Opteron vs Althon vs P4 benchmarks

sonoran · Jul 22, 2003

Linky: <A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/opteron-1.html" target="_new">http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/opteron-1.html</A>

Mephistopheles · Jul 22, 2003

Yes, I've seen that... Actually, I was about to start a thread on that, but you beat me to it.

Anyway, I think those benchmarks are... well, not bad, but they are nothing spectacular either. They show that a 2.0Ghz A64 will be a respectable performance in its own right, and it has very good IPC improvements over Barton. I'm still not convinced that this core (current x86-64) has what it takes to beat Prescott, but hey - none of the optimizations are out.

In the end, only time will tell... I think it'll be a fair game. If AMD plays their cards right, they can have an excellent performer by 2004... if they can get x86-64 to mature... On the other hand, Intel has its weapons too.

But, forgetting about A64 for a minute, you can also say this: there is no reason to buy Opteron 1xx. A full-blown Pentium 4 will probably be a better choice for workstation tasks right now. But hey, Opteron is a young child, and it has some room for improvement... Until then, though, there's no strong reason to use it as a workstation part.

Mephistopheles

eden · Jul 22, 2003

Additionally, the single vs Dual show very well how little Dual Channel impacts AMD's core, even as it's now in a new generation, the K8. So A64 will really lose performance probably in the cache.

Sad to say, but the way things are according to such benchmarks (remember that SSE2 IS enabled on K8), AMD is done.

EDIT: Forgot to add, the ECC-loss on A64 may help by as much as 5%.
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<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/news.html" target="_new">The official Tom's Hardware Guide Forums Photo Album, click here to contribute!</A>Edited by Eden on 07/22/03 05:49 PM.

Pirox · Jul 22, 2003

Lo!

DDR-400 registered memory here: http://www.amdzone.com/articleview.cfm?ArticleID=1313

Yep there ya go..

TheRod · Jul 22, 2003

Wow!

we see that the Opteron platform continue to mature. I wish to see more benchmark from more objective website. Maybe Tom's will put a new article on the Opteron platform within a couple of days.

I hope that AMD will be able to boost to CORE speed up to 2.2GHz. This would make the Opteron equal to the P4 3.2GHz.

It's bad that the AMD core can't run near 3GHz, it would kick the ass of the P4. Always a roller coaster ride between AMD and Intel... For now Intel still have the lead, but in September, maybe AMD will retake the crown of the "fastest" x86 processor!

and I really enjoy this war, because, price will go down... And I will buy an XP 3200+ to sit on my A7N8X for almost nothing by the end of the year!

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mr_gobbledegook · Jul 22, 2003

Indeed the Opteron is still to mature.

Is it only me that feels Opteron should perform better than expected ?? I mean AMD made quite a few improvements to the Athlon core and I still get the feeling that it isn't coming up to scratch.

Remember Opteron is made on SOI which is supposed to enhance performance and yet it only manages to keep up with the Xeon. I wonder what the performance benchmarks would be if Opteron was made using normal silicon ?

I reckon AMD could easily squeeze out an extra 10% of performance by simply tweaking the existing core.

It will be interesting to see what performance gains are achieved with thier 2nd core revision.

Ladies and Gentlemen, its...Hammer Time !

eden · Jul 23, 2003

SOI is not in any way affiliated with Mr. Performance. SOI is there to tell Mr. Clock speed that its new "special running shoes" have arrived and it can now run faster than ever without sweating more.

2nd core? Haven't seen their roadmap feature ANYTHING IPC related, only 0.09m.
It's sad to say but AMD has NOTHING interesting on their roadmap. Intel's, shows so much improvements to come on the P4s, ARCHITECTURALLY, from mobile to desktop to servers. All are receving more weaponry.

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Spitfire_x86 · Jul 23, 2003

Opteron peroformance is reminding me Willamette. Like Willamette, it's consistent good performer only in gaming benchmarks

And BTW, what is SOI doing in Opteron? It is supposed to increase clockspeed upto 35%, but Opterons can't reach the clock speed of Athlon XP

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<A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new"> My Rig</A>Edited by Spitfire_x86 on 07/22/03 07:55 PM.

simwiz2 · Jul 23, 2003

Opterons can't reach the clock speed of Athlon XP

I hope that's not right! What good is an A64 at 2 GHz or less going to do? Maybe AMD just doens't have good yields yet?

