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Linux and EM64T; Intel's 64-bit Suggestionby Kristopher Kubicki on 8/9/2004 12:05 AM EST
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- Linux
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dfxshadow - Friday, August 20, 2004 - linkI will admit, i am an AMD fanboy, i was loyal to AMD since the k6-2 days. I ran AMD when intel was stomping us... Now we get a better product, and this, A review comparing a Desktop pc processor. with the very best that intel can pull off. and it only manages to win by a few.. Compare it to an opteron 250, i do belive the 250 will bench 2 or 3 times more than this new intel, It is good to see competition. But, is it really worth trying to glorify sub par technology. Reply
KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, August 18, 2004 - linkTauCeti:
EMT is some medical something. EM64T is the actual terminology.
Kristopher Reply
caliden - Tuesday, August 17, 2004 - linkOh dear. I'm sorry to say that this review is so full of conceptual and methodological holes that I can almost hear generations of scientists, reviewers and geeks in general turning in their graves.
Does anandtech have no peer review procedure? No one checks articles before they are published? It's such a shame, because this has made me think twice before accepting what I read here as objective fact. Reply
johnsonx - Monday, August 16, 2004 - linkJust wondering, is 270 comments (not counting this one) a record?
dark0n3 - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkI see lots of pro-AMD comments here, but I think noone noticed one issue about this test that might make intel scores look worse than they really are.
Because Xeon's pipelines are much longer than pipelines in A64/Opteron, their performance is more dependant of optimizations. And from my experience, gcc does not produce binaries that have comparable quality to binaries that any windows compiler produce. (and disabling all optimizations in some tests...) I wonder how results would look, if programs were compiled with intel's linux compiler instead. See performance delta on windows for reference [gcc vs icc]: http://www.aceshardware.com/read_news.jsp?id=75000... I'd expect same ratio to apply in unix benchmarks. Reply
TauCeti - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkHi Kristopher,
"What the heck is an EMT64? "
Because Intel changes terms for the AMD64 emulation mode every odd hour, YOUR test-system.os vendor ( SuSE 9.1 Pro) decided to stick to the EMT64 nomenclature.
Not that it matters a lot... Reply
KristopherKubicki - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkhifisoftware:
What the heck is an EMT64?
Kristopher Reply
KristopherKubicki - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkhttp://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2163
Kristopher Reply
hifisoftware - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkYep, pretty stupid idea for this review. I have an old bicycle, why not compare it to EMT64... Ohh wait here is another great idea for the review: "What tastes better, EMT64 vs LCD TV vs Scroll wheel from the mouse?".... I guess I could continue like this for a while.
Man do you really have so much trouble figuring out what to review?
kresek - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkKris, how about the OpenSSL benchmark?
Among others, RSA, DSA and AES-128 show nice performance boosts for AMD64, so it would be interesting to see how a EM64T capable chip performs in 32/64 bit modes.
BTW it does not take much time to complete ;) Reply
JGunther - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkIt's now past noon in half the country. :( Reply
splice - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link#261
What the hell are you talking about? A free review? What site makes you pay to see there review of hardware? Don't forget Anandtech is partly, if not mostly, funded by it's readers and forum members! Ever notice those banner/dealtime ads and forums ads?
Kris' review was sloppy and skewed. He needs to make it right. He owes it to his readers and his boss! Otherwise, it's going to look like Anandtech could care less about what it publishes. Reply
nastyemu25 - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkThe message is clear: it's noon. Reply
Aileur - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkIts crazy how ungrateful you all are, he spends time on his vacation to please all of you whiners and all of you are complaining your free review isnt on time to the second. Reply
KristopherKubicki - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkThe review is finished, I cannot post it until Noon though because we had another review go live instead. I am just about to get on the plane to go home anyway. Just wait a few more hours.
Kristopher Reply
offtangent - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkOk, its been a lot more than 24 hours now ... is an actual report expected any time soon? Reply
snorre - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkStill no new review?!
Kristopher: You should've also tested ApacheBench as well as compile times for the Linux kernal.
A proper review should at least compare 32-bit vs. 64-bit and 64-bit vs. 64-bit performance for both the Xeon 3.6GHz EM64T and Opteron 150 AMD64 processors.
gnuorder - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkThis review is so poor, I'm sure it's not an attempt to skew the results. It looks to me to be a rushed review and a lack of understanding of the platform on which the testing was done.
First you have the CPU selection. A server CPU that is not in hand as a stand in for a CPU that hasn't been released yet vs a chip that has been around and is most likely at it's EOL. This wouldn't be a problem for me if we are constantly reminded of this fact and no conclusions are drawn.
Second, The tests are done on a linux platform, which supports 64 bit but has to be tuned for 64 bit. It's a fair platform since 64 bit windows isn't ready but you have to know what you are doing. I think this was new to the author.
Third, tests should be selected carefully to either try and isolate certain aspects of each CPU or try and broadly select all aspects of the CPUs evenly. knowing what the test is actually doing helps out a lot. To the author's credit, he has source code and his binaries available for others to use. I dont think he knew what his various tests were doing, though, so conclusions based on them were meaningless.
Fourth, optimize for each platform or find a common optimization to test on. People are interested in both. Some will run off the shelf software that will be compiled to run on both, others will run software they can tweak for one CPU or the other and would be interested in seeing how far either CPU can be tweaked. What you can't do is run a test on both when it's tweaked for one and not the other. Again, I dont think the author knew how to tweak it, thus his confussion over the compile error he got.
One other note to those who think people are whining only because AMD lost, There have been many fair reviews pitting Intel vs AMD where AMD has lost and you didn't get this kind of response.
I don't think this review was meant to be a head to head test but it does have serious flaws that can't just be addressed by changing a few of the results. I think the article should be pulled and the tests re-done. This time don't rush through it to get it done before a vacation. We can all wait for a thoughtful review that gives us deep insight. This one does us no good.
Since the review is on a new mid-range desktop CPU, compare 2 new mid-range desktop CPUs on desktop motherboards with other mid-range desktop hardware. You can also throw in other CPUs and run 32bit vs 64bit tests as well but at least have 2 pretty well matched systems, and both in your control. Since it is desktop, run some typical desktop benchmarks along with your speciallized synthetic tests.
You serve the desktop users (gamers) better if they know how well doom3 or their favorite app is going to run on CPU x and how they can tweak it to run better. Using mathmatic or database tests on what is to be a desktop CPU on the desktop server is meaningless especially since you have a server platform as a stand in for one CPU.
Well I'm trying to end this but I keep thinking of more flaws to comment on and it's turning into another rant. It is just an awful review but let's give the author a chance to redeem himself. Reply
cdo - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkReply
Zebo - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkcould acehardware have a worse forum tech? that's like 1995 BBS. Reply
JGunther - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkDon't mean to be a pest, but every moment that botched review is online is depressing. I'm looking forward to the new review as well. So where is this thing? Reply
tfranzese - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - linkAbout the Opteron vs. Xeon talk: Opteron scales better in SMP. Opteron is 8-way capable. And, I'd be willing to bet you Opteron will really stretch it's legs in 64-bit/64-bit once it's primetime, contrary to what I believe the Xeon will do - improve, but marginally. Reply
Aileur - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkReply
Tabajara - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkI think that to call the reasoning of the author of this atticle as "nonsense" would actually be a compliment. Just take a look at the conclusion that someone thinking straight would get, using tha same info that is on the article:
"In spite of the fact that this Xeon processor retails for $850 and the Athlon 3500+ retails for about $500 less, that this Xeon does not even exist in retail channels yet, that the AMD processor is clocked 1400MHz slower than the 3.6GHz Xeon and has 512 less kb of cache, IT STILL WINS MOST OF THE REAL WORLD TESTS!"
Another important factor: the price and performance difference of the mobos used for each processor probably gives the P4 an edge. To use a NVIDIA NForce3 250 Reference Board against a SuperMicro Tumwater X6DA8-G2 is just not fair.
Other caractheristic that makes this review resemble the ones done at the POS THG is that the synthetic benchmarcks seem to have been picked to benefit a CPU that has a higher clock and that excels at handling branching instructions (as chess based bechmarks, that have to calculate lots of possible moves). In other words, tests that show the best qualities of the P4. Reply
Viditor - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkKK - "yeah the review is done just pushing it live as soon as i can"
You da man Kris! Now may I suggest you turn off the damn computer and go enjoy what's left of your vacation!!!!
Charles Reply
snorre - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkKristopher: Read this:
You should also test Crafty. Reply
KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkNot really sure what the fuss is about the remote server? Its at Jason's place, SuperMicro gave it to him. You can email him about it if you like.
Anyways, yeah the review is done just pushing it live as soon as i can. I think you will enjoy these benches much better.
-JTR again but a different source - the AMD and Intel optimizations are highlighted as we compiled the code
-One synthetic benchmark
-Anything else i can think of in the next 20 min that is quick to test.
anything we compiled was done using -o2 and unroll-loops.
snorre - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkTime's Up! Reply
snorre - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkCorrection, still about 20 minutes to go :P
Prepare to be scrutinized, so this new review better be flawless ;-) Reply
snorre - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - link"202 - Posted on Aug 10, 2004 at 7:51 PM by KristopherKubicki
I have made changes to the article that were suggested; i fixed the broken makefile, i even did another article on my vacation with an opteron 150 to be posted within the next 24 hours."
24 hours have passed now, so where's the proper review you promised?! Reply
SDA - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkEasy there, ss284. Try not to get the froth on your keyboard.
Really, there's no foul play involved. It's just a series of poorly conducted benchmarks. People wouldn't've liked seeing a Xeon beat an A64 to begin with, and now that it's shown that the benchmarks are meaningless poor Kris is getting torn apart. Everyone makes mistakes... I'd advise just taking this review down before it festers, myself, but that's just my opinion. Reply
ss284 - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkOh dang is that an AMD logo I see on anandtech's site? OH NOES! AMD IS PAYING OFF ANANDTECH! TIME TO START TALKING OUT OF MY ASS!
Jesus christ will people stop accusing intel of paying him off? Muks75, you're an utterly useless and pathetic moron. Its pretty obvious you havent taken a look at anything between pages 1 and 13. Try reading the entire discussion before posting your useless crap here.
muks75 - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkSeems like Intel is paying for the advertisements here. I am disappointed with AT, for such a pathetic comparison. And Kristopher, your post saying it did "pretty good for 500$ less" is the lamest excuse to defend the utterly useless comparison you have done.
MrEMan - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - link#232 stated:
"I praise AMD for bringing 64bit cpu's to the home user but any business in their right mind would never purchase a clone/emulator cpu as of AMD.".
Based on your comments, I guess most Intel-only businesses must not be in their "right minds".
As for X86-64, AMD is the innovator, and Intel is the cloner. It is the Itanium (which is the emulator of the two CPUs) which is most likely going to die or at the very least be severly as far as sales go. As a reminder, many of the Athlon64/Opteron engineers worked on the DEC Alpha, which has a great reputation.
The articles I have read stated that board manufacturers really dislike BTX and that DDR2 will be implemented by AMD when there is an actual performance reason to do so (now the only thing that DDR2 increases is the cost).
As a reminder, you are getting much greater performance (per $) out of your Intel-based systems because AMD is forcing them to cut their huge profit margins and actually get back to competing based on value (performance per $) delivered.
As for the review, I totally agree with those who stated that the article should have been pulled mainly because the conclusion has not been corrected since it was based on BS testing methods.
I will be curious to see what Anand's view of this fiasco is when he returns. Reply
Macro2 - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkIt appears to be about some bogus benchmarks, particularly John The Ripper. The program looks to Intel in the code. We've seen that trick before in benchmarks so no wonder a lot of people are skeptical.
ALSO, the REMOTE location of the Intel server. Which, for some strange reason has never been dilvulged, yet we are supposed to take the word of the person in front of the "remote server"? Reply
chaosengine - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkIntel has the knack to intoduce System packages much before they are market ready....
Rambus & i820 are few things that went haywire.... If they try to rush things like this DDR2 will be just where RAMBUS went...in the dustbin Reply
Viditor - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkporkster - "any business in their right mind would never purchase a clone/emulator cpu as of AMD"
I disagree. I think Intel made the smart move in copying AMD's x86-64. While obviously their first chips will perform at a substantially lower level, I'm confident that they will have some excellent designs out by 2006.
"I'm a programmer and also want future ready items like PCIe, BTX design, DDR2"
Huh? What does one have to do with the other?
As to being "future ready", BTX looks to be nearing an early retirement...DDR2 is more expensive without any appreciable gains yet...and PCIe has not shown any improvements yet (though it will be much more important to a platform that doesn't have Hypertransport...) Reply
allnighter - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkto 236:
He he, he's probably not a programmer. What does BTX have to do with programming. It's just a form factor, and some are arguing that the only reason it's been brought to the market is to make sure that components are rearranged in a way that will ensure Prescotts and other new chips get good enough airflow inide a case cause they're too runnig too hot. Reply
Locutus4657 - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - link#232: Your comments about not wanting an AMD chip because you are a programmer confuses me. I am also a programmer and I bought my A64 3000+ because of that. A64's excel in our work evironment e.g. Code Compiliation, Web Serving, Database serving etc.... Why would you choose an inferior product? How does PCIe help you write better code? Reply
Locutus4657 - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - link#228: I don't beleive that for most people it's the inability to accept that A64 can be beat. The fact is there are certain tasks for which any P4 core is better suited and I think most people accept that. What I think most people don't accept are the faulty benchmarks and conclutions in the original artical. The one I personally questioned the most were the mysql benchmarks (corrected now). I'm sorry but the Prescott CPU is inferior in this type of environment as compared even to the old Northwood CPU! It has already been well established that the Opteron/A64 processors can best any Intel chip in DB envirnoments. So what this article was to have me belive is that a 12% increase in clock speed for Precott translates to a 60% lead in database benchmarks? Give me a break. Those test results alone were enough to call the entire original artical in question. I would like to add a disclaimer now that this issue and a couple others were fixed, so I would have to re-read the artical to make any sort of judgment about it again. Reply
eiger - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - link
Snorre and Fritz64,
Thank you guys for your comments, It was
quite useful. We are probably going to go with
the Opterons as of now.
snorre - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkI'm looking forward to the single CPU review with Xeon 3.6GHz vs. Opteron 150, and the dual CPU review with Opteron 250 ofcourse. I really hope these reviews will be much better, or else :P. Reply
porkster - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkFair review.
I praise AMD for bringing 64bit cpu's to the home user but any business in their right mind would never purchase a clone/emulator cpu as of AMD.
Intel has some catching up to do with releasing 64bit to the desktop users at a good price.
I can't bring myself to purchasing an AMD cpu as I'm a programmer and also want future ready items like PCIe, BTX design, DDR2, etc which AMD based systems don't have.
Least there is sometime yet before 64bit OS and device drivers are available for the general market.
. Reply
Viditor - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkAileur - "Is this review total crap because the opteron doesnt wipe the floor with the xeon?"
I don't know if it's total crap because
1. it's in German and even Babelfish can't translate it very well
2. I can't find any listing of the setup used for testing. (given the proper setups, I can make even a K6 wipe the floor with Nocona...)
"As for the cpu difference question, thinking the 3500+ isnt targetted to be against a 3.5xx offering from intel is a nice try to convince everybody else, but im sure it doesnt even convince yourself"
1. it's not a 3.5xx but a 3.6xx
2. Targeting occurs between chips within a reasonably similar price range and market Reply
fritz64 - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkHello eiger,
For Scientific computing and best performance for your dollar, you will be in a better situation going with the Opteron. Are you looking for a dual processor set-up? If so, Opteron with on-DIe memory controller and NUMA (non Uniform memory access) aware architecture gives you the best performance again. Just like someone suggest earlier, go and read the bencmarks from aces hardware and get some feeling about the type of performance that you can get.
On the compiler issue, I will advise you to go for pathscale compiler suit for optimum performance on the opteron. if you choose to go for intel, the the Portlan group compiler or Intel compiler should be fine. A 30 day free trial version of the pathscale compiler can be obtained at www.pathscale.com.
