Thouroughbred to Barton, then what for x86?

[AMD_Man]

The Itanium costs thousands of dollars, while a mid-range ClawHammer will probably cost $200-$300USD. We, as enthusiasts aren't concerned about the performance of the Sledgehammer or the Itanium.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Raystonn]

Well this forum is for everyone, not just the PC enthusiast's market. Unless the forum is renamed to "x86 CPUs" I believe there is a place for discussion of these processors here. 😉

As far as the cost... I will probably pick up an Itanium just to play with it once it reaches the $1000 range.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[IIB]

Yes, but Hammer's 3rd gear has nowhere near the performance of the Itanium's 3rd gear. 😉

dont be so sure about it... the Itanium as it stands today offers weaker Integer preformance and aroud equal Floating prefornce comperred to your evry day x86 processor. fell free to look up Itaniums Spec_Int and Spec_FP scores.
see how it ranks among RiSC processors (say IBMs Power4) and x86 processors - its not that Hot (well - it's hot - as-in you can fry eggs on it faster then on an athlon )

also look at "Real World Technolgies" take on the Hammer
<A HREF="http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?AID=RWT010202033918&p=3" target="_new">Here</A>
one of the finest sites which deals with High-End processor preformance evaluation.

heres some of what it has to say:

Although the Intel McKinley and AMD Hammer are both 64 bit MPUs, these devices are directed at different markets. While the large and expensive McKinley will target medium and high-end server applications, the first member of the Hammer family, code named "Clawhammer", will target the high end desktop PC market. That is not to say that McKinley will outperform the Clawhammer device. Indeed, I expect the AMD device will easily beat the much slower clocked IA64 server chip in SPECint2K and many other integer benchmarks, as well as challenge much faster clocked Pentium 4 devices in both integer and floating point performance.

This post is best viewed with common sense enabled

 

[MeldarthX]

Question on that Ray.......double of the cache size has its own problems. I'm guessing it has to do with timing and electric migration and such. What about the sledgehammer that's going to have up to 8 megs of l2 cache. Do you see AMD having problems with that much cache and performance; does that much cache become a hinder in performance in anyway?

Curious, I'm doing research just for knowledge on this.

MeldarthX

 

[Raystonn]

Question on that Ray.......double of the cache size has its own problems. I'm guessing it has to do with timing and electric migration and such. What about the sledgehammer that's going to have up to 8 megs of l2 cache. Do you see AMD having problems with that much cache and performance; does that much cache become a hinder in performance in anyway?

Yes, the larger yoru cache the more time it takes to search through it. If something is not in the cache then you incur the penalty of having to search through it all before even trying to fetch it from memory. Anything that is not found in its 8MB L2 cache is going to have latency issues before a memory fetch is even attempted.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[SammyBoy]

Currently, cache runs at the CPU frequency... but is it possible to double, quad, etc., pump the cache so that it runs faster than the CPU? Granted, that seems like an easy way to overcome the increased cache size penalty, but is it feasible?

-SammyBoy

 

[Raystonn]

dont be so sure about it... the Itanium as it stands today offers weaker Integer preformance and aroud equal Floating prefornce comperred to your evry day x86 processor. fell free to look up Itaniums Spec_Int and Spec_FP scores.
see how it ranks among RiSC processors (say IBMs Power4) and x86 processors - its not that Hot...

At 800MHz, the currently released Itanium comes in at a SPECint2000 of 370 and a SPECfp2000 of 711. An Athlon XP 2000+, operating at over twice the clockspeed as the Itanium, comes in at a SPECint2000 of 710 and SPECfp2000 of 619. When the McKinley is released as the next version of the Itanium, it will offer about twice the performance.

Now then, how many of you want a processor that offers twice the performance as one with a score of 711 on the floating point spec. Think about the performance in all of your 3d games and applications. 😉 I am going to grab one when the prices hits 3 digits just to play around and see what I can do. It will be fun.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[Raystonn]

Currently, cache runs at the CPU frequency... but is it possible to double, quad, etc., pump the cache so that it runs faster than the CPU?

If this was done, then the cache would be the limiting factor in the processor's clockspeed. You would have to reduce the clockspeed of the processor for this to work, so it is not really feasible. The same transistors are used in the cache as are used in the rest of the processor. They all have about the same speed limitations.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[lhgpoobaa]

"this forum is for all cpu discussion"

you mean, even apple cpu's???? *gasp* lol

and i see intel and amd diverging. intel going the way of the p4 with amazing high clockspeeds while amd goes for the hammer architecture and ondie dual processors

I love helping people in Toms Forums... It reinforces my intellectual superiority!

 

[zengeos]

At 800MHz, the currently released Itanium comes in at a SPECint2000 of 370 and a SPECfp2000 of 711. An Athlon XP 2000+, operating at over twice the clockspeed as the Itanium, comes in at a SPECint2000 of 710 and SPECfp2000 of 619. When the McKinley is released as the next version of the Itanium, it will offer about twice the performance.

OK Clawhammer on release is expected to have a SPEC2000 of over 1400 at a clockspeed of just over 2ghz and a price similar to todays Athlons. Not sure of the FP numbers, though.

Working the numbers out...let's say Itanium gets down to $1000 price range by the time Hammer intros. How much will Itanium boards go for compared to Hammer boards?

With a 2P Hammer system probably going for significantly less money than an Itanium 1 or 2 P AND Offering better performance all around than an Itanium costing more....which would I get?