Mephistopheles · Jul 23, 2003

I read this report on LN2 cooling for Opteron that got the thing up to 2.2Ghz... The guys at amdzone were thrilled with that, but heck, if you stop and think for a minute about it... liquid nitrogen gives it a measly 2.2Ghz? You actually need ln2 to do that? My god, those guys are in trouble...

Mephistopheles

juin · Jul 23, 2003

Get real most of you there are allready dying.
Still in the red
still slower that Intel
still not able to get clock speed
still looking for solution for short term and long term
still no support from any major corporation.

I dont like french test

Mephistopheles · Jul 23, 2003

Weeeell... I didn't say otherwise. I was just saying that they might just have a slim window of opportunity to do something vaguely respectable...

Mephistopheles

eden · Jul 23, 2003

Your pointing out of the 2.2GHZ just clicked in my head one thing: Tbred B.

I will risk my odds at this kind of situation once more, likely to be the case.

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spud · Jul 23, 2003

I agree, the Athlon 64 doesnt look too promiseing anymore. It just wont be able to ramp up and compete with the P4 line. With the talk of 20% more IPC on the Scotty. Scotty should be able to negate most of if not all the ground AMD has gained with the Opteron/Athlon 64. It's a sad day, but to me AMD looks to be falling back into the hole they were in back in the Pentium Pro and K6 days. Sad sad day.

-Jeremy

:evil:

<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=5341387" target="_new">Busting Sh@t Up!!!</A> :evil:

<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcm=1400777" target="_new">Busting More Sh@t Up!!!</A> :evil:

Edited by spud on 07/23/03 10:03 AM.

Spitfire_x86 · Jul 24, 2003

September is the "lucky month" for AMD. They launched Athlon "Classic" in Sepetember 1999, they manged to get more clock speed from 0.13µ in last September. I hope they have good luck in this September with Athlon 64

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TheRod · Jul 24, 2003

And what's the worst thing in this situation, is that most users don't need the power of the top of the line CPU. And it's in this segment that AMD is strong. They have low to midrange advantage.

But the problem is that most buyers are miseducated or badly informed about PC technology. A person in my family bought a CELERON just weeks ago... And for the price he paid, is system SUCKS! These day, PC makers wants to sells BOX at a price. They build cheap system based on Celeron to keep the price tag down. And because most users still think that Intel is the only viable choice of CPU, they buy these box even if the box next to the Celeron is a GOOD performer AMD...

I stop here... It's pointless to continue!

NOTE FOR THE FLAMERS : I'm talking about entry-level PC. I know that Intel is building great mid to high level CPU.

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Mephistopheles · Jul 24, 2003

You want to know something really frustrating?

I'm from Brazil. Can you imagine how much time it takes for new tech to get here? OK, we can always import at any moment, but that means cost increases... So it's cheaper to go with what most people buy, because of mass import and availability...

I checked the newspaper ads in the computer section yesterday. Most of them advertised 1.8Ghz, 2.0Ghz, 2.2Ghz and 2.4Ghz P4s (all 400Mhz FSB). The higher-end ads mentioned maybe the 2.53Ghz and 2.66Ghz or something. Athlons mostly come at 1700+ and 2000+. What stood out was this one ad - and it's the first I've seen in this country! - of the whole 2.4C-3.0C line... Made me so happy, until I saw that it was configured with single-channel DDR333 (and very little memory) and a crappy GeForce MX.

Noone knows what they're getting, really... My uncle recently got himself a 1700+ with GF4 MX420, upgrading from a 266 P2 or something. I said something like "nice upgrade", and he said, "yes, it's state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line". I wasn't too polite with him... "No, it is not, but it is a fine upgrade."

Mephistopheles

eden · Jul 24, 2003

It's kind of contradictory though, considering your work place is looking for Itanium IIs and has HT-enabled P4s, dontcha think?