You code seems to run faster (<10secons). I will advise you to task both system( Operon and Xeon) with a program that requires at leat >200MB of memory and ri=un for at least >30minutes. With that type of program all aspect of the hardware will be put to test. A code that runs for less that 10secons is probably running from the cache alone. Hope this information is useful. Reply
allnighter - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkreply to #220
chainbolt wrote:
I guess you did not understand the intenton of this article in the first place?
Oh God.
You know I'm trying to stay civil here so please do not insult my intelligence. Next time you comment on someone's comprehensive skills make sure your butt and your head switch places. Reply
Aileur - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkBaring in mind i am well aware this review is far from perfect, im wondering, how many reviews will it take for people to accept the opteron can be beat?
Heres another one
Granted, it is not a total wipe out, but it does win some and lose some. Is this review total crap because the opteron doesnt wipe the floor with the xeon?
As for the cpu difference question, thinking the 3500+ isnt targetted to be against a 3.5xx offering from intel is a nice try to convince everybody else, but im sure it doesnt even convince yourself. Whos gonna bench it against a tbird and find out "hey thats true! it is equivalent to a 3500mhz tbird!", ridiculous.
The xeon that was used in this review IS a prescott, the only differences are pins placement, and SMP support, so stop crying this review wasnt fair. Instead of wondering why they didnt use a "server" chip on the AMD part, realise that the xeon used IS a desktop chip, in a different suit.
And finally, for the name calling part, this site is free, they provide countless benches for countless pieces and theyre considered one of the most respected site on the net, so if youre not happy, you can go read one of those site that does 3 reviews a year, reviewing the stuff he just bought to put into his mothers pc.
-vent off Reply
douglar - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkThe disappointing aspects of this review as I see them:
1 - Questionable test setup. Where exactly was this Xeon64?
2 - Bad choice of benchmarks. He called them "synthetic benchmarks" but I don't even know if some of these tests should be called benchmarks at all when they only test putchar.
3 - Flawed testing methodologies. Let's see. Bungled compiles. Dissimilar test configurations. Copied results from other sources. Copying the wrong results from other sources. I don't think I've seen worse.
4 - Totally ignorant conclusions. The summary looked like a two bit fanboy site and was about as logical.
5 - Failure to address failures. Yes he did fix two of his more egregious mistakes, but Anand would have tacked on a full page disclaimer at the front of the article in red italics for something that was 1/10th as controversial. This guy just put a pair of "my bad" footnotes in the middle of the article and left the atrocious conclusion stand for us to enjoy.
cdo - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkthis so called review wont be an issue for much longer... we all know that aces and a myriad of other high tech sites will be doing this exact review over the course of the year. time will show just how bad a "review" this was.
snorre - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - link#194:
eiger, I think the Opteron will be best overall in scientific computing compared to the Xeon EM64T, thanks to Opteron's built-in memory controller and point-to-point HyperTransport bus. I suggest you read this great review too for more numbers:
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000275 Reply
lewchenko - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - link
So the original article had some flaws. OK accepted. They were spotted by the user community really quickly, and the staff at AT are dealing with them.
So all the people still going on about the original review, paid for by intel etc - Whats with the angst ? Grow Up, wait for the updated version with the Opteron's etc and stop whining. Anyone would think these people pay AT a fee for reading their work.
Just be thankful that these guys listen to your comments and do something about them. And for most of you making the noise still - I would like to see you do any better. How about it muddocktor ? (Comment 222)
Xspringe - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkCome on everyone, let's keep things civil in here :)
No need for personal attacks. Reply
muddocktor - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkHi Kristopher,
When did Anandtech hire you from Tom's Intel butt-kissing site? Your review really disappoints me in that it doesn't even come close to the articles and reviews I'm used to seeing here at Anandtech. If you want to do a comparison, please do it with processors that are in the same class at least. Your review tells me nothing substantial at all except that maybe you took some money from Intel for this pile of garbage. Reply
chainbolt - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkReply
chainbolt - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkI guess you did not understand the intenton of this article in the first place? Reply
allnighter - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkI am looking forward to a new article. I'm also very glad Kris stepped in with some more feedback. Thank you.
DerekWilson - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - link#217
Much of what you've asked for/stated has been dealt with or will be dealt with in the upcoming article.
The implimentation of x86-64 is as different between AMD and Intel as each implimentation of x86. Just because they both support the same 64bit extensions doesn't mean code optimized for one architecture will lend itself well to the other (as each is better at different things).
I don't think integer performance is an open and shut case for Intel here. Remember that Intel has 2x 32bit ALUs inside the P4F, so integer performance under 64bit mode isn't a straight forward translation of 32bit mode.
Derek Wilson Reply
ThePlagiarmaster - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkAll I want to see (besides that article being killed as completely misleading), is the use of REAL apps/games. NO synthetics. You drew conclusions PURELY based on synthetic scores (did your damage, slashdotted etc now). The complete opposite of a normal review. Most reviews tell you take the synthetics with a grain of salt, and look at the real apps/games tested. I don't care if you get the makefile/scripts or whatever correct. I don't want to see a review on synthetics at all (done right or not). If we haven't heard of the benchmark/game/app don't use it. I only recognized Povray in this review, which you dogged anyway. But at least its a REAL app that you CAN use to get work done (nobody does this..but it is REAL - rather see 3dsmax, Maya, Lightwave etc..)
If Intel's integer unit is so good, it should show the same in 32bit. It's not just some 64bit Integer addon that only works in 64bit is it? We know A64 smokes in math (FP and INT). So prove it's not just some BAD SYNTHETIC benchmark showing us BS numbers. Run a 32bit REAL app that tests integer "that we all know about" and show it "THRASHING" the A64. There's nothing magic here, just your chosen out of this world benchmarks that we've never heard of. MS said AMD's 64bit is better than Intel's (the guy was LOL in fact in the interview over Intel's implementation), Andreas Stiller's source (CT magazine) came to the same conclusions (it's a software emu hack). So how is it you come up with these conclusions that it's magically great after we've been told it's REALLY CRAP? Intel's 64bit can't be better than AMD's when they copied AMD verbatim, and in doing so accidently got an "OLD DOCUMENTATION COPY" and ended up with emu crap (or so they say). Are the benchmarks above lying? I take it INTEL was very pissed about your Doom article (and the previous cpu article where athlon dominated also even in DIVX now), so they told you to run these OBSCURE benchmarks to save some face? Or you won't be receiving any new chips to test?
Take a look at these before your next review:
We see here in an old anand article 64bit shows around 15-20% (34% on Lame) improvement on A64:
Here's another, look at those encryption/Zip scores! What's that a 3x faster on RSA encrypt? It cut over 2/3rd's off the score.
Another Encryption AMD vs. Intel (Itanium2 no doubt!):
AMD 10% better than Intel Itanium 2! Dual vs. Dual.
Your own MySQL tests a good while back, where opterons crush Xeons repeatedly:
Integer doesn't help MySQL AFAIK, so what magic made Intel so good? Also you better show some John The Ripper scores in 32bit, as IXBT shows us AMD get a 2-3x performance inscrease in most encryption stuff. I want to see if Intel did this too, otherwise this benchmark is crap. The benchmarks used here:
ARE 64bit optimized (for A64), and shouldn't hurt Intel, as they are compatible now right? So in effect, they are optimized for X86-64 AND EMT64. Maybe you should be using those. Slight rehash of my previous post, but worth repeating in case Kris/Derek missed it. Check those benchmarks out on those sites please. Dump synthetics. Reply
Macro2 - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - linkRE:"What is wrong with my conclusion."
What is wrong with John the Ripper?...that's what you must ask.
I figure you're going to learn a lot from this...
about phunny lines of code in benchmarks etc.
I've never seen a P4 core trounce a A64 in math like that..a light should have gone on is someones head.
DerekWilson - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link#213:
It is much easier for other members of the AnandTech staff to setup Linux boxes comprised of the hardware Kris wants to test than for us to ship everything to him, have him work on it, then ship it back -- the AT staff is global, and the fact that SSH allows us this freedom is invaluable in Linux testing.
A "remote location" will always be with another AT staff member unless very specifically noted (though we would not be comfortable taking someone elses word on the system without having physical access to it).
Derek Wilson Reply
prd00 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkI read all those comments, and some are nasty.. I think Kris is not providing thie valid benchmark suite, perhaps he doesn't know any optimization or anything inside there..
I suggest, next time you provide benchmark that has proven to take advantage of both sides. Aces' Hardware comparison of server benchmark is a good example. Take a look at that..
About those fans that asking to compare against Opteron, I guess the figure will not so much difference, looking at some similarities between 3500+ and Opteron 150, or, should I say FX53 and 150, but I guess moving to FX53 will change the result a little. Remember P4 vs P4EE? Nocona is in P4EE position, while 3.6F is in P4 position. There is no way 3.6F is comparable in term of performance to Nocona. You forget about all Xeon having a huge L3 cache which help them tremendously here. But number that much difference are not supposed to change with move to Opteron 150. Granted, it will lessen the pain but Opteron is always on par with Xeon on single CPU config, some better, some worse. And with this new CPU, Opteron is supposed to be a little slower. But where Opteron really shines is when you put them into multi processor config which is normal on server system on which Nocona intended.
Well.. Kris, I'm waiting.. The only valid bench you provide are MySQL, GZip and Lame which is I know that it is 64 bit indeed. I can't consider your review is valid right now.
I suggest you void this review, and start a new review on real 64 bit vs 64 bit, in server environment vs server environment, and in server configuration vs server configuration. Dual Nocona vs Dual Opt and Quad Nocona vs Quad Opt will be good review. John the ripper is useless on server, and so does lame and SuperPI. We are talking about server CPU, so put server benchmark there. A real time database throughput, a request response, page per second, java performance, and so on. If you need reference, please look at this. This is the way server CPU comparison supposed to be done.
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000275 Reply
JGunther - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkKris, could you address comment #135?
Basically, why is this Nocona located in a server "in a remote location". What does this mean exactly? Reply
love4ever - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkKristopherKubicki im sorry for all that coments, that are against you.
i suport you, and your page.
good work. Reply
thatsright - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkFor all the Bitching everyone here has done (including I), at least we have to give it to AnandTech and Kris for listening to it's audience and bending over backward in an effort to rectify the 'problem.'
At least Kris K is address our complaints. Whens the last time you ever heard of Tom Pabst doing the same with one of his 'articles' on Tom's? While the overall nature of the article I read on AT was deeply troubling for it's incompleteness, its the only time I have really seen on AT. The same can't be said of Tom's Hardware guide.
Now stop whining, you bastards! It's not like were paying for these Articles. Just regard the article as a mistake, and save your whining for the Update.
LONG LIVE AnandTech.com!!! Reply
tfranzese - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkGlad to hear it Kris. Reply
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkI understand your concern for the other benchmarks, and the conclusions i drew were from those benchmarks. This is why we are doing another review as we speak. I hope the other article with more thorough realworld benchmarks makes more sense (should go live soon).
Kristopher Reply
tfranzese - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkI've grown to ignore things like Sandra benchmarks and I guess I find it difficult to ignore these because even though you state these are synthetic the conclusion just puts a lot of weight into the 'victory'. Reply
tfranzese - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkOkay, are you confident your other results are just as accurate? I only ask because John the Ripper, primegen, and ubench have also been mentioned in earlier posts. Not only in possible botched compiling, but perhaps their legitimacy as a valid benchmark - synthetic or not. Reply
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkTSCP and the incorrectly copied numbers for MySQL have been changed as stated earlier.
Kristopher Reply
tfranzese - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkWhich tests were re-ran? I guess I should ask that first. Reply
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link#203 can you be more specific? What is wrong with my conclusion.
Kristopher Reply
tfranzese - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkWhat more do we want? Fix the rest of the article, including the conclusions you drew. Reply
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link#200:
Jasons article is seperate from mine. His is running on windows anyway with two processors.
"f-off people" is strictly not my attitude. I have made changes to the article that were suggested; i fixed the broken makefile, i even did another article on my vacation with an opteron 150 to be posted within the next 24 hours.
What more do you want? Really?
Kristopher Reply
MikeEFix - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkThere is nothing wrong with an engineers' pov. We tend to like symmetry and base results on facts. Unfortunately there is little symmetry and too many variables for accurate results.
Experiments should be kept in the lab
allnighter - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkA few days ago when Nocona was announced I shouted I wanted some benchmarks.When Jason Clark mentioned AT is working on some benchmarks I was very excited. Now I am am not. This article is... well in attempt to be polite... of a very questionable quality or simply crap.
As many people posted their observations, whith most of which I agree, this is not quality we're used to from AT. And all the AMD and Intel fanboyish escapades in here are just making all this worse.
I feel like something should be done. I have no idea what but just one 'f-off people' type of comment from the author is just not doing it for me. This is bad. Reply
Pumpkinierre - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkGood on ya Kristopher, you got a bit of scientist in you unlike some of these machine like engineer types. Some of us know where you are coming from (and it aint Intel). A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing but its still better than no knowledge at all. Looking forward to your later articles on the subject.
MikeEFix - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkWell the nvidia 250 reference board isn't exactly a Tyan Thunder K8W(S) either.
The Xeon is using platform $600.00 server mainboard while the desktop variant, a64, is using the generic desktop solution. Reply
Macro2 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkThis is the kind of article i'd expect from Tom's not Anandtech. I guess Anand is out with the lady. Reply
srg - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkWell with these refinements an updates to the benchmarks, not forgetting setting them up right, the gap is closing to what I would have though it would have been, although the Jon-The-Ripper benchmark does seem odd (explained better my an earlier poste, if he's right then the 3500+ is basically running 64-bit'ised K6 code).
I think what Kris has learnt here will be valuable for later reviews (and no, the simple fact that Intel beat AMD won't bring a torrent of flames like this one).
srg Reply
Macro2 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkJohn the Ripper results are completely invalid.
The source code contains Hand-tuned ASSEMBLY routines, some of which only get called if the CPU has the word "Intel" in the name!!!!!
(And others are optimized for the K6. LOL.)
Totally bogus.
See x86.S detect.c and best.sh in the source package.
These results are garbage-- this "test" should be removed from the article.
The architecture-detection code is also probably broken, even in the generic case.
The big picture was that K Kubcki doesn't know jack about compiling software on Linux.
He wrote a bogus Makefile, penalizing the K8 by 50%
He ran "John the Ripper" without looking at the source code, and noting hand-tuned assembly routines which are only called if the CPU has the word "Intel" in the name. So that one's completely invalid.
On top of that, he miscopied an earlier database result, again, against the K8.
Then he formulated a bogus conclusion.
The average user is not running miscompiled, largely irrelevant software. Reply
eiger - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
hi all,
I am new to this forum. Seems like an interesting
debate. I am in the scientific computing business
and over the past week I tried to benchmark the
existing processors we have here to get a bearing
on whether we should get the 3.4 GHz Xeon EM64T's or the opteron 248's for our new cluster (the prices seem to compare).
My numerical code which is
floating point intensive took about 6.60 seconds
using the intel fortran compiler on an Intel Xeon 3.06 GHz, while it took 3.98 seconds with the
portland groups fortran compiler (pgf90) on an opteron 246. Both were run 32-bit right now.
Moving to 64-bit on the opteron improved the
time by 0.2 seconds. Unfortunately I have no
access to a 64-bit Xeon yet.
Now using the intel fortran compiler gave 7.1s on the opteron and using pgf90 on the Xeon gave
6.90s. So it seems like the opterons can still
do better overall. pgf90 is versatile and can
optimize for both processors well.
Both machines have 2G RAM and 1 MB
L2 cache.
These are the highest end opteron and Xeon's I have access to at this moment.
I would love to hear your comments and suggestions
-j Reply
eiger - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkReply
johnsonx - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkTo avoid further misunderstanding, my statement from the last post:
"I'm not arguing that an A64 isn't generally faster than a P4."