Hammer probably.

Any timeframe on when the Itanium will hit the 1000 mark?

Mark-

When all else fails, throw your computer out the window!!!

 

[Raystonn]

OK Clawhammer on release is expected to have a SPEC2000 of over 1400

*laugh* Says whom? You seriously expect a Clawhammer at PR3400 to perform 2 times better than the Athlon at PR2000? The PR rating improvement is only 1.7 times. I mean no disrespect, but this is just not going to happen. The author of whatever article you are quoting is full of himself.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[AMD_Man]

For all we know that PR refers to the relative performance of the clock speed of the Athlon XP not the Athlon. If that's true then a Hammer is as fast as an Athlon XP at 3.4GHz which is over twice as fast as an Athlon XP 2000+. Plus, AMD's PR ratings are generally conservative.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Raystonn]

I highly doubt AMD is going to change the definition of their PR ratings. The shifting of definitions would absolutely kill their credibility.

As far as their PR ratings being conservative, I disagree. AMD handpicks the benchmarks that allow their processors to perform the best, enabling them to pick higher PR ratings. They publicly state their PR ratings compare their processors to their own older versions, yet put up benchmark charts showing a comparison to a Pentium 4. The only reason they publicly state it as a comparison to their own processors is to avoid legal issues. We all know the intended purpose is to base comparisons against Intel processors.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[AMD_Man]

Hmm, I don't understand. Most review sites agree that the Athlon XP 2100+ is best performing overall processor in most tasks. I consider that conservative.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Raystonn]

And what tasks are these? Do you need MS-Word to run more quickly?

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[AMD_Man]

See <A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q1/020313/index.html" target="_new">here</A> and <A HREF="http://active-hardware.com/english/reviews/processor/xp-2100.htm" target="_new">here</A> and <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1595" target="_new">here</A>.

As you can clearly see, the Athlon XP is faster overall in all aspects of performance except Lightwave, which is specifically P4-optimized.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Raystonn]

As you can clearly see, the Athlon XP is faster overall in all aspects of performance except Lightwave, which is specifically P4-optimized.

First off, your middle link pairs up the Pentium 4 with DDR SDRAM. This kills performance. That one can be tossed.

That leaves a link to a THG review, and another review from some other site. I never count THG reviews as they are always flawed/biased/take your pick. So I am not going to bother reading through it.

Let us take a look at the numbers from your third link. Ok this is an Anandtech link. Let us count up the benchmarks to see where we won, lost, and tied...

Here are the results indicating who won each benchmark:

Pentium 4 2.2GHz: 6
Athlon XP 2100: 4
Tie: 1


Would you care to retract your comment? Perhaps you can point out some further benchmarks from non THG sites where they use an i850 chipset motherboard for the Pentium 4?

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[AMD_Man]

I would, but since I've seen you and Matisaro argue for dozens of posts, I'll just hand this one to you simply to avoid the risk of losing your respect or the respect of other valued members of this community.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Raystonn]

So long as you refrain from "name-calling", cussing, lying, etc. you will not lose my respect.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[eden]

I don't consider Lightwave to be Pentium 4 optimized, otherwise a Celeron 1.3GHZ should not be beating an Athlon XP 1500+. The software is clearly rejecting AMD processors, as benchmarks indicate, and like I said, Celerons are nowhere near Athlon performance, considering they don't even contain any SSE optimizations like AthlonXPs. Thus that test should be omitted and even sent back to Newtek for complaint.

--
For the first time, Hookers are hooked on Phonics!!

 

[AMD_Man]

Fine, correction, it's Intel-optimized or AMD-deoptimized, take your pick.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Raystonn]

While I agree that Celerons based on the Pentium III core do not have SSE2... what makes you think they do not have SSE? One interesting problem in today's software is that many applications that do incorporate optimized instructions for different processors will have trouble with processors that have multiple types of optimizations. They will check for 3dnow support and load that module if supported. If not supported, they will then check for SSE support and load that module if supported. This is simply the way it had always been done.

If today's optimized software is using 3dnow (not 3dnow pro) for any processor that supports it, then a benchmark that does the same thing should be used to accurately reflect real software. The 3dnow modules most software used were not built with SSE enhancements as well. Thus, you have to pick one or the other. Older and most current software being sold were not created with a processor in mind that supported both 3dnow and SSE. If AMD was planning on adding SSE support they really should have informed the software industry long ago so we could have taken this into account. The use of processor optimizations is only as good as the information provided by the processor manufacturer at the time the software is being written.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[AMD_Man]

3DNow seems to be a subset of SSE and so I believe SSE should be preferred over 3DNow in modern apps. Also, I've heard about a few apps that check for the 'GenuineIntel' text before using SSE.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Raystonn]

I agree that SSE should be preferred over 3dnow in future software. However, AMD's processors will have to run software that is available today and written in the past. This is much the same problem that the Pentium 4 encountered when it was first introduced. Most applications used the wrong optimizations for this new processor, and most review sites held this against the processor. It is now the Athlon XP's turn to deal with it.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[zengeos]

Actually, I don't think 3DNow and SSE are really related. They are different routines that do some of the same things. 3DNow PRO? actually incorporates the full SSE(1) instruction set, making SSE a subset of the larger 3dNow instruction set.

SSE2 incorporates SSE in it's more extensive instruction set

OK OK instruction sets are confusing me now....I think I need to take more ginseng!

Mark-

When all else fails, throw your computer out the window!!!