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slvr_phoenix · Jul 24, 2003

Additionally, the single vs Dual show very well how little Dual Channel impacts AMD's core

I don't know... Some of the tests showed there being little difference. Other benchmarks however really seemed to lag more than just one processor speed grade when in single-channel.

Sad to say, but the way things are according to such benchmarks (remember that SSE2 IS enabled on K8), AMD is done.

I had rather feared that would be the case. The benchmarks did a rather good job of showing just how well SSE2 was implemented by AMD, and it's sad to see just how poor of a job AMD did. SSE2 will definately not be Opteron's saving grace.

The ondie memory controller does seem to help out quite at bit at least. The latency is significantly better than the AXPs. (Though Intel seems to have done a very good job with the i875.) I have to wonder how much better the latency will be for A64 with DDR400.

What's scary though is how much this doesn't matter for AMD. Low latency is not that big of a concern. With their clock speeds so low, AMD's CPUs aren't affected by latency nearly as much as Intel's CPUs. Imagine if Intel put an ondie memory controller into Prescott... Now that would be scary.

All-in-all, I was rather unimpressed with the Opteron bencies. (Not the quality of the site, but AMD's scores.) Prescott is definately going to be putting a crimp in AMD's exuberance if these are any indications of AMD's future performance.

And one last thought ... whatever happened to AMD's decision that Opteron was for multi-CPU only and A64 was for single-CPU only? Now we have single-CPU Opterons??? Not that I mind, but why can't AMD even make up its mind on something so simple?

"Yeah, if you treat them like equals, it'll only encourage them to think they ARE your equals." - Thief from <A HREF="http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=030603" target="_new">8-Bit Theater</A>

Mephistopheles · Jul 24, 2003

Oh well, it is more or less contradictory, if you don't consider how much we actually paid for those dual Xeon setups. We paid, for each of those systems, about 4-5 times the money we, as individuals, usually pay for home use PCs. Institutional purchases are funded by the federal/state government, if you can justify them. Home purchases are another matter entirely. Like I said in my earlier post, we can get the latest tech, but then, it has to be imported specifically for us. This costs enough money so as to make it an inconvenient option for home purchases, but doesn't really stop us from making institutional purchases with new tech. As a gamer, this makes my life a little harder... :frown:

flamethrower205 · Jul 25, 2003

What do u work as by the way?

All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

flamethrower205 · Jul 25, 2003

And if u remember how optimistic we all were about hammers, the legendary cpu's. We used to think if ms released a 64 bit winxp at the time of the hammer's release, intel had a serious strike against them. Well, looks like amd about to die out sadly, and I do not wanna go with inhell, they can go suck donkey cock. My workstation at work, which I was so impressed with, has turned out to be and in terms of being able to quickly process info. P4's just don't cut it imo.

All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

eden · Jul 26, 2003

has turned out to be and

You got an incomplete sentence which makes whatever comment against the P4, pretty moot.

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Kelledin · Jul 26, 2003

2nd core? Haven't seen their roadmap feature ANYTHING IPC related, only 0.09m.
It's sad to say but AMD has NOTHING interesting on their roadmap. Intel's, shows so much improvements to come on the P4s, ARCHITECTURALLY, from mobile to desktop to servers. All are receving more weaponry.

Oh, there will be revisions, they're just not the sort you shout about from the rooftops.

The one I remember most readily is that the SSE2->integer conversion slowdown in first-run Opterons is supposedly going to be revised out.

I can love my fellow man...but I'm damned if I'll love yours.

Mephistopheles · Jul 26, 2003

Actually, right now, I'm about to finish my physics graduation - I'm 20 years old. I see lots of things around here... Right now, as an extra, I'm working with a little research based on molecular dynamics - and for that, I have also been granted a scholarship. It's a nice amount of money - but it's not a lot, of course.

Oh, and one more thing: I didn't quite get that last anti-P4 argument of yours... maybe, just maybe, that's because the sentence is incomplete, like Eden said 😱 ... You don't like P4s, huh?...

Mephistopheles

Opteron vs Althon vs P4 benchmarks

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