Means that I agree that an A64 is generally faster than a P4.
johnsonx - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkJGunther,
Sorry, your post is irrelavant to this discussion. Since the AT article in question is strictly about 64-bit mode, some other article comparing a regular 32-bit 3.6Ghz to A64 running 32-bit apps is irrelavant. I'm not arguing that an A64 isn't generally faster than a P4.
Secondly, why are people here not grasping the FACT that a 3.6Ghz XEON EM64T and a Pentium 4 3.6F are the SAME for all practical purposes?
It's not "justifying", it's stating a fact.
JGunther - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkjohnsonx,
Go read the comparison of an actual 3.6GHz P4 (not 3.6f, but who cares) vs. the s939 offerings.
AT did not just commit an act of bad journalism by comparing a server part to a desktop part, but as the numbers from Ace's Hardware review, AT's procedures are so bad and misrepresentitive, that it's downright fradulent.
You can justify the comparison of the Xeon and the A64 all you want. It's a moot point though, since AT's results are so incredibly flawed. Reply
johnsonx - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkTo WiZzACkR,
No sorry, you're still not making sense.
If a $850 Intel server part and a $400 Intel desktop part are the same (just one is pinned and validated for DP use), then having the $850 server part 'stand-in' for the as yet unavailable $400 desktop part doesn't invalidate the comparison to a $350 AMD desktop part.
To suggest an analogous situation, imagine AMD announced 2.6Ghz FX-55's and Opteron 152/252/852's. For sake of arguement, let's say pricing was $800 for the FX-55 and 152, $1000 for the 252, and $2200 for the 852 (no, I don't know if this is reasonable, but 8xx opterons are very expensive). Now, for whatever reasons AMD releases the Opterons ahead of the FX-55's, and AnandTech gets 4 852's for a server test. In another article, they use a single 852 to stand in for the soon to be available FX-55 and compare it to the currently available regular A64's, P4's and P4EE's.
In that situation, would be make any sense to complain that a $2200 server chip was being compared to much cheaper desktop chips? No, of course not. It doesn't make any sense now either.
An the desktop applications vs. server applications arguement is similarly pointless. Since the chips are the same, they run the apps the same.
Remember again, this was a general preview of Intel's EM64T running a commercial desktop Linux distro.
JGunther - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkI personally would still like to know why this Nocona that they "got their hands on" is located in a server "in a remote location". What does this mean exactly? Reply
Anemone - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link"I'm sorry Jim, I'm a doctor not a miracle worker! I'm truly sorry, but it's dead, there is nothing more anyone can do."
*hands the next person the baseball bat*
Anyone else feel utterly compelled to beat this horse further?
Zebo - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkKK
Why did'nt you say in your conclusion... "the Midrange A64 desktop chip. costing $500 less, absolutly destroys intel's best 64 bit offering in all real world tests"
Instead you focus on synthetics, screw them up, and draw inflamitory conclusion. Come on, be fair. Reply
Viditor - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkjohnsonx - "What other conclusion could be drawn from the benchmark results?"
That's just it...the benchmark results have been shown to be rather intensely flawed (for those of you with conspiracy theories on the brain, don't be stupid...it wasn't deliberate!).
While Kris HAS been correcting them, he hasn't re-written the conclusion to reflect those changes... Reply
WiZzACkR - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkhey steve - thanks for the response. next time i'll calm down first and will try to not look like an idiot. promise ;)
concerning the processor choice i still think it's a bit odd though: if intels desktop 3.60F equals its server offering in form of the here tested XEON that doesn't mean AMDs desktop offering in form of the 3500+ is as well it's top-of-the-line server chip. if you compare the 850$ version you should do so against AMDs 850$ counterpart - if you compare the desktop offerings it may well be that the 3.60F will do better when comparing it against the 3500+ in the desktop arena. do i make any sense here? man, too tired...
anyways - thanks for the response, and again sorry for acting like a fuckwitt. Reply
ss284 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkWiZzACkR, I dont disagree with the statements about how the selected benchmarks wasnt that great a choice(although he was limited considering the 64-bit nature of the tests
), in addition to poor execution.
I just disagree with all the people complaining about the processor choice and using idiotic analogies about how this is comparing a duron and a xeon. ====The core in the xeon 3.6 and the p4 3.6e em64t are the same.==== I want that drilled into everyone's mind who is complaining about unfair comparisons. Given the setup used in the article, its actually likely that the p4 3.6e em64t on a desktop board with standard non registered memory at cl2 will perform better than the tumwater setup. As for pricing/performance, pricing ends up being the more important factor. In the case of the 3500+, its currently running ~350 dollars, while the p4 3.6 em64t is slated to be released at 416 dollars in a week or so. I dont think pricewise the comparison is much off. A 3600+ from amd will no doubt cost at least 50 dollars more than the 3500+, putting them at a price parallel.
And regarding the hardforums, yes there are some decently constructive posts. However, the general populace there seems a lot less curteous and tend to get into craptastic posts from immature members. Forums like Anandtech, Ace's hardware, and arstechnica, have much more contructive posting by the general populace. Semi decent punctuation also seems to be a skill that most Anandtech forum goers possess that a great deal of hardocpers do not. The cluelessness of many of the posts are pretty apparent by browsing almost any of their forums (I've actually been a member since 2000, so I would know).
I overreacted as well, and I'm sorry for that. Its just I believed some of the quotes you used from the hardforums werent valid, and that readily available correct information should have been used.
-Steve Reply
WiZzACkR - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkreplying to 178 - Posted on Aug 10, 2004 at 1:18 PM by johnsonx
ok, i put that weired. what i meant was: if you run a benchmark suit of mostly server apps and one server CPU you should compare it to the other company's server chip as well, not a desktop one. comparing a DESKTOP intel product (3.60F) vs a DESKTOP 3500+ is fine - but then do so with a desktop benchmarking suit, typical desktop applications and as few as possible synthetic benchmarks.
hmmm, still weired... Reply
dougSF30 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkJohn the Ripper results are completely invalid.
The source code contains Hand-tuned ASSEMBLY routines, some of which only get called if the CPU has the word "Intel" in the name!!!!!
(And others are optimized for the K6. LOL.)
Totally bogus.
See x86.S detect.c and best.sh in the source package.
These results are garbage-- this "test" should be removed from the article.
The architecture-detection code is also probably broken, even in the generic case.
chaosengine - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkAtleast someone is taking a note on what we are irate abt
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17754 Reply
flip0mode - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkOh man, I got here late. Wow, what a response. I think that the response thread is much more interesting than the benchies. OK, pass me a cold beer too...thanx...
I guess I'll throw 2 more cents on top of this mountain of pennies and see how tall it will get; though a stone in a field is generally more interesting than a stone in a mountain range.
I think it's just fine to compare these two processors - inaccuracies aside. But the review should include amd's top of the line, seriously. Comparing high-end to low-end is extremely useful - we all want to know why we should spend the extra dough. But to be equitable you need a true sampling of high end and low end, which was not provided here.
I don't care who wins the crown, I just want to see the price/performance. Besides, I'll probably never buy a server chip anyway - in the desktop arena, there is currently only one choice IMO.
Now is a terrible time to buy anything anyway. At least 4-6 months need to go by to allow PCI-E and DDR-2 to find their way to market.
All in all, I think two-thumbs down is not inappropriate, but this is a whole new level of kicking a dead horse. In the end I still have to thank you for this review just because of the feedback it generated!
Priceless!!! Reply
johnsonx - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkTo #175, WiZzACkR,
"but giving the unavailable 3.6F as an excuse i find inappropriate"
Why? Theres no difference between the XEON 3.6 and the Pentium 4 3.6F, and further, aside from 64-bit, there is no difference between the 3.6F and the regular 3.6Ghz P4 (what is that, a 560?). So even if this were a CPU review, how would comparing a A64 3500+ and a 3.6Ghz P4 be so horribly wrong? A 3800+ is only 200Mhz faster and thus would affect the benchmarks by 12% at most (more likely only a few percent.)
MikeEFix - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkTo clarify PR rating:
The reference CPU used in AMDs' PR scheme is an AMD cpu not an Intel part.I always yhought this was common knowledge whether it be right or wrong, smart or stupid.
Opteron a higher end smp capable chip had always been targeted at Xeon and lower cost solution to Itanium. Reply
Noubourne - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkI see what you were trying to do. I am not super technical but the comparison did seem a bit odd to me when I first read it. If anything it shows the technical knowledge of the AT community, which is good, even if the manners are a bit lacking here and there.
It's not easy to admit you are wrong, so I applaud the corrections that have been made. It would take at least 10 more articles like this to get me to stop reading AT, but I look forward to a more thorough comparison in the future. My Linux experiments have been mostly failures (again, not too technical), but I do try and it will be cool to see some more "real world" benchmarks on a true 64 bit OS. It might inspire me to d/l the latest fedora and give it another shot. Reply
WiZzACkR - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkRegarding Post: 166 - Posted on Aug 10, 2004 at 9:28 AM by ss284
hi steve - just a short reply. first of all let me say sorry for definitely overreacting, BUT:
"just mentioning that you seriously post in the [H]ardforums drops your credibility to 0. Saying that Hardocp, and especially the disgustingly bad hardocp forums come even close to Anandtech and its forums are an insult."
i don't really know where you have such a bad impression from, and frankly i don't care. however, for someone calling me biased and accusing me of "huge sweeping assumptions" this seems put you into the same boat, doesn't it?
"obviously written by that of a person who has done minimal research and has made huge sweeping assumptions."
it's actually quite simple: i just had their forums open at the time i was writing! look at the huge posts here in anandtech's forums ( http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=... ) or in whatever forum you want (just as another one you may want to look here http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=115093788 ) - it' everywhere ppl ranting over the review. so don't call me biased, don't accuse me of simple sweeping assumptions or minimal research. mind you - the wording here in anandtechs forums about the topic was not one bit better than the [H] forums...
"Oh, and FIFI, insulting people loudly with the intent to attention only shows how much your typical, non insulting postings command no respect or deserve any thought whatsoever, and that the only way for you to get a reponse is to yell."
i admit this is true and again want to apologize for overreacting. however, this remains the poorest review i've read at anandtech's for YEARS and think articles like this HAVE to go through an editors office - and prevented from being published!
"Last I checked it was AMD that came up with these processor ratings. Yet they dont seem to be taking any of the blame. A PR rating of 3500+ means its supposed to be competing with intel's p4 3.5, which doesnt exist. Kris took the nearest speed, a 3.6, and mentioned that in the review."
ok, you got a point there i admit. however, intel themselves is changing to a non-performance related numbering scheme and the article is comparing a $850 SERVER chip against the cheapest 939 MID-Level DESKTOP cpu. AMDs PR-rating scheme was designed comparing them to the previous generation of intel CPUs. put it ups against something equally expensive and a SERVER chip i say, but giving the unavailable 3.6F as an excuse i find inappropriate.
"Its sad to see how many horribly biased morons are posting this crap."
you have to admit it's the whole freaking internet you are talking about, as i really do not represent a minority here...
"Yes, there were problems with the article, and Kris is actively trying to remedy it."
then change the last paragraphs and not just add this little update-thing at the very end. how can you correct the benchmarks and then leave the conclusion the same - even though the first benches now show the 3500 winning (still being 500 bucks cheaper)?
"He is even testing an opteron system per request. Yet people continue to flame. Maybe you should offer some constructive criticism instead of going off on lame conspiracy theories and dooming the fate of Anandtech."
Let me say again i am sorry for the wording i chose - and again that a site as reputable as anandtec's is HAS to edit articles to prevent this from happening. sorry, there is just no excuse for dropping the ball so badly. i wouldn't even have cared if it wasn't one of the most professional sites on the net.
"If this is seriously how you feel, dont bother posting anymore. If the content is that bad, dont bother reading it."
i was so upset mainly because lots of ppl are reading this and take it as a fact, go out and buy a product. it's not about me really.
to put this to an end: excuse my swearing, it'll not let it happen again, but all criticism about the article still seems valid to me.
kresek - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkWouldn't a "openssl speed" make a better encryption test?
John the Ripper uses some quite outdated assembly routines, and imvho does not represent a typical encryption workload. Reply
Matthew Daws - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkOkay, an update after reading over at Ace's. GCC under 64-bit linux does default to 64-bit mode (as expected). No idea what processor it defaults to though. There is also some suggestions that -O3 would make a big difference. There are some quite powerful critiques of Jack-The-Ripper as well:
"The key parts of the tests John the Ripper runs are written in ancient assembler code, with different routines for an intel CPUID. From what I can see, the AMD code path uses 8 bit operations half the time and does a lot of memory copying! COmpletely invalid to use this as a benchmark."
--Matt Reply
kresek - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkReply
johnsonx - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkI've read and read and read all this drivel in here, and I still don't get it. Everyone keeps complaining what a bad CPU Review this is; back to my earlier point about borderline illiteracy, did anyone notice the title of the article?
"Linux and EM64T: Intel's 64-bit suggestion".
Doesn't sound like a CPU review to me. Sounds like a quick preview or first look at running 64-bit linux on the first x86-64 capable Intel processor AT had gotten their hands on. That's how I read the article.
Also, why does everyone take the conclusion line out of context:
"Without a doubt, the 3.6GHz Xeon trounces over the Athlon 64 3500+ in math-intensive benchmarks."
Everyone who quotes this line leaves out the "...in math intensive benchmarks.". Why is this incorrect? What other conclusion could be drawn from the benchmark results? Sure I guess if you want to get really picky and legal about it, it might have said "....in THE math intensive benchmarks WE RAN". But seriously, what other benchmarks would he be referring to?
ianwhthse - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkI don't know about the rest of you, but I do thank my mailman. Reply
Matthew Daws - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkJohn the Ripper really needs some better work on the GCC flags. The generic configuration tries to optimise for a 486, which is why it fails (I would have, ahem, expected this to be obvious to someone doing a linux benchmark). The supplied text files indicate that "John optimizes itself during the build" is certainly not the case. The following flags are used:
-c -Wall -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops
Does anyone know what the default CPU target is? There is not explicit -mtune or -mcpu command, and no explicit command to use SSE(2) for math processing (hmm, a check shows that the x86-64 compiler defaults to SSE for math). For something like encryption, I would expect that optimisation would have a HUGE difference, so for the nocona (with GCC 3.4.1) I'd use -march=nocona. You can force 64-bit support with the -m64 command, which might be worth trying. Also, what about using the -O3 command or the -ffast-math command?
Anyone got a 64-bit linux system and know what target GCC defaults to? I can only presume 64-bit.
I've just downloaded the source-code from http://www.openwall.com/john/ and it appears that there are specially optimised modules to use x86 options (e.g. MMX). These are NOT being compiled in your test (from checking the attached transcripts). There is also a BETA version which offers much improved performance. You might consider using this?
Also, from my (limited) understanding of encryption algorithms, they don't use "math" (which tends to mean floating-point code as far as computers go) but use bit-twidling and such-like. This makes the fact that Nacona can thrash the Athlon 64 even more surprising (and hence suspect).
Just a few thoughts, --Matt Reply
Arias74 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkOk, I guess it's time to throw my $.02 into the mix. I've almost all the posts, and I think I understand the frustration.
First of all, let me just say that I am a fan of AMD's processors. Within the past 6 months, I've puchased for myself or work several Opterons, an Athlon 64, and about a half dozen Athlon XP's. So, I'm fairly familiar with their products. That doesn't mean that I like Intel, only that I prefer AMD.
I think the most objectionable point in the article for me, and probably for most people, is the conclusions that the reviewer derived from his benchmarks. Especially the first sentence of the second paragraph "Without a doubt, the 3.6GHz Xeon trounces over the Athlon 64 3500+...", it seems to me that the conclusion was written to generate more of a "sound bite" than anything. In fact, I was pointed to this article from another website that used that line as a quote. And for you Intel fans out there, how would you feel if a website of technical merit published a review and declared "Intel's latest offerings is a joke compared to AMD's products...". Seems a little biased, don't you think? And the few corrections made throughout the article barely make it onto the conclusions, as an afterthought or a p.s. line at the bottom.
