some Alpha SMP benchmarks to get an idea how much better EV6 is in SMP than GTL+.

 

[Crashman]

HEY SHITHEAD! IF YOUR AMD IS SO SUPERIOR 1 TO 1 WITH THE P4 WHY DO YOU DEFEND COMPARING 2 TO IT! YOU HAVE ALREADY ADMITED DEFEAT, NOW CASTRATE YOURSELF AND JOIN A CULT!
(unless you already have) ;-)

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

Hehehehe....the P4 sucks, boy, and so do you. Shithead? Now if that aint the "pot calling the kettle black".

<b>The P4 is really an overclocked Cyrix processor. Honest!</b>

 

[Guest]

It will make a lot of difference. You get roughly 40% from adding a second processor in an Intel SMP setup, you'll get around 90% from the AMD setup. Take a look at some Alpha SMP benchmarks to get an idea how much better EV6 is in SMP than GTL+.

This is interesting. Where do you get the 40% number? I ask because I currently have a dual PII 450 and I see around an 80-90% rendering time decrease (speed increase) in 3D Studio MAX. I was about to get a dual PIII 1 GhZ(have the case sitting here already) but I'm trying to hold off for dual AMD's. I had not taken into account the possibility that at higher CPU speed, the bus would have a dramatically increased bottleneck effect as you're suggesting, but I will need to look into this. Any more info would be appreciated on diminishing returns with mhz increase when running dual PIII's.

 

[Crashman]

Actually I don't even like the P4, I think it was rushed ot the market in a compromised and unfinished state, and that it has served to set back technological progress by a few months. But at the same time, if someone wants to compare it's few REDEEMING factors to another processor, doing the other processor in dual configuration is still an unfair comparison, especially when using a hypothetical configuration that is not even available. And so what if I suck, maybe the lady likes it!

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

Hi BNN. My post about SMP on an Intel box isn't entirely accurate. Your results will vary depending upon the application you're using. RC5 is the best and you'll get 100% from a dual Intel setup. 3D Studio Max must be a multithreaded app. to get the kind of results you're seeing. Other programs, such as FFT or scientific programs will show the limitations of the GTL+ bus because they place a high demand on the FSB. FFT is one app. that you won't get a very good improvement from two Intel processors. Another thing that makes a big difference in performance, especially for Intel setups, is the amount of L2 cache your processors have. The less cache you have, the more the PU has to search the bus for the data it needs, thus potentially saturating the shared bus. This is where a Xeon shows it's worth. In many cases you would get better results from running with two equally fast machines than one SMP machine. As you know this won't be a problem for the upcoming AMD 760MP because each processor will have it's own, dedicated point-to-point connection running at full speed. I understand your wanting to wait for the 760MP because it should be killer running two 1.2GHz Athlons, but if you go with 1GHz PIII's it should be a huge improvement over your PII's.