I've always relied on Anandtech to give very thorough and useful reviews of products. It's almost a given. However, with this current review, I am sincerely beginning to doubt that. With a review filled with numerous errors, I would think that a correction AT THE BEGINNING of the article would be the least that could be done, not at the end.
Also, I have to say that the choice of benchmarks should be seriously reconsidered. As many people have already pointed out, synthetic benchmarks are entirely useles compared to real world applications. I think one of the best reviews I've read in recent memory is the Anandtech Database performance shootout (http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=1982). You present 2 competing architectures and use them in a real world environment to derive a solid conclusion. These are the types of benchmarks to use when comparing enterprise level hardware. And if you decide to use desktop level hardware, use benchmarks that users can relate with, including gaming benchmarks and the like. It's difficult to make a definitive statement comparing two products when the methodology is flawed. Synthetic benchmarks are just that, synthetic. The only way to use them is to compare to similar products, such as a Prescott from a Northwood, or an Athlon 64 to an Athlon XP. In any other case, it's always best to use real application benchmarks.
Unfortunately, I have to say that the review was simply a waste of my time. Why? Because unlike other Anandtech.com reviews, I came away knowing that I learned nothing from the review. Nothing in the review made sense, from the choice of processors, to the choice of benchmarks. It was very disapointing.
Sorry for the long post... just wanted to say what was on my mind... Reply
tfranzese - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link#166, it's a poor comparison anyway you slice it. Anandtech assumes most of it's readers are not who the PR rating is targeted at persuading. This has been made clear in the past. You don't compare by number but by price and by performance. Reply
ss284 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkRegarding post: 159 - Posted on Aug 10, 2004 at 3:12 AM by WiZzACkR
Just mentioning that you seriously post in the [H]ardforums drops your credibility to 0. Saying that Hardocp, and especially the disgustingly bad hardocp forums come even close to Anandtech and its forums are an insult. Then again, your post seems of the typical hardforums quality, biased, and obviously written by that of a person who has done minimal research and has made huge sweeping assumptions.
Oh, and FIFI, insulting people loudly with the intent to attention only shows how much your typical, non insulting postings command no respect or deserve any thought whatsoever, and that the only way for you to get a reponse is to yell.
Another thing, people are still complaining about the comparison. He has already mentioned that this is the same thing as a 3.6. Last I checked it was AMD that came up with these processor ratings. Yet they dont seem to be taking any of the blame. A PR rating of 3500+ means its supposed to be competing with intel's p4 3.5, which doesnt exist. Kris took the nearest speed, a 3.6, and mentioned that in the review. Not to mention the favorable timings on the AMD system.
Its sad to see how many horribly biased morons are posting this crap. Yes, there were problems with the article, and Kris is actively trying to remedy it. He is even testing an opteron system per request. Yet people continue to flame. Maybe you should offer some constructive criticism instead of going off on lame conspiracy theories and dooming the fate of Anandtech. If this is seriously how you feel, dont bother posting anymore. If the content is that bad, dont bother reading it.
In every review, kris had paid attention to the comments, and even actively participates in the forums. He takes suggestions, and usually makes good on them. Give him some time, and I'm sure the article will satisfy at least half of you. Some fanatics will go crazy no matter what, whether AMD or Intel.
-Steve Reply
intelpen - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkDid Intel paid you to put so questionable unknown tests in your article ? :) Reply
Floffer - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkKK: You may be a bit excused if this was your first CPU review. But I find it a bit drastic to do any conclusions on some of these tests.
You should know that a test like this would be looked at like the like Win/linux server test.
Give a guy money from ms and let him test the 2 platforms - the linux guys will eat that man raw for failing to show what linux can do.
This is the exact same thing with AMD/Intel.
Doing such a fast preview containing containing errors people start the trenchwar - that is funny for maybe 5 min
Ask yourself: What do I want to test, Linux workstations, Linux Servers, Linux, CPUs.
This looks more like - ohh I've seen this test - don't know what the results I have actually mean but without standards, references and tweaks and doing conclusions. To me this test looks a bit like a F1 Car and a 24h Le Mans car showing up at at brand new racetrack without allowing the teams to change setup. Then conclude from one testlap with 2 different drivers what car will be the winner. The Chess test to me looks a bit like this. A 64 bit AMD vs Intel test is that new that to conclude this is the test where Intel is alot better than AMD - next day AMD is 25% faster than Intel.
Firstly have a reason to run a test - be sure how it works. A new test with a program intended to be optimized a CPU should be so. And have enough results to see that this maybe isn't "correct" - and may need further testing.
And to me it doesn't look that good that you are having problems compiling being a senior linux editor?
Here is a testidea I would like to see ala a FPS/$ that can be seen in cpu or gfx tests:
What I would like to see is a kWh pr year pr PC/Server. If a company wants to upgrade 100 or 1000 PC's seeing they could save money, and being environmentally friendly.
Like buy a fuelefficient car that (maybe) costs more but has lower running costs, pollute less.
eg: calculate kWh for standard use of a desktop/gaming pc 2-6h a day (load/idle factor)
server running 24/7
It could be one component only when possible and/or the whole computer.
But I guess the gennerally concern in the US is more in the FPS/$ - like getting a SUV instead of a fuel efficient car and complain over high oil prices.
Greatings from Denmark (hoping not to start Bush/Kerry, Win/*nix, etc flamewar) Reply
plus - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkKris,
You just don't get it. You correct two erroneous benchmarks, which now favor the Athlon 64, yet you don't change your conclusion.
Also, you need to clarifiy regarding the Nocona being in a remote location - somehow justifying only running synthetic benchmarks. Did you have your hands on the cpu, or not?
Who set up the Nocona box?
Plus Reply
snorre - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link"Update: We have addressed the issue with the -02 compile options in TSCP, the miscopy from previous benchmarks of the MySQL benchmark, and various other issues here and there in the testing of this processor."
That's not enough, you should have pulled the bad review altogheter and reposted it when you've updated it with Opteron 150 results and with a proper conclusion. There's still without a doubt many things wrong with your conclusion and test setup. Reply
peter79 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkI think people here are maybe exagerating a little. By this I mean,different errors are done in this review, making the final result disgusting and requiring deletion. But the mistakes separately are understandable. If a 3500+ was compared to this xeon in a correct benchmarking, with correct results, I would not have had a problem with this. If the benchmarkchoice was unfair, but all other things were OK, I would also not have complained. Problem is, all these things together do make for a very bad review. And I do think that this might permanently damage Anand's. Hope it's not the case. You will be getting more intel-fanboys like this. Might even get some THG people. Reply
4lpha0ne - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkThe test loop of ubench:
double x,y;
unsigned i,j,k=0;
for (j=0;j<i;j++)
if ( j%67 )
if ( x > 10.0 )
if ( i==0 ) i++;
return i;
I think that says enough - it's neither useful to test 64bit mode capabilities nor to compare different CPUs. Divisions, modulos, sin, cos, atan, pow, exp, log... A good test for the ability to execute some of the less often used microcode routines, nothing more. Reply
WiZzACkR - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linki cannot believe it. after having read most of the posts i'm still so pissed i just have to say it: I find it incredible just how irresponsible this review treats their duty as a source for reliable benchmarks and reviews - ppl actually base their opinion on this stuff here! you can't just put a freaking update behind shit you dribbled and think it'll all be good! not even to talk about the serious damage you've done to anandtech's image as a unbiased source of info! i mean man: look at ANY hardwareforum on the bloody planet and see how annoyed and disappointed ppl are!
saying "Not a big deal on the choice of hardware; it was just in there for reference anyway" is plainly the dumbest and most ignorant statement i've ever read from someone who wants to be a journalist.
way to go guys! i'll quote some random lines of a few threads on [H] for you (could be ANY other site though, mind you):
"Infact, I was getting fed up with all the bullshit articles Anandtech came out lately. So much so, I've just signed up here, and left Anandtech to sell out."
"Dissappointing review at best, frighteningly incompetent review better describes it though"
"This was the WORST review ever. Maybe tomorrow he will review the celeron vs the FX-53? Since that's basicly what he did here. Idiot."
and finally: "This article looks like it was written by a forum troll, actually. It is almost like he wrote it in the hope to start a huge flame war. I mean, i have always trusted Anandtech.com almost as much as HardOCP.com, but that time is now over." - YES, indeed, for crying out loud! now get that dumb review down and admit it was shit - otherwise you cannot even measure the damage that article inflicted on the site's image and no little tiny update in the world will help you out of this one, believe me.
man, am i disappointed...
Burbot - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkMy major problem with the article is that despite Athlon winning or archieving a draw in all real-life tests, author does not pay much attention to the results. Instead, he turns to synthetic tests and bases his conclusion on their results, ignoring real-world apps. Does the author actually expect Anandtech readers to run some obscure pi or prime number calculator more often then lame, gzip or mysql?
It is unfortunate to see yet another reviewer falling into "I'll just quote GarbageMark's results" trap. Synthetic benchmarks may be useful, but correctly measuring the results, understanding and interpreting them takes a lot of knowledge of "what happens under the hood" and time. Author lacked both - and have a look at the deceptive conclusions he arrived to. Benchmarking is *hard*. Going easy and fast way (quick and dirty Pi or prime JunkMark instead of carefully picked benchmark suites or respectable selection of real world apps) gives you irrelevant numbers and not a single useful result.
Sincerely, Scientific Approach Fanboy. Reply
fifi - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkI for one don't think that the choice of CPU is all that inappropriate.
I think Kristopher has a valid point that when P43.6F comes out, it's going to be much like Xeon 3.6 now. The L2 cache is not going to change, and the instructions should be pretty similar too.
If the 3500+ is what he has his hands on, then that's alright, it's not like getting a 200Mhz upgrade is going to make ALL the difference, but the L2 is difficult to say, depending on the applications. But 128+512 kb is what the 3500+ has, and nothing is going to change that.
My main critique is with the choice of benchmarks and the incompleteness.
I apologise if my comments came out a bit too strong before, but I can't stand people who start throwing accusations of "fanboy" or conspiracies at the drop of the hat and unable to listen to any reasonings. It seems like the only way to get their attention is to insult them loudly.
Dennis Travis - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkKris, on your new test with Derek please test in both 32 and 64 Bit as I feel that what caused most of this flaming is just weeks ago in 32 Bit the new Intel got BEAT down by the AMD 64. What changed? I would like to see the 32 Bit benchmarks as what changed in just a week that makes the intel Walk all over the AMd 64. Anand even said with the performance of the new Intel AMD was the CPU to buy. Putting AMD's 64 Bit code in the Intel CPU can't change the 32 Bit performance. Something is going on somewhere. I will not flame nor put you down. that is not fair or right. I just feel reading all the 32 Bit tests just a week or so ago that something is wrong somewhere. Something with the CPU's and Linux and the benchmarks.
Will be awaiting the new round of testing. Thanks in advance for the 32 Bit tests.
it will help figure this mess out!
Take care Kris and hang in there.
...Dennis Reply
Accord99 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkThe hardware IOMMU is for devices that do not natively support 64-bit addressing, typically these are EIDE controllers, sound cards, USB controllers. So if you do a lot of I/O and have >4GB of memory you may see performance degradation. However, 64-bit SCSI cards, gigabit network controllers do support 64-bit addressing and the issue does not affect them at all. The latest SATA controller may also avoid the problem.
And it is a chipset issue, not a CPU one. Intel could release a new chipset with a hardware IOMMU. Reply
DrMrLordX - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkThat's cool. I'd like to see how the Opteron 150 does. Heck, even the 3800+ would be interesting. Either way, it'll be a good competition. Reply
xlax - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkNot a big deal on the choice of hardware; it was just in there for reference anyway. Derek and I are working on an Opteron test as we speak. Gonna work some of the other little changes in the new review as well.
hopefully some benchmarx.....and a lot less bs synthetix.... Reply
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkNot a big deal on the choice of hardware; it was just in there for reference anyway. Derek and I are working on an Opteron test as we speak. Gonna work some of the other little changes in the new review as well.
Kristopher Reply
DrMrLordX - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkAgreed, the 3.6F P4 is not marketed against the 3500+. It's marketted against the 3800+.
Kristopher, why are you so dismayed by people complaining about your choice in hardware? You picked the wrong AMD CPU. All the other flaws of your article aside, that flaw caught my eye first and affected my view of the entire article. The remarks in the conclusion clinched it.
I don't want you to think you're being "flamed" when I, or others, complain about the CPU comparison. If you want the AMD cpu poised to compete with the 3.6F, you want the 3800+, not the 3500+. If you want the competitor for the 3.6 Nocona, it's the Opteron 150/250/850. The competitor for the top-of-the-line EE cpu(which I believe is currently the 3.4, and will later be the 3.73) is the FX-53.
The 3500+ is the "cheap" CPU for socket 939 and nothing more. Reply
xlax - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkHmmmmm, usually dont see this much action on ur reviews. Typically most of us like to see real benchies, not synthetics. Somebody get me a cold beer....thanx...anyways, we all know how sythetics can be optimized for a desired result. Lets see some real benchies. I usually like to read ur reviews cuz they have a balanced feel to them. This one smells.....I think maybe all these luv letters reflect the same and perhaps that is y u have been getting so much feedback. Pleased dont turn into THG, give us the real stuff, not the fluff.
ps, synthetics dont mean @#!% to gamers and u know that. Reply
Drayvn - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkWhen i hear that the 3500+ is a good comparison to the 3.6f, i think that is wrong, in fact shouldnt it be that u should find what Intel are aiming the 3.6f at AMDs line.
3500+ cant be very well compared to something that has come out after itself....
maybe the 3.6f was comparing itself to some other cheap maybe? Reply
fifi - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkwhat I objected to are sentiments such as
"Again Thanks for the early release, it really and truly helped. I hope these fanboy's don't affect you decision to post early numbers in the future."
what did it "really and truly" help? creating more flame bait in a quiet neighbourhood?
if AMD is as much a litigious bast*rd like SCO (see SCO vs IBM/Red Hat/Novell/Daimler-Chrysler/Autozone) or Intel (see Intel vs 7intel and other tidbits with "intel" and "intel inside" trademarks) or Microsoft (see MS vs mikerowesoft.com), then they would be sending out CAD to AT for publishing bogus numbers, not to mention threats of libel and so on. And in this case, AT is not even in the right, eventhough it's clear it was just some mix up of the numbers (except that stupid conclusion...).
sure, if he ends up correcting it and does it properly, then he deserves the commendations. But it doesn't change the fact that it was screwed up in the first place, and to release numbers that looked strange even to a layman like me, without checking it thoroughly first is not a good thing for AT's reputation.
It just seemed like it was done in a hurry as if trying to rush out of the doors before anybody else does.
tfranzese - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkToo little has been done to correct the matter to deserve much thanks IMO.
fifi is spot on. There are times it's polite to say thank you for a job well done, but this isn't the time. Reply
Viditor - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkfifi - "But he screws up major and we are supposed to THANK him for screwing up?"
No. We thank him for dealing with the inumerable flames over a mistake and being professional enough to correct them.
We also thank him because he works hard at this and probably gets paid substantially less than that garbage collector you alluded to! Reply
saechaka - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linki don't know much about cpu but this thread has been a great read. to fifi, i don't think you thank the garbage man if he spews garbage on your driveway, but if he picks it up, you should. props to kris for picking up the garbage. mayb Reply
gherald - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkI think this article can be best characterized as "useless" or perhaps "how to not benchmark processors."
I'm pretty sure Kris will take it as a lesson learned, and anticipate any follow ups will be more interesting/informative.
To those who allege Kris or Anand have somehow been paid by Intel: quit talking out of your ass. Seriously, I've got better things to do than read your senseless drivel.
People make mistakes, and that's all we should take away from this. Reply
fifi - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - linkI don't understand, what's with the thanking Kris ?
Do you THANK your newspaper editor? do you THANK a TV news reporter? do you THANK your mailman?
This is his job, he is supposed to do it right. If he screws up, then he gets told off. That's all.
If he does a good job with it, then he is told that it's a job well done, more than that, AT gets visitors, gets sponsors and ads.
But he screws up major and we are supposed to THANK him for screwing up?
Do you THANK your garbage collector for spewing garbage all over your driveway? Do you thank your TV news reporter for giving you wrong *news*?
No, I am not grateful that this *review* was posted. It was incomplete, misleading, confusing and factually incorrect. Reply
MikeEFix - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link"Those who pay attention to our other articles should know the 3.6F and the 3500+ are in fact marketed against each other."
This statement is incorrect
Viditor - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkG'day Kris!
Thanks for the reply! I can imagine that it's not easy to deal with all of the yammering...!
"I'll just remove all the 3500+ marks and you can all look back at my previous articles to see where this 3.6F stands"
If you could just post an Update saying that some possible errors occured and that you're looking into them, that would be much better...
"There was a problem with the MySql graphs. We posted the 32-bit marks on accident instead of the 64-bit"
I figured it was something like that...
"i'm open to retest and revise as many times as it takes to provid ethe best information i can"
Many thanks! That's all that most of the intelligent posters can ask for...please try to ignore the rest. Reply
dtobias - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThis article was either the perfect marketing gimmick for Anandtech.com, or a colossal screw up. This was like Coke saying they were pulling Coke Classic off the market. We'll know that it was nothing but a publicity stunt when Anand gets back from vacation and prints a retraction. If not, then we'll start looking for the new intel ads to pop up at Anandtel.com Hey - if they paid you then you have to put the ads up, right? Reply
plus - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkAnand,
Do the right thing. Take it down tonight, repost it when you believe it's accurate.
Don't be the next Tom's Hardware. Too many people count on Anandtech.com.
Plus Reply
KristopherKubicki - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkAlright.
Heres the deal. I'll just remove all the 3500+ marks and you can all look back at my previous articles to see where this 3.6F stands.
Second, I asked if anyone wanted the binaries or test files from this review. I just went over my email and from the 120+ emails i got flaming me, 3 people asked for the binaries. I'm probably just going to give open shell access to the machine and let you guys find out for yourself where this machine stands.
There was a problem with the MySql graphs. We posted the 32-bit marks on accident instead of the 64-bit. The comments we posted on the benchmark magically still lined up.
DJB is one of my professors and i will discuss some of the issues raised with him concerning primegen. Thats if he doesnt cut my head off first for posting his program without his permission.
I need to persue the issues with TSCP. I'll admit, the only reasons i posted it here was because i saw it in Ace's benchmarks; whom i draw and extreme amount of respect from.
Regardless of what you may or may not think about the marks from the review, i'm open to retest and revise as many times as it takes to provid ethe best information i can. Simply stating "this review sucks" or "why did you compare these chips" without digesting the entire article has been extremely discouraging.
Oh and for all those people who think Intel paid me for this review or whatever; yeah right they dont even know i have their chips! Good luck trying to prove that one.
KristopherKubicki - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkTest Reply
snorre - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkSlash dotted!
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/04/08/09/136230.sh... Reply
dke - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkHi, I just read this comparison between
the Xeon 3.6 (Nocona) and the Athlon 64 3500+. This is from an e-mail I sent out earlier today and I didn't want to re-write it again. Here it is:
"I started reading
AnandTech's article and noticed that on the third page they have a
little note that says:
"Our Nocona server was setup in a remote location with little access,
so we had limited time to run as many real world benchmarks as we are
typically accustomed to. Fortunately, there are multitudes of
synthetic benchmarks that we can use to deduce information quickly and
This seems to contradict the statements they made in the first
paragraph of the first page of the review:
"... we found ourselves fairly entertained to come into the possession
of a 3.6GHz EM64T Xeon processor. ..."
What does that mean?
Unless I am not understanding this correctly, is sounds like
AnandTech's reviewers didn't have local access to the computer that
they were using to benchmark the Nocona. Does that mean that they
didn't have local access to the computer for [any] of their benchmarks,
or only the synthetic ones? If that's true, I don't think this can be
a trusted review. Who would setup a Nocona server for AnandTech to
"review"? Intel? I can see that...
Intel: "we equipped this machine with the following specs, xxxxxx. we
This article just seems questionable to me, and I remain fairly
skeptical about how accurate this review/comparison is. If AnandTech
didn't have local access to the machine, how can anyone be certain
that the system's specs are what AnandTech claims they are? How can
AnandTech's reviewers themselves be certain? [The benchmarks given in this comparison do not duplicate previous benchmarks using the same hardware as well as the same benchmarking software.] It's not that I think
AnandTech is feeding us misinformation, but I question the information
given to them by this mysterious third party [who has local access to
the machine?]."
I just don't understand and I would like an official response from AnandTech. I don't care to hear Intel fangirls respond to my question. They don't know anything more than I do. I can read enough sarcasm and smart-arse comments on this board without any new sarcastic responses to this post.
Thank you.
David K. Reply
ThunderPC - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkNice way to generate site hits by making the entire "techy" world come by for a good dose of laughter at the "comparison". Reply
Graphic67 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkKeep in mind that Mr. Kubicki is the "Senior Display, Optical Storage and Linux Editor" and from a listing of available articles he has not done a CPU review before.
AnandTech had a reputation of quality over quantity (or speed) which made the articles that much more worthwhile to read. "Quick and dirty" as an earlier post called this review is a phrase which would normally not be applicable to an AnandTech posting. Reply
ThunderPC - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkLike everyone else has said, the worst review I have seen since boycotting Tom's hardware. I am completely unbiased on processor manufacturer, and have a relatively new Intel and AMD system. That being said, why the #$%( are we comparing these two processors? How much did Intel pay you to do such a lopsided test? I have a Kyro video card sitting in a box if you care to test it against a 6800 :D Reply
snorre - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThis bad review really have created a big buzz. People are debating it heavily over at Ace's Hardware:
This review should never have been published, and if it dosen't get removed of fixed soon Anandtech will for ever lose its credibility and join the line of biased sites like Tom's Hardware & Extreme Tech. Reply
Viditor - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkjohnsonx - "The memory thing too.... if the benchmarks in question don't need more than 1Gb of ram, then why isn't 1Gb enough? Is there some magic of 64-bit systems where having 13267432Gb of RAM somehow makes them faster? Of course not."
A reasonable question...
The reason that memory is questioned is that the Nocona has no hardware IOMMU. This means that when using larger amounts of memory (3 Gig+), the Nocona (and all other EMT64 chips) will actually start to slow down. Reply
schemer - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkAnandTech! Did you try benchmarking KristopherKubicki against a Blonde? Reply
coldpower27 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link
I believe benching the Opteron 150, would have been a fairer choice like I said.
I also don't beleive the 512KB of cache vs 1Mb of cache holds any water, because of the fact that the Netburst Prescott has to make due with 16KB of LV1 cache while the Athlon 64 gets 128KB of it which is 8 times more :S
I am also not all that sure if the Opteron 150 will be all that much faster then the Athlon 64 3500+ considering it has to work with registered memory and 600MHZ HT.
Comparing AMD's K8's and Intel Netburst Architecture has been always Apples to Oranges. you couldn't really compare Apples to Apples anyway with how different these 2 architectures are.
mkruer - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkto add more flamebait, you got to love this quote
"Since the excuse to not compare Athlon 64s to Intel Pentium based processors has always been "you can't compare apples to oranges,""
so now hes comparing oranges to apples.
Snoop - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkKristopher,
Are you going to defend this article? It seems that your silence to these charges speaks for itself. If you cannot dispute these claims, then remove the article. Reply
tfranzese - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link"The memory thing too.... if the benchmarks in question don't need more than 1Gb of ram, then why isn't 1Gb enough? Is there some magic of 64-bit systems where having 13267432Gb of RAM somehow makes them faster? Of course not."
That was only mentioned by someone because much of the speculation has been that EM64T is no where near a match for AMD64 due to the reason being that AMD (and Apple, IBM) built a new architecture from the get go with this in mind to take advantage of a 64-bit world and Intel has simply bolted this to save face.
That said, part of the reasoning behind testing with more RAM is not to see if the performance improves but if it degrades despite not utilizing it. Reply
JGunther - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkJohnsonx, here's the deal. These numbers are bogus. This is such a miserable representation of any attempt at a comparison that people are going to kick and scream and find anything they can to blame it on. Server vs. Desktop, $350 vs. $800, 1MB cache vs. 512KB, poor benchmarking choices, poor benchmarking procedures, whatever the reason may be.
It's one of them. It may be all of them. But you should know that people aren't whining because they compared a desktop chip to a server chip, but rather because this is a disgusting attempt at hardware review and comparison.
The staff of AT may get "rather tired of reading the uncivilized, juvenile" drivel on this page. All I can say is that the feeling is mutual. Reply
johnsonx - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkJust to be clear, my two rants were squarely directed at the whining complainers, not at those with reasonable issues to discuss regarding compiler config, merits of individual benchmarks, etc.
That said, I still don't think the 3500+ vs. XEON arguement holds water. Yes, fine, an FX-53/Opteron x50 would be faster than a 3500+. So what? That's not the point of the article. It wouldn't be so much faster that any of the tests would have changed by much: tests that one CPU or the other dominated would still be dominated by almost unchanged margins and tests that were a virtual tie would still be a virtual tie.
The 'Server' vs. 'Desktop' CPU arguement is along the same lines, but put in those terms it is patently absurd. Apparently many folks out there think there is something somehow magic about 'Server' CPUs. Today, for both AMD and Intel, the only difference between desktop and server CPUs is the socket they fit in, the chipset they connect to, and whether they support SMP. Aside from a few special large-cache variants of the XEON (which we are not dealing with here), there is really no other difference. In fact, while at this time the effect is minimal or non-existant, at many times in the past 'Server' CPUs were often slower than their desktop counterparts. XEONs were stuck with 400Mhz or 533Mhz FSBs long after the desktop P4's moved to 800Mhz, Opterons originally launched with only PC-2700 support and still require slightly slower Registered ECC memory, AthlonMP's to this day are stuck with 266Mhz FSB and RAM as well as a much older, lower performing chipset. Now is the first time I can recall since the very end of the PIII days where a Desktop to 'Server' CPU comparison wouldn't actually give unfair advantage to the Desktop CPU. Today, it's as apples to apples as it gets.
The memory thing too.... if the benchmarks in question don't need more than 1Gb of ram, then why isn't 1Gb enough? Is there some magic of 64-bit systems where having 13267432Gb of RAM somehow makes them faster? Of course not.
I also get rather tired of reading the uncivilized, juvenile commentary from people who didn't even read the article carefully. I'm sure AT's staff does too.
For what it's worth, if you remember my post-script at the end of my original late night rant way back at comment 19, I really do have two Dual-Opteron servers sitting here ready to be delivered. Over the past 2+ years, I'd say I've purchased 100 Athlon TBirds and XP's, more than a dozen AthlonMP's, and now a half-dozen Opterons. In all that time, I've purchased maybe 3 Intel chips, all for upgrades of existing systems. So don't go assuming I'm pro-Intel or anti-AMD or whatever. I've made a business decision to use AMD, not a personal emotional one. I guess I do tend to make somewhat 'contrarian' choices in this regard; my ideal small business network is an AMD based server running NetWare & GroupWise, AMD based workstations running Windows XP Pro & Corel WordPerfect (and the GroupWise e-mail client, of course). Color me a rebel...
thpcgr - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThis review sucks. I have a 2.8 nocona in an e7525 and it makes me feel even worse for having one. :-(
And I can't even buy a peg 6800gt for it so I'm stuck with a diamond viper s550 pci for now!
Damn you intel!
Hurry up and come out with a dual opteron + dual peg platform! Reply
thpcgr - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkReply
Roleplayer - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkDid you perhaps leave off the Optimize -O2 which from what I've read elsewhere can as much as double the AMD64's performance? Without it, you're just optimizing the link, not the compiler. Reply
Marlin1975 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkhttp://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17754
From listing...
""Relax, its just a primer for future articles. A 3.6F is supposed to compare with a "3600+" rated Athlon 64 isnt it? Since we dont have a 3600+ the 3500+ should perform slightly lower? Isnt this what we expected? And for those of you who dont believe me, a 3.6GHz 1MB EM64T Nocona is *exactly* like a 3.6F."
"I thought the AMD chip did pretty damn good for costing $500 less!"
Just a primer? Look at the concluding section's second paragraph:
"Without a doubt, the 3.6GHz Xeon trounces over the Athlon 64 in math-intensive benchmarks. Intel came ahead in every severe benchmark that we could throw at it, particularly during John the Ripper. Even though John uses several different optimizations to generate hashes, in every case, the Athlon chip found itself at least 40% behind. Much of this is likely attributed to the additional math tweaking in the Prescott family core."
If the author had said that the "fastest 3.6GHz Xeon trounced the slowest socket 939 Athlon 64 in math-intensive benchmarks at $500 more in cost", that would have put the paragraph in context. But as it currently stands, someone at Intel Corp. will no doubt use the AnandTech quote for the chip giant's next round of Xeon promotional material. Intel will be happy, if it understands "happy". µ"
vmajor - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkTo the deluded few, this review would be seen as a primer and would not be as offensive and would be given more slack IF it did not make such strong conclusions like these:
"Without a doubt, the 3.6GHz Xeon trounces over the Athlon 64 in math-intensive benchmarks. Intel came ahead in every severe benchmark that we could throw at it, particularly during John the Ripper. Even though John uses several different optimizations to generate hashes, in every case, the Athlon chip found itself at least 40% behind. Much of this is likely attributed to the additional math tweaking in the Prescott family core."
If this 'review' was instead concluded with a disclaimer, and a 'to be continued', THEN it would be considered a primer.
As it is, this review is meritless, shoddy junk. Reply
Pumpkinierre - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI thought the article was okay . As Kristopher states the Nocona is the same as the P4 3.6F in architecture and cache size which is approx. the equivalent of the 3500+ (remember the plus sign is supposed to mean something). As far as the tests go he's constrained by linux and the lack of 64 bit tests. If anything the OS and available tests will be AMD oriented due to Opterons/A64s having been out for the past year or so. If some of the test are 32bit coded it begs the question why the performance differences are so large for processors that are fully 32bit capable.
Good on you Kristopher for an interesting article, keep on the 64bit trail we're all interested!
tfranzese - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link"AnandTech has a right to compare any processor they wish. I don't care if they compared the Celeron to the Opteron, so long as the benchmarks and review were articulate and accurate. The cloudiness over what 'bit' some of the benchmarks were run at, the discrepancy between the benchmarks in the article and benchmarks from other sources (including AnandTech itself), and the errors and omissions are what really struck me about this article. "
They certainly have the right, but people come here for fair, unbaised comparisons as they should expect from tech sites. People have grown to trust Anandtech and their judgements and then we have this. Not to long ago we also had their RAID 0 article which was real great at drawing conclusions on limited testing. Reply
Denial - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkDoesn't Anand usually author the CPU articles himself? You'd think he would have definitely written this article since it represents such a major change in CPU's. I get the feeling he didn't want his name associated with the article or the chip. Reply
TechnoBabble - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI can't even believe someone did a review of a Xeon processor and a 64-Bit Athlon. Did the "author" even realize that the cache on the AMD was HALF of the cache on the Intel? Did he even DO any research on these two chips? I mean c'mon...let's rate apples to apples here. Or are the rmors correct and is this guy just a fan-boy or a payola-recipient of Intel??
Hey, I have an idea...why don't you do the next "review" between a P4 EE and a Sempron? That would make for some GREAT reading just like this review did!!
Lucky this isn't a paysite because there could be a mass-exodus because of this crap-tacular article.
GEEZ...maybe Tom ISN'T that bad... Reply
JGunther - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkSuch bad press all over tech websites... primer or no, if I were someone over there at AnandTech, I'd rip this thing down before it does any more damage to the site's reputation. Reply
opposable - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkAnandTech has a right to compare any processor they wish. I don't care if they compared the Celeron to the Opteron, so long as the benchmarks and review were articulate and accurate. The cloudiness over what 'bit' some of the benchmarks were run at, the discrepancy between the benchmarks in the article and benchmarks from other sources (including AnandTech itself), and the errors and omissions are what really struck me about this article.
I don't care if this was a 'primer,' it was poorly articulated, inadequate, and in some places potentially wrong. I certainly hope that this is not a trend, for AnandTech's sake. Reply
JGunther - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkAn actual 3.6GHz Pentium4 (still a heck of a lost more costly than a 3500+) is compared at Ace's Hardware to some of AMD's offerings. Check it out here:
It's not a 3.6F, but from what we've heard, 64bits shouldn't much affect 32bit performance.
Sorry if this has been posted before. Reply
liquidrage2000 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkWhat I don't like about the review is that while the everyday visitor to the site is technical, these reviews show up in searches by people that are not technical.
The two CPU's are not geared for the same market, and they aren't priced in the same ballpark.
Hell, the blurb on /. basically just said in a nutshell that Intel thrashed AMD.
So ignoring all the errors and problems with numbers, reviews like this shouldn't be published in this manner unless it's very clear that you're comparing apples to oranges. And it's not clear. Something like "Intel's Server line vs AMD's lowend new desktop" would be better. But overall, you just shouldn't have done this review. It's misleading.
RyanVM - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link"Relax, its just a primer for future articles. A 3.6F is supposed to compare with a "3600+" rated Athlon 64 isnt it?"
Be sure to let me know where I can buy a 3.6F for $350. Reply
JGunther - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkViditor: Then why make it? Surely the FX-53 would have made for a better, if still not entirely fair (desktop vs. server) comparison. Reply
JGunther - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkHrm... just punched in the numbers, and the Intel CPU here is a laughable 240% more expensive than the AMD unit. Let's see the next part of this review: The AMD Opteron 250 vs. the P4 3.4GHz Northwood. Same price ratio.
Haha better yet, let's see the A64 3500+ against the P4 2.6GHz w/ 533FSB. Again, 240% price difference. Reply
Viditor - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link"How, by any stretch of the imagination, is this a good comparison"
Kris actually acknowledged that it wasn't in the review...
His point was to try and predict what the P4f will be like when it is finally released.
The only real problems with the review if looked at in that light are:
1. Many of the results appear to be in error
2. Only 1 gig of ram was used on a 64-bit system
3. He mixed 32 bit and 64 bit apps without being completely clear on it
4. He didn't publish memory timings
It has been speculated that he made errors with his makefile, and that he didn't compile for AMD when he tested the A64... Reply
JGunther - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkWhat the hell is the matter with you guys? I mean, I'm all for a good CPU wars, but comparing a desktop CPU to a server CPU? I mean, we're talking a $350 CPU vs. an $850 CPU. How, by any stretch of the imagination, is this a good comparison??
Oh. my. god. Anandtech... I'm starting to wonder about this site. First you guys blast RAID 0 on the desktop (which Tweakers.Net just stated was COMPLETELY misleading in their own, more extensive battery of tests) and now this?
Man... this isn't even a question of AMD vs. Intel. The only people who would think that this is a decent comparison have to be Intel fanboys or something.
How did this get to print? Reply
Viditor - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkSoultrap - "The reason the benchmarks come out faster on the Intel part is because of it's higher clock."
This is what I thought at first too...
The problem is that the benches being reproduced around the web for the A64 don't match up to Kris's... Reply
menads - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link#101 The mistakes in the results has nothing to do with the Intel clockspeed - it is the reviewer lack of knowledge how to use gcc (and its flags) and to understand what the benchmarks measure. And finally the poor judgement of selecting a badly positioned desktop CPU (even 754 pin 3400+ makes much more sense than the 3500+ used in the review let alone Opteron 150) versus the top end server CPU. Reply
manno - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link"This is a sad day for all of us. Anandtech has now lost all credibility as an independent review site. First THG, now Anandtech, WTF is going on in the world? :("
Get a life. Reply
Soultrap - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThe reason the benchmarks come out faster on the Intel part is because of it's higher clock. If you do the math you will see that the scores are proportional to the clock frequency on the benchmarks that the Intel part stomped the AMD part. This does not make the Intel part better then the AMD part! But, it does make it (much) faster a doing very simple tasks. The more complex the task is the more important all of the other features of the chip become. The "other" features is where the AMD chip realy shines, not in core frequency. (shorter pipeline, better instruction management, better memory access, ...)
In any benchmark that truely uses the processor as a computer and not as simple calculator, like just about any of the gaming benchmarks out there you will find that in even comparisons (apples to apples) the Intel will be falling behind. When 64bit is mature you will realy see the weakness of Intel's 64 bit clunker.
By the way, just how much did you get paid by Intel to do this cornhole of a reveiw?
Never mind, I am sure they promised that you would disappear if you told on them.
Just kidding!
But really "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth then lies." - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietshe
And I beleive that when it comes to AMD vs Intel there are alot of convictions in the IT world. Reply
bhtooefr - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link#48, you're not going to see Doom 3 benchies because Doom 3 doesn't run on Linux, and even if it did, it'd be a regular x86 app, not x86-64/EM64T. Reply
chaosengine - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkYeah its really sorry to see this. I joined anandtech right now to post this damn message!!!
So what next will we have? Since when sane people have started comparing Server chips against Desktop Chips???
I thought anandtech was much less biased than others but sadly not the case. Reply
dougSF30 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkProblems with primegen benchmark:
What Anand's "primegen" was actually measuring:
*locking* and *unlocking* of the thread-safe version of putchar() was the bottleneck.
switching to unlocked putchar made the benchmark run twice as fast.
commenting out the putchar stuff entirely resulted in another factor of 2 faster.
50% of time involves locking.
25% of time involved input/output
25% of time was actually doing arithmetic, calculating primes.
Gosh, I wonder if The Prescott New Instructions MONITOR and MWAIT have anything to do with the selection of this benchmark, and the performance of Nocona?
snorre - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThis is a sad day for all of us. Anandtech has now lost all credibility as an independent review site. First THG, now Anandtech, WTF is going on in the world? :( Reply
DrMrLordX - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkIn response to #93,
I don't see 3500+ vs Opteron 150 being minor. It means the reviewer actually believes AMD's stupid PR scheme. Their PR scheme has always been wrong, and will likely always be wrong. The 3500+ is a glaring example of how screwed-up their PR scheme can get. Aside from dual-channel memory support, the 3500+ for socket 939 is the same cpu as the 3200+ Newcastle for socket 754. Previous Anandtech articles have highlighted this fact. Not only does KK's choice of cpus potray AMD as being in a position of weakness(somehow implying that AMD has nothing better to offer than the 3500+, that it's only purpose in the market is that its cheaper than Intel "just like always", etc), but it casts Intel in an unfavorable light by giving it a truly unworthy opponent. The 3500+ is a lousy processor for the price. The 3400+, which is clocked 200 mhz higher than the 3500+, is a superior CPU AND costs less. Dual-channel memory just doesn't do enough to justify any of the PR ratings AMD uses on its Socket 939 cpus. Reply
ss284 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkIts funny how all the illiterate morons who couldnt read, shut up after it was made clear that the xeon 3.6 is using the same core as the prescott 3.6 em64t.
Not to mention that if anything, a non registered enthusiast board with standard pc 3200 memory at cas 2 will perform better than the tumwater setup.
Otherwise, there are some pretty serious errors in the article, all of which have been mentioned. The most important is probably the lack of 32-bit comparisons and some discrepancies in the benchmarks. You might also want to make it very obvious that performance on a prescott 3.6 em64t will be similar if not faster than your current numbers so the more morons like the ones in this thread dont start complaining of how you should be comparing this to an opteron.
-Steve Reply
Xspringe - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkJup, the TSCP seem to be flawed as well, this guy also got different results ( http://f11.parsimony.net/forum16635/messages/69533... ) then those provided in this article.
The fact that a quick evaluation of the results already yields two significant errors as well as various other peculiarities makes me question the validity entire article.
I hope that Anandtech will take the time to redo this article in a proper way, with a reasonable benchmark set, 32 vs 64 bit comparisons and comparable processors.
I also strongly suggest that you add a footnote to the article to clarify any issues that have been mentioned in the comment section.
Either that or pull the article in it's entirity until it has been improved to the standards which we normally can expect from Anandtech. Reply
dougSF30 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThese results are WRONG.
3500+ vs. Opteron 150 is only a minor issue, compared to the other mistakes.
The TSCP makefile is broken, and does not apply -O2 optimization. With -O2, you'll score about 300K n/s.
As mentioned, primegen spends nearly all its time in putchar. Just edit primes.c and comment out the putchar() loop. Then edit conf-cc and bump the optimization to -O2. Re-run on both systems.
ubench is known to be broken. the AMD64 results are implausible.
You copied the result for Test-Select over incorrectly, choosing the 32b result instead of the 64b result. The 3500+ wins that one, too.
I suspect you have similar issues with the compilation and optimization in "John the Ripper", but I have not investigated that one yet.
gzip is apparently 32b by default, so that test may be not what you think it is.
super_pi is also probably 32bit, and who knows what it was optimized for???
This whole review is filled with errors. Get someone to help you compile and optimize software.
Needless to say, the conclusion about "math performance" is not warranted.
This should be pulled down until the results have been re-run correctly.
mrdoubleb - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkMy previous comment (#91) was in repronse to johnsonx's reaction (#69). Reply
mrdoubleb - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkJust for your information (since you've referred to my comment).
What most of us have been complaining about is that this benchmark should have been set up more like this:
They put 2 Nocona 3.6 processors against a pair of Opteron 250s. Both are the top two way x86-64 server processors of the 2 big rivals costing exactly the same. These benchmarks are detailed, appropriate (they use the applications these processors will be used for) and even use SSE3 for Nocona. Of course the Nocona is excellent compared to its predecssor, and it turns out that each processor has its strengths and weaknesses. Nobody complained that AMD doesn't win ALL the benchmarks.
They should have done something like this benchmark only with "linux 64" instead of "windows xp 32". Reply
dali71 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThe message is clear...Kristopher has failed!
(Sorry, had to be said for old times sake;) ) Reply
ten9 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThe makefile used in TSCP on the A64 is totally screwed up!
Read this comment on aces:
They get: Nodes per second: 281583 (Score: 1.158)
on a non-overclocked AXP 2500+ on a single channel Via board Reply
ashay - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkAny Truth in this ? :
by kent.dickey (685796) on Monday August 09, @01:28PM (#9921562)
The "primegen" program listed where the Xeon beats the Athlon slightly does not do any floating point.
I looked at the code and played with it a little (I got it from http://cr.yp.to/primegen.html [cr.yp.to] and it seems the benchmark is mostly limited by the implementation of putchar().
My system was an dual AMD Opteron 1.8GHz running Win XP pro with Cygwin. I modified the benchmark to not use putchar() but instead just write the characters to a 1MB buffer, and it got 16 times faster! To be specific, "primes 1 100000000 > file" went from 24.2 seconds to 1.497. Note that it's generating 51MB of output for primes under 100 million. I didn't bother running it for the 100 billion max, but would expect it to be around 50GB.
This is a very poor benchmark since it's just measuring your stdc implementation of putchar and your system's ability to sink data to /dev/null, not anything useful. Reply
Zebo - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkWith thier server implications where are the server benches?..you have sql.. which A64 trouces as expected in 64bit..
Where are Samba File Transfers which simulates client access to a server? Where are the apache benches which is world's most popular webserving software?
Even so, with the limited benches we have the Athlon wins or ties every single 64bit non-synthetic benchmark. Audio Encoding, POV-RAY, GZip and 64 bit MySql. Only when the synthetics are thrown in does Intel dominate...wonder why.
RZaakir - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkWhile I think that it's interesting that the upcoming PIV is supposed to be the "exact" same as the Nocoma chip (if so then why differentiate?), I don't think that this review is quite the travesty that it's being made out to be. I do think that it is incomplete given the fact that we aren't really being shown how effective EMT64 is though.
Hopefully the next review will address all of the controversy that has ensued. Reply
Anemone - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI just can't help but wonder, if you already knew, by numerous tests, that the math ability of the A64 is leaps and bounds ahead of the P4 or Xeon, didn't you want to question your results?
I know the P4EE and the A64's are often neck and neck in some tests (obviously not Doom3 haha) so I'm not going to be shocked if Xeons do well in some apps. But there are literally thousands of posts of pi tests (of the many flavors) in which the P4 is soundly trounced in every single one of them, and by a large margin. The Xeon even the EM64T version is just a Prescott core, and quite honestly its math ability should not be, even in 64bit mode, night and day different from its current results.
Anyway, have to at least say you stood by your convictions and stated things as they were presented to you. And hopefully more information will help us all to understand if maybe the Xeon at least does relatively well in 64 bit, which would be a nice bit of news I think.
SDA - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkFunny, it looks like you're testing the 3500+ in 32-bit mode, in MySQL Test-Select at least...
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/linux%20and%20e... Reply
Decoder - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkHello Kristopher,
Some people don't know how to articulate their thoughts properly, as we see in this thread.
Anyways, for your followup review please test the 64 bit implementations by AMD and Intel using more than 4 GB of rams. 6 or 8 GB will do nicely. I heard Intel implementation relies on software where as AMD's is 100% hardware and this is where AMD Opteron's shine and Intel's EM64T has performance issues.
Again, testing 64 bit mode with 1 gig's is probably not worth it.
Decoder. Reply
tfranzese - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkSome of you, the very few of you, that cannot see the problem with the quality, consistency, and lack of comparisons in this article compared to not only other sites, but this one's as well seriously need your heads checked. It's that simple. Reply
tfranzese - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI don't visit Anandtech (or any site for that matter) if I weren't expecting well thought out and quality articles. I don't think many here visit to see rushed out numbers and editorials. I don't thank a publication that thrives on users reading their material for sub-par work. Publications survive thanks to the readers and not the other way around. Reply
mino - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkmanno: U're Idiot or Intel PR (You can choose your favourite).
Kris: The best thing to do is to either: COMPLETELY rewrite or call in this BS U produced.
No Offence. I'm disgusted. Reply
danidentity - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkYou all sound like a bunch of whiny little babies. It's amazing how many people come out of the woodwork when something puts AMD in a bad light. I'm actually laughing outloud reading these commments.
As KK pointed out, the upcoming P4 3.6F will produce extremely similar numbers to the Xeon benched in this article.
The P4 3.6 is a comparable processor to the 3500+. Reply
fritz64 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkHello Kristopher,
I have been a silent member on this forum since I registered but this article made me search for my password in order to make a comment. You guys at Anandtech have been doing a good job of keeping us informed about capabilities of current day computer hardware. However this current review need serious attention and should be immediately considered based on the various opinion expressed in the forum.
I love to see more of number crunching on real applications using 32/64 bit set up. I mean 32-bit OS/32-bit compiler and 32-bit/64-bit AMD vs Intel.
As for the current review. I think the idea of using the installed Suse Linux OS 9.1 is not a real test of a hardware capability. The OS should be compiled for the best performance optimization on both Intel and AMD platform. Further, the use of 32-bit compiler for AMD Athlon 3500+ does not make use of its 16 registers and thus cripple it's performance a little bit. For best performance, Since Intel writes optimize compiler for their CPUs, I will suggest that you get the best compiler for the Intel system and bench it against the best compiler for AThlon 64 which is undoubtedly the PATHSCALE COMPILER SUITE ( YOU CAN GET A 30-DAY FREE DOWNLOAD VERSION AT www.pathscale.com). Whether the 30-day trial version consist of all the necessary optimization is what I don't know. However the PATHSCALE compiler gives the best SpecInt score that blows the Itanium2 away.
TauCeti - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkto #74
"Look they stuck their head out and released some early numbers, and rather than thank them for doing it, people are throwing tomatoes at them."
I wish i could agree with you, but:
Well, if the numbers are that early that you do not detect obviously wrong results, you should at least inform your readers that you have no idea at all what your benchmark results mean.
I mean: The TSCP Bench on the 3500+ produced a score BELOW 1.0. IF you use that arcane bench you should at least wonder why your 3500+ performs worse then a 2000+.
I cannot understand how one could publish a TSCP score below 1.0 without any comment on that.
FYI: TSCP defines score 1.0 (about 243k nodes/sec):
/* Score: 1.000 = my Athlon XP 2000+ */
fritz64 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkHello,
Testing. Please ignore Reply
redpriest_ - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkBetter quality than a rush job IMO. I don't think the systems were even set up right. Remember the extremetech fiasco where the memory was running at *half* speed the entire time they had the FX51 and for a good portion of the FX53 time period? Reply
manno - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkfifi
"So keep on the sarcasm and hopefully it will improve your mental abilities which are clearly being impaired by the background EM waves, you SHOULD have bought those aluminium hats like I told you to..."
Yeah I can be a bit of a sarcastic pr#$%. Sorry about that :)
But look here's my thing AT posted a preliminary review, and that's obvios I mean they're using a A64 3500 and comparing it to Intels latest and greatest. And they posted numbers that showed that in some benches the new intel chip is better than AMD's 3500. It's a quick little heads-up review. And there are posters on here treating it like a full fledged benchmark suite. The numbers they got were the numbers they got. Do with them what you will. They told you what the benches were if you think there's somthing fishy going on do us all a favor and run the benches yourself and post your results for the rest of us, I for one wouldn't mind seeing another set of numbers quote:
"The delicate bit for this review was using the SuSE 9.1 Pro (x86_64) installation rather than compiling it from scratch (à la Gentoo). This was done to preserve the ability to replicate our benchmarks easily."
Look they stuck their head out and released some early numbers, and rather than thank them for doing it, people are throwing tomatoes at them. That's where I stand. Yes I would like to see more numbers on more chips, and that will come in time. For right now however this is what they have and it's what they released. So again I'de like to say thanks for giving me a heads up.
-manno Reply
redpriest_ - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkSomething is seriously wrong with the 3500+ setup. Independent verification with the exact same compiler settings, only on a worse configuration (3200+ A64) show this:
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?m... Reply
tpinckney - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI don't think anyone would be pissed off if it was a simple matter of the Xeon beating the A64 (probably disappointed would be a better word). The issue is the poorly done, inaccurate, and questionable benchmarks as well as a comparison between two chips that makes little sense.
Manno and JohnsonX, please try and keep your posts above a third grade level.
redpriest_ - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThere's a lot more wrong than just the MySQL numbers. Using TSCP, this guy gets phenomenally better results than what is portrayed. I would suspect the Xeon results would be much better as well if compiled under the same flags:
The fact of the matter is, these binaries do not seemed tuned for AMD64 at all. Reply
jshaped - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link
yes, i too joined just so i could comment on this article.
i agree with johnsonx - most of Anand's readers must be illiterate, or half-way oblivious.
take this article for nothing more than it was meant - it was a quick and dirty benchmark of a non-existent processor - that's it.
quit whining about A64 vs. Xeon - as johnsonx said the Xeon is 99% the same as a p4 - it's always been that way. please read what the author of the article said - this is just a primer for future articles.
anand's received this non-existent processor from unnamed sources, and they did what any of us would've done - quick and dirty benchmarks with what they had readily available.
chill Reply
johnsonx - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkDear KK,
Please don't post any more articles that don't show AMD stomping over Intel in every benchmark (except of course video encoding, which AMD Fan has graciously allowed Intel to win).
This way we can avoid furhter diarrhea of the keyboard.
johnsonx - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkYes, it would be nice to have an edit feature on these...
I meant of course:
XEON 3.6 EM64T = Prescott core, 3.6Ghz, 800Mhz FSB, 1Mb L2, EM64T enabled.
Pentium 4 3.6F = Prescott core, 3.6Ghz, 800Mhz FSB, 1Mb L2, EM64T enabled.
johnsonx - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkto #20, srg,
oooh, ouch, you called me an Intel fanboy.
First, as I pointed out, the only difference between the tested AMD cpu and the very best FX-53 or Opteron x50 is 200Mhz and 512K more cache. 200Mhz isn't going to make the difference, nor is the extra cache. Anandtech has shown numerous times that K8 is not cache starved at all. At best, the top AMD CPU would be 10% faster.
Second, as KK pointed out, the difference between the tested XEON and the P4 3.6F is NOTHING, aside from the 603-pin socket and the E7525 chipset. A P4 3.6F on a 925X chipset would produce exactly the same numbers.
XEON 3.6 EM64T = Prescott core, 3.6Ghz, 800Mhz FSB, 1Mb L2, EM64T enabled.
XEON 3.6 EM64T = Prescott core, 3.6Ghz, 800Mhz FSB, 1Mb L2, EM64T enabled.
Many of the comments here make me think much of the Anandtech readership is bordeline illiterate. For example KK points out that "The entire Prescott family of Intel CPUs received a dedicated integer multiplier rather than continually using the floating point multiplier. This becomes extremely useful in some of our other benchmarks." I guess the Dick and Jane readers had trouble sounding that one out, or they couldn't apply that nugget of info before flaming that the Opteron was faster than XEON before, so why isn't it faster now!?!?!? XEON has changed quite a bit since then Reader Rabbit.
About the only comment in this whole rant I agree with is the one just after my first: #19 fifi pointed out that there is likely a mistake in the MySQL Select numbers, as the last place showing of the A64 doesn't match KK's comments about A64 winning this test.
Stinger22 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkHorrible review... Please get an Opteron 150, provide more details on the testing done, and please throw some more variety in there (like additional cpus (32/64bit/different speeds etc..) and how they perform on these err.. tests lol), oh and do it right next time.
Btw, I registered for the forum just to post this. Yes, it is that bad! Reply
fifi - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkoh blasted, can't edit!
that post above was addressed to manno.
tfranzese - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkEdit buttons would be great, but anyway... I meant to say objective in place of subjective, but for anyone looking for someone's opinion there is also a link in there to a subjective view on Intel's implementation of AMD64. Reply
fifi - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkwhy is it that it MUST be AMD-fans versus Intel-fans? can we not complain when we see shoddy work done?
It's shoddy work when there's no comparison between 32-bit and 64-bit on the P4.
It's shoddy work when the benchmarks posted are simply wrong (look to his earlier review on A3500+).
No, it's not AT being bought by Intel. It's just plain shoddy work.
I would have preferred if Kristopher took his time to run the benchmarks properly, and checked all the numbers are correct and ran all the control tests and present a complete picture, rather than just trying to be the first out of the door with a review on the EM64T.
it's just plain shoddy work.
So keep on the sarcasm and hopefully it will improve your mental abilities which are clearly being impaired by the background EM waves, you SHOULD have bought those aluminium hats like I told you to...
tfranzese - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link#55, 60, aka fanboy. Anandtech was no where the first to post Nocona benches. Not even the second, and probably not even the third.
Here's some further Nocona reading which is far more informative and subjective for those interested that I've collected here: http://www.overclockersonline.com/index.php?page=w...
As for this review I can only say my respect for this site has been lowered a notch. Congrats Kris and Anand! Reply
Viditor - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkAbout what you'd expect between these 2 chips...
1. 512k cache vs 1 meg cache
2. 3.6 GHs vs 2.2 GHz
3. single CPU (Opteron and Athlon64 perform much better as you add CPUs because of Hypertransport)
I really feel that this review should have been held until some comparable chips could have been tested as it appears quite biased in it's present form...
Questions though...
1. Was the setting for the memory timing on the Athlon 64 set to 1T or 2T?
2. Since both CPUs are 64bit, why use only 1 Gig of Ram? (4 Gig would have been a better demonstration...) The reason this is interesting is that there is some confusion as to Xeon's ability in handling larger amounts of memory well.
manno - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkOh cry me a river you poor poor souls.
"Alot of the benchmarks are incorrect due to setup errors. It's not just the scores that we're bitching about, but the SLOPPINESS of the review.."
Yeah it's got to be that, and not the fact that it doesn't paint AMD as the savior of the free world. Of course!! why didn't I see that the first time a lame fanboy posted?
God I feel so stupid!
You know what you're right I must of been crazy to think that Anand isn't in a secret Cabal with Intel to paint The A64 in the worst possible light. Thank you... no I truly mean it from the bottom of my heart thank you for showing me the error of my ways, and keeping evil Intel, and the even more devious Anantech.com out of my life. Well I'm going to head out now and buy myself one of those shiny aluminum hats to keep them from taking over my brain waves. Take care and have fun flaming me.
-manno Reply
Xspringe - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkIt'd be nice to see more balanced benchmark set in the next similar review with less synthetic benchmark and more benchmarks relative to real world usage. These current benchmarks aren't very useful and incomplete as has been stated by a few people before me. Reply
hirschma - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI'd really love to know the sizes of the executables where the Xeon won by a significant amount. I'd bet that everything just fits in the cache for the Xeon, but not for the Athlon.
If that is, in fact, the case, then Anandtech's conclusion should be: sometimes 1 meg of cache beats 512k of cache.
Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
WizzBall - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkUh you're right manno, how awful of us to not behave and thank KK for his effort... So here it is, thank you for wasting my time Kristopher!
And btw, what's this bs about the 'service'... if WE wouldn't come here to read on a daily basis they would have no job, get it manno? Now go back and bow again to KK, thank you very much.
*We'll send kudos when we see something done right although it's true you can't please everybody but this time a majority of the people expressing their opinion think this is crappy work. It's weird how all the fanboys gather here on AT, huh?
Carfax - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkManno, have you read ANY of the replies? Alot of the benchmarks are incorrect due to setup errors. It's not just the scores that we're bitching about, but the SLOPPINESS of the review.. Reply
manno - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkCome on people this is Anandtech, have they ever appeared to be anything, but honest, and unbiased in their reviews? These are the number they got using these benchmarks. They did the work, and gave you the numbers. This site isn't here to advertise for AMD, or Intel. They give you the information, and you use it as a tool for you own purposes from there. I mean come on take of your uniforms, and accept what you see in front of you. This should be looked at as a favor. I don't see any other sites posting benches of Intel's EM64T chips, do you? You came to this site by choice, they don't charge you dime one for the service they provide, and you get pissed at them for not bending the truth so you can to advance your own personal agenda.
Say thank you, and be on your way.
These guys work hard, and they do a fantastic job supplying the enthusiast community with some of the best benchmark numbers around. They just posted numbers showing that EM64T is a huge step forward in terms of P4 performance. So what? If you want to buy an A64 or P4 Prescott and get worse performance in those benches then go out and buy one. I was just about tho buy a some PC's for the office here, and they were all going to have A64's in them. Thanks to Kristopher I've decided to sit on the fence a little longer.
Again Thanks for the early release, it really and truly helped. I hope these fanboy's don't affect you decision to post early numbers in the future.
-manno Reply
WizzBall - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkIs this what you call these days a *benchmark*? Just wondering... o.O Reply
nastyemu25 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkhello. someone effed up :( Reply
coldpower27 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkNot a bad article, though it might have been better if an Opteron 150 was benched which is priced @ 637US or the Athlon FX 53 @ 827US those would be closer in comparison to the Pentium 4 3.6 Nocona EM64T
Though eventually a fairer comparison would be the Pentium 4 3.6F vs the Athlon 64 3500+ or Athlon 64 3700+. You could also throw in the Pentium 4 3.4F and Athlon 64 3400+.
noxipoo - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkat least compare the same thing, if you don't have the same class CPU for testing THEN DON'T POST THE ARTICLE. Reply
tpinckney - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkGiven the numerous errors in this article, I believe it is prudent that it be removed from Anandtech.
This ludicrous article has damaged my opinion of Anandtech. Reply
SKiller - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkWow... and a big fat Intel ad at the bottom of the article. Never thought I'd see the day. Reply
manno - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkGood review, thanks for the early benchmark release. I'm not going to lie to you I like AMD, and I own a bunch of Athlon 64s. But before I think I'll hold off on buying any new hardware until I get to see how well these new P4's do. Any chance we can get some Doom 3 numbers up? Again thanks for giving us the heads up. Looks like things could start heating up in the Chip market soon!
-manno Reply
peter79 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkwow intel fanboy alert.
I also joined the forum just to post here.
Numerous forums are all comenting on this article. Anand's is even compared by some to THG. So I think an update is appropriate here. A delete to.
T8000, maybe you should read some of those comments, you would discover that , compared to an opteron, results would be very different. Results that aren't even correct btw. And that the benchmark choice is awfull. Reply
redpriest_ - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThe gcc options used don't generate 64-bit binaries. Reply
T8000 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI think it is justified to put the 3500+ in its place here. Either it is overrated or its 64 bit support is more of a marketing statement.
For those wanting an 3800+ in the review, just add a little under 10% to the 3500+, since the 3800+ has about 10% more clockspeed and it usually scales close to that. Not that it would change that much, it would only make things worse for AMD fanboys, seeing the 3800+ unable to hold its own against a real 3.6 Ghz CPU.
Besides, you are welcome to try these tests at home with your FX53 or Opteron x50 and submit some scores. Don't have one? Don't worry, AMD hardly sells them anyway, especially to home users, since most users that can afford them do not buy AMD. Reply
matman326 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkVery disappointing.... thats all i'm gonna say. Reply
wildguy2k - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link"Even a intel fanyboy has to laugh at how off sided this failure of a "review" was.
Come on anandtech, if we wanted to read stuff like this we go to tom's"
Exactly. Also, to all those who say that 200MHz & 512KB of cache don't really make much difference, there's an article on this same site that may point out the very difference they provide. Now, I know it's not utilizing the 64bit extensions, but this image
(http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/athlon%2064%203... DOES show a 10% difference between the FX-53 & the 3500+ while compiling... Reply
rocketbuddha - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkReply
AlexWade - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkOkay, deep breath ...
Obviously, the Prescott does some nice math work. I'll keep that in mind. But, most of us, and I'll tend to believe most servers, don't crunch numbers all day. I wanted to see more benchmarks on stuff that is more likely to get done, not finding prime numbers. More encoding, more games, more SQL, more compiling, only one or two math benchmarks.
It is NOT a fair comparision of A64's weakness vs. Prescott's new strength on 60%+ benchmarks.
It is a fair comparision of CPU's. Although, not the best. The Opteron and Athlon64 come from the same mold. Variations aren't going to be that minor.
Please, next benchmark, make it more well-rounded. I could give a flip about Super Pi . Reply
classy - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI see no basis at all for this article. If you only had benchmarks for the 3500+ you should have even written this article. In all the years on Anandtech, I don't ever recall an article as uninformative as this one. Its nice to see the Athlon win a couple of benchmarks, but this is a very needless comparison. Reply
Marlin1975 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkEven a intel fanyboy has to laugh at how off sided this failure of a "review" was.
Come on anandtech, if we wanted to read stuff like this we go to tom's Reply
Pollock - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI just want to throw my comment in here that I agree with most of the other people here. The conclusion is what I find most ridiculous.
"Without a doubt, the 3.6GHz Xeon trounces over the Athlon 64 in math-intensive benchmarks."
Like many other people said, I find that statement very unfair, again considering it wasn't against a similar chip. Reply
bhtooefr - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkOK, I posted that last comment in reply to one on the previous page, and didn't realize that some of the benchmarks were 32-bit ones, either by accident, or to make the AMD smearing more obvious... Reply
bhtooefr - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkAll of the benchmarks were 64-bit. They couldn't have thrown in a regular Xeon 3.6, because it wouldn't be able to run the OS or the benchmarking apps.
They should be testing chips against others in their price range and PR rating range. So, here's what they should have tested (I noticed further down why they used the 3500+ ($346):
Pentium 4 560 EM64T (3.6GHz, $637)
Pentium 4 550 EM64T (3.4GHz, $417)
Pentium 4 540 EM64T (3.2GHz, $278)
I obtained these P4 prices from Intel's price list. While these prices are for the NON-EM64T chips, I read in a press release that Intel isn't charging any more for EM64T.
If they did it right, with the Xeon DP 3.6, here are the CPUs:
Xeon DP 3.6 EM64T ($851)
Opteron 250 ($851 - looks like it's aligned EXACTLY against the DP 3.6) Reply
TauCeti - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkHi Kristopher,
the most disturbing thing for me about your comparisons is your selection of the benchmarks you did run. Some of them are simply not suited at all to run on modern 64-bit systems.
Some details:
If you did not get some 'special' version, you benched Super-PI 2.0 compiled with an ancient (GNU) 2.95.2 in late 1999. Purely 32-bit and the compiler blatantly unaware of modern microarchitectures.
You are joking. The TSCP-bench function does need way below 1Megabyte of memory in 32-bit. Totally in-Cache for the Xeon. Did you have a look at the source (it's small enough)? Why did you think that 64-bit could possibly increase performance? That uneccessarily increased mem-consumption and decreased performance.
BTW: TSCP scores about 420000 on my P4(3.0/875) and about 240000 on a Athlon XP2000+ in 32 bit. The latter value is included in the source code.
Tau Reply
thatsright - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkWOW!!
It is just absolutely mind boggling that AnandTech would run such a incompetent article. To compare a High end server chip, to a mainstream desktop chip, is utterly pointless. (And I am a proud owner of a P4c, not a hardcore AMD fanboi.) I would only expect this sort of incomplete and shoddy journalism from Tom's Hardware or the like.
This article should be pulled until a apt and completer comparison can be run with a Opteron chip. I'm getting a bit concerned with the writing of the last few stories here @ AnandTech. Reply
Pjotr - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link"Relax, its just a primer for future articles. A 3.6F is supposed to compare with a "3600+" rated Athlon 64 isnt it?"
No, it's not. They come from two separate market segments. The 3500+ is a desktop CPU. Opteron is AMDs server CPU. Server CPUs typically has more L2 than desktop CPUs, both for Intel and AMD. Also, the 3500+ rating is supposed to compare to Intel desktop CPUs, not server CPUs. Reply
mrdoubleb - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkOFF
Sorry for the double post. The 1st one had some typos and I used the BACK button to correct them. Bad idea. :)) Reply
mrdoubleb - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkNow, come on! Honestly, this was meant to be posted on April 1st, wasn't it?! Even in your own previous tests we see that (except for video encoding and a few synthetic tests) the 3500+ beats Prescott 3.6. Is a "Prescott B" coming out so shortly that we don't know of that you claim that the new Nocona 3.6 is exactly like the Prescott 3.6?! Why didn't you put up a similarly priced Opteron against this iAMD64 zombie?!
My suggestion for a future test: Sempron 2000+ vs. Prescott 3.6. Title of review: "Both AMD and Intel have released 2 new processors recently. How do they perform against each other?". Reply
mrdoubleb - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkNow, come on! Honestly, this was meant to be posted on April 1st, wasn't it?! Even in your own previous tests we see that (except for video encoding and a few synthetic tests" we see that the 3500+ beats Prescott 3.6. Is a "Prescott B" coming out so shortly that we don't know fo that you claim that the new Nocona 3.6 is exactly like the Prescott 3.6?! Why didn't you put up a similarly priced Opteron against this iAMD64 zombie?!
My suggestion for a future test: Sempron 2000+ vs. Prescott 3.6. Title of review: "Both AMD and Intel have released 2 new processors recently. How do they perform against each other?". Reply
Carfax - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkTo Locutus4657, apparently he used 32bit scores for the first MySQL benchmark on the 3500+ instead of 64bit scores..
Had he used 64bit, the 3500+ would have won both benches instead of just one.. Reply
Locutus4657 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkHere's what I really don't get... Reviewing previous Prescott v. Northwood v. A64 server benchmarks the Prescott was trounced, not only by the A64 but by the Northwood as well (on Mysql Linux). So how the hell did a Prescott end up improving this much in mysql? Were there some core updates I'm not aware of? Reply
Fr0zeN2 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkSynthetic benchmarks are worthless. Show me some real numbers! I dont care who wins i just want to see real benchmarks! Reply
snorre - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkKristopherKubicki: Don't be stupid, you should always compare with the best possible alternative and in single processor systems that is AMD's Opteron 150 or Athlon 64 FX-53. And besides, AMD's rating has nothing to do with Intel's MHz... Reply
snorre - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI'm *VERY* disappointed with this review. Why on earth didn't you compare it with Opteron 150 or Athlon 64 FX-53? Useless! :( Reply
Anemone - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkAs others have commented, the cache probably would have altered these positions. It would have been easy to take an FX and trim the clock down to 2.2ghz if you wanted a close "claimed rating" comparison. It's not exactly a secret that cache helps servers, I mean since that was teh foundation for the entire Xeon line as different from the P4...
I'm taking this in, as I haven't made my decision yet, but honestly there is so much evidence that this analysis falls counter so so many others that I think you have to start over, or at minimum throw a few chips in the mix to see if there was some variation, as well as showing us what the 32bit scores are. And you danced quite interestingly around 64bit Unreal scores which I'm pretty sure you have on hand as well.
What's amusing from all these comments is that you quite obviously have had these results for quite a while, as I know things don't get published entirely instantly, and yet knowing the results didn't change your system recommendations away from the A64's. So, that being true, show us a bit more, because I'll bet there is more to this than meets the eye.
Would also like to suggest in places where you throw up a bunch of cpu's if you would show an FX or one of the A64's at a slightly higher memory bandwidth as a standard item from now on. Most folks seem to be at minimum turning their machines to 225 memory vs 200, and I think that easy speed being possible for even the simple oc'er should show a result on the charts. If you want to be fair you can show the same, say 230-240fsb for P4's but I'm confident that won't really put them in any better light, though it would be fair.
Hope to see more thorough analysis soon!
j3pflynn - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkWhat on earth was that CPU selection about?! Quite inappropriate? Is that the only way Intel would send you their latest? Reply
Carfax - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI joined AT just so I could post a comment on this review..
The review is TERRIBLE! When I saw the heading, I thought FINALLY! We're going to see how good EMT64 is compared to AMD64.
Ofcourse, you can imagine how disappointed I was when I saw that you didn't even have any 32bit reference benchmarks for the Nocona..
Also, you used WAY too many synthetic benches. Like the other members, I'm suspicious of synthetic benches because they are a poor indicator of real world performance.. Also, I have to wonder what possessed you to include these particular benches, when AT didn't use them for the other 64bit benchmarks.
Not to mention, you should have atleast compared an FX to the Nocona, and not just an A64!
Shame on you! Reply
mjz5 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkWouldn't it be fair to compare AMD's fastest CPU (3800+) with Intel's fastest? They are at the same price level! You can't compare CPUs base on spec's allow, price is a bigger issue. Reply
srg - Monday, August 09, 2004 - link*johnsonx*
I wouldn't give up on those opterons yet. The reason why everyone else is flaming here is that it wasn't a fair test. They tested an top end Xeon with a mid range desktop CPU. It would be like compairing a top opteron with a P4 2GHz Northwood.
If it was between a top Xeon and a top opteron and the opteron still got stomped on, then there would be no need to flame (and no I don't agree that a 3600+ desktop CPU is compairable with a top end server CPU).
Although you moan about AMD worshippers, you do sound more like an Intel fanboy.
srg Reply
fifi - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkHi Kristopher,
There are some discrepancies:
for MySQL Test-select, you used the 32-bit result for A64 3500+, instead of the 64-bit results. So A64 should have 215/223 seconds (according to here:http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2127... instead of 289 seconds.
I don't know if there are any others, but I would suggest you check all your benchmarks again carefully.
johnsonx - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkMy oh my, they do come out of the woodwork when AMD loses a set of benchmarks.
Do you all measure your self-worth by how AMD does in benchmarks?
Really, do you all honestly think that 200Mhz more and more L2 cache would really change anything here? That's all an FX-53 or Opteron x50 would gain you, 200Mhz and 512K cache.
AMD Fanbois have such chips on their shoulders... is it really that big a deal that an Intel XEON beat your beloved Athlon64 at what was supposed to be it's own game?
Gee, maybe if you all bitch and moan enough Kristopher will 'fix' the graphs so you'll stop crying. Maybe you can get him to delete the ones where the XEON was faster (oh, that's almost all of them...).
Well, goodnight AMD worshippers. I'll laugh at your flames in the morning.
(p.s. after these benchmark results, I guess I better not deliver these two dual-opteron servers I have here all boxed up and ready to go. Now that I've found out Opterons suck, it just wouldn't be honest to deliver them... nope, I'll have to send back the mainboards and CPU's and order the obviously superior Intel XEON platform)
KristopherKubicki - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThe only reason we even put the 3500+ in there is cause we already had benchmarks for it.
Relax, its just a primer for future articles. A 3.6F is supposed to compare with a "3600+" rated Athlon 64 isnt it? Since we dont have a 3600+ the 3500+ should perform slightly lower? Isnt this what we expected? And for those of you who dont believe me, a 3.6GHz 1MB EM64T Nocona is *exactly* like a 3.6F.
I thougth the AMD chip did pretty damn good for costing $500 less!
ThePlagiarmaster - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI have a problem with which cpu's were compared. You should have included a NON 64bit P4 3.6 as others said to see if 64bit did anything). I'd also have liked an FX in there since you're comparing an $850 chip to 3500+ (perhaps more cache really helps here, and FX has double). These are benchmarks we know NOTHING about (do they favor large caches? etc). You also should state VERY CLEARLY which benchmarks ARE 64bit on 64bit OS. We know that A64 is faster in everything Windows. I've never heard of any of these except PovRay. We see here in an old anand article that 64bit shows around 15-20% (34% on Lame) improvement on A64: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1884&p... I'm having a real problem believing Intel could make up 34% in lame with MS (and a few linux companies) saying Intel's 64bit isn't as good as AMD's. Some people calling it a software emulation hack basically.
Here's another, look at those encryption scores! What's that a 3x faster on RSA encrypt? It cut over 2/3rd's off the score. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlo...
Times cut in half on some, look at zipping too. In less than 1/2 here! Thats 2x+ faster. I really have to suspect these benchmarks with numbers like these out there. Are these 64bit or not that you used? This review does us no good if we can't tell if they are even firing up 64bit. Are they just some old benchmarks written for Intel basically or made for new systems? If you're trying to show a difference you must (at the very least) compare only benchmarks that show 32bit vs 64bit.
"These are both 64-bit CPUs, and so, all benchmarks are run on 64-bit OSes with 64-bit binaries wherever possible." So where was that exactly? You used synthetics everywhere, which in the past have shown intel in a good light when the real world apps/games show something COMPLETELY different. At least Xbit did 32bit+32bitOS vs 32bit+64bitOS AND 64bit+64bitOS. Thats something we can get some data from. That was written Sept 2003! You can't find better benches today? Synthetics have NEVER been shown to reflect the realworld. Quite the opposite in fact.
Another Encryption AMD vs. Intel (itanium no doubt!): http://www.itweek.co.uk/news/1142289
AMD 10% better than Intel Itanium 2! Dual vs. Dual. Your own MySQL tests a good while back, where opterons crush Xeons repeatedly: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?... Granted they are on windows (I think?), but we've been told by MS and other companies that Intel's 64bit sucks compared to AMD's. What gives here? Intel's chip has gained 800mhz, and AMD's has gained 600mhz (since your opteron article). AMD's 600 is worth more per clock than Intels 800. So how did they trounce AMD? The FX score would have shed a little more light here, but if things didn't even up, something's a bit fishy with these benchmarks. We need some answers here methinks. Not 'Intel's 64bit trounces AMD in benchmarks you've never heard of, oh and we're not even going to tell which are 64bit, and no 32bit vs. 64bit to even show if its a 64bit win or just more fake synthetic crap scores'. Yes, I know what a run-on sentence is...heh. I could go on, but I think I've provided ample "other" benchmarks that show complete reverse or serious AMD 64bit improvements. Besides it's 2am, I'm wiped out. Reply
syadnom - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linki'm have been a loyal anandtecher for quite a long time, if i keep seeing reviews of this caliber, i'm going to have to delete my bookmark. Reply
syadnom - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkwow, WTF were you guys thinking!?!
in our next review, we'd like to show your how an AthlonFX53 compares to a 2.8Ghz Celeron
........."as you can see, the Celeron just cannot keep up with the AMD monster, looks like intel is really going to have to pick up the pace or AMD could rule the frickin' world with this new behemoth"
really though, a Xeon3.6 vs. a A643500, WTF, where is the Opt 150? how about showing apples to apples, this is like comparing apples to bannanas. Reply
kellymjones4 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkThis review was bizarre. Why compare a $345 CPU to a top of the line Xeon? An Opteron 150 is less than $700 from many retailers. What's next, Opteron vs. Celeron??? Reply
Avalon - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linklol Shimm.
"Xeon processor retails for $850 and the Athlon 3500+ retails for about $500 less". $500 less than the Xeon, not $500 :)
I agree, weird article to put up, and very weird benchmarks. Reply
mkruer - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkKristopher:
To reiterate what other people have been saying, your methodology is flawed. What you need to do is choose 3 processors from AMD and Intel (same class preferably) and run them both in an 32-bit environment and then 64-bit to see what the gain, if any, really is. For all we know the 64-bit scores for the Nocona might be even lower then the 32-bit brethren. If so this also points to the fact that most of the applications you tested are more megahertz dependant the 64-bit dependant, and not a good judgment of the how good Intel's 64-bit implementation is. If the AMD is 64-bt scores higher then it does in 32-bit then this says that AMD did a good job and gets a boost, however if Intel's chip falls compared to the 32 test this shows that Intel implementation is not good.
Shimmishim - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkfor real though, did intel pay you off for this review???
and you state that a 3500+ retails for less than $500... why don't you try less than $400 at most online vendors...
and you'll do a review later (opteron vs. xeon)??? why don't you do in the first place instead of being a lazy bum and trying to save face for intel... Reply
Shimmishim - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkwhat in the world are you doing?
is AT's review's getting worse and worse???
this by far has to be the worst review ever... comparable to those found at tom's...
kris... what in the world were you on when you did this review??? Reply
Zebo - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkWow!
In other news: "intel's offers 10M for anandtech.com" Reply
Locutus4657 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkIs it just me or is a Server/Workstation CPU v. Desktop CPU comparision anything but apples to apples? Perhapse apples to pears at best? Could please re-run every test with the correct hardware? While I'm in a mood to rant, why the heck is your site no longer storing passwords when posting comments to articles? Reply
murdmath - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkWhy are you running a Server chip (ie Xeon) against a Desktop chip (ie Athon 64)? Get an Opteron 150 and do it right. Reply
Jeff7181 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkOoops... I really wish it was possible to edit these. =) What I meant to say was...
"... especially since 2/3 of those benchmarks..." Reply
Jeff7181 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkI would like to see some Pentium 4 3.6 GHz numbers in there too so we can see the effect of Intel's x86-64 support. With the data available, it's impossible to decide whether Intel has integrated it properly and gets a performance boost, or if a 3.6 GHz Xeon is just naturally that much faster than an Athlon-64 3500+... especially since 92/3 of those benchmarks are not benchmarks I've ever seen you run before so I have no idea how ANY other processor compares.
Sorry Kristopher, but this was a BAD article. There's not nearly enough information to draw any useful conclusions. Reply
gimp0 - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkthis was probably the worst comparison ever. At least give us some game benchmarks like UT2004 64bit and let us see some real numbers.
Server CPU against a mianstream chip in a database environment will surely favor the xeon.
whatever though Reply
the5thgeek - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkwhat is the reason for comparing the new intel processor against the slowest socket 939 processor? why not a FX53 or 3800? Reply
DrMrLordX - Monday, August 09, 2004 - linkWhat the hell made you run a 3.6 ghz Nocona vs the 3500+?!? Try running it against an Opteron 150! For crying out loud . . . Reply