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Subject: Re: Memory benchmark comparison DDR333 vs RDRAM PC1066 !

Author: Aaron Gordon

Date: 12:35:25 12/02/02

Go up one level in this thread


On December 02, 2002 at 15:12:36, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On December 02, 2002 at 14:48:33, Aaron Gordon wrote:
>
>>On December 02, 2002 at 10:49:47, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On December 01, 2002 at 23:13:39, Aaron Gordon wrote:
>>>
>>>>On December 01, 2002 at 22:19:16, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On December 01, 2002 at 12:57:51, Aaron Gordon wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On December 01, 2002 at 12:28:38, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>On December 01, 2002 at 05:03:00, Jorge Pichard wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Also a comparison of the new AMD XP 2600+ Vs Intel P4 2.53 Ghz !
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q3/020821/athlonxp-04.html
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>That just highlights what others have said before.  AMD has a memory
>>>>>>>bottleneck that is hurting them significantly in the war with Intel...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Hyatt, it's not nearly as bad as you think. It happens I have a KT333 chipset on
>>>>>>an Epox 8K5A2. I'm running "Turbo" settings in the bios (but running CL2.5
>>>>>>instead of CL2(cl2=faster)) and I'm getting 2.5gb/s.
>>>>>
>>>>>So?  That is about 1/4 what the PIV xeon can do.  Go to tom's hardware page
>>>>>and you'll find some interesting comparisons...
>>>>
>>>>I have been going to Tomshardware for years now, watching the stuff he's been
>>>>saying, stuff he's posting and etc. I haven't seen anything interesting in years
>>>>as well. You say the P4 Xeon can do 10gb/s? (2.5x4). I think not.
>>>
>>>The number I have seen for the 2.8 xeon on the E7501 chipset was about
>>>6.5gb/second.  I either mis-typed my response or misread your number as
>>>1.5, I don't remember which.  But the AMDs are not approaching 6+ gb/sec
>>>yet in any test I have seen.  And on a few of the really memory intensive
>>>_real_ applications such as linpack, the fastest intel box has been posting
>>>number 3-4x that of AMD...  And I'm not talking about overclocked numbers as
>>>I ignore those.
>>>
>>>
>>>>The efficiency
>>>>on P4's is less than desirable. The 133fsb(533QDR) PC1066 RDRAM P4's can
>>>>supposedly do something like 8.5gb/s. Actual bandwidth = 3.2gb/s. Not too
>>>>impressive. Around 37% efficiency. As as said in the previous message an Nforce2
>>>>can manage over 3gb/s at over 95% efficiency & with much lower latencies
>>>
>>>I have looked around and don't see any references to support the above.  The
>>>2.8xeons are at the top of the bandwidth heap on every chart I have seen.
>>>Notice that I am specifically addressing "2.8ghz xeon using the E7500 chipset"
>>>as that is the machine I have ordered and that is the machine that I carefully
>>>studied on the intel side when making the decision...  I had some crafty
>>>benchmark data from that machine as well as the recent 2800+ AMD and I made
>>>the decision based on performance and nothing else...  And before you ask,
>>>(a) I didn't do the benchmark tests and (b) I can't reveal the people that
>>>did them, but you can probably at least figure out who they work for...  Same
>>>for my Itanium2 numbers that I have mentioned in the past...  But that doesn't
>>>mean the numbers are "phoney".  Whether the athlon 2800+ dual is faster
>>>for another program doesn't matter to me since I work on Crafty.  I'm not
>>>even sure when the 2800+ will be actually available, but it doesn't matter
>>>in the context of what I am doing anyway...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>If you bothered to do any testing yourself you'll find out the P4 isn't what
>>>>it's cracked up to be. It's odd to me that you have such a blind confidence in
>>>>the P4. You haven't bothered doing any extensive testing on one and you haven't
>>>>messed with an Athlon yet you 'feel' the P4 is faster. Why is that?
>>>>I can try to believe a Pinto is faster than a Ferrari but it's just not going
>>>>happen. :)
>>>>
>>>
>>>I haven't tested on AMD, you are correct.  But I _have_ tested on a dual PIV
>>>as I said before.  And I will have a dual 2.8 here pretty soon (I hope, if
>>>the holidays don't cause delays).
>>>
>>>I don't "feel" anything is faster than anything else.  I rely on numbers posted
>>>by people here that I trust.  Eugene is one, as I doubt anyone knows more about
>>>the internals of both processors (from an assembly/optimizing/etc point of view)
>>>than he does.  So when he posts numbers I listen.  And his dual PIV numbers
>>>were better than the dual AMD numbers.  Others also have the PIV on top of the
>>>heap, including Tom's page of course...
>>>
>>>However, if someone has a dual AMD 2600+ (or whatever they are going to call
>>>the chip after admitting their "+" numbers were too optimistic) running linux,
>>>we can compare speeds once my machine arrives.  That's the way I tend to settle
>>>speed disputes.  Run the test...  If I thought AMD was faster, I'd have bought
>>>a dual AMD.  If I could have afforded a dual/quad itanium-2 I would have bought
>>>that as nothing else is close.  If Cray built something in this price range I
>>>would have gone that way as well.  I try to "follow the performance" and don't
>>>have any vendor-specific preferences at all, although I had a couple of very bad
>>>AMD experiences in the K5 days, and that did leave a sour taste...  But if AMD
>>>can take the performance lead, I'd buy.  But so far, they've been unable to
>>>even think about quad machines...  while Intel has had 'em for at least 5+
>>>years.  That means they will _always_ be behind by a factor of nearly two or
>>>so...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>This just proves once again Tom is a bad reviewer. There's already proof out he
>>>>>>faked a Pentium4 review and I have proof he hinders Athlons (by setting their
>>>>>>bios settings to the absolute lowest setting). The KT333 set to "turbo" has an
>>>>>>efficiency of 94%, this means out of 2.7GB/s max theoretical bandwidth at
>>>>>>166fsb(333DDR) it does 2538MB/s. Since mine is CL2.5 I'm only running 90%
>>>>>>efficiency (2430mb/s). With Nforce2 boards and running 200+ fsb you can get over
>>>>>>3gb/s on an Athlon easily. Same with the Epox 8K9A2.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Again, that is _still_ slow compared to the PIV xeon numbers with (say) the
>>>>>E7501 chipset...
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Tom however is managing a horrible 74%. You can do better than this even setting
>>>>>>the settings to 'normal'. He has disabled other options to get the benchmarks
>>>>>>THAT low. 26% below regular 166fsb(333DDR) scores is pretty bad.
>>>>>>Even your average KT266a/333/400 board at 133fsb gets about 2gb/s.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>About the faked review he did.. it's the "Hot contraband P4-3.6GHz". He used a
>>>>>>Pentium4 2GHz CPU and cut&pasted some of the 3's to make it look like a 3.3GHz
>>>>>>P4. The picture is STILL on his page. Just go look at that article and save the
>>>>>>large P4 picture. Go into an image editing program and go near the bottom where
>>>>>>it says "80531PC3.3G0K". Drag a selection box around the second three in that
>>>>>>line and copy it, invert the colors and then drag that over the other three. You
>>>>>>will see a black box where the colors match EXACTLY. This was a cut & paste job.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Tom isn't the only corrupt reviewer, either.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>I'm not going to debate that.  Tom's hardware isn't the only place that is
>>>>>doing these measurements.  There are some well-known academics that are
>>>>>interested in various benchmarks like streams, linpack, etc...
>>
>>You say, "I had some crafty benchmark data from that machine as well as the
>>recent 2800+ AMD and I made the decision based on performance and nothing
>>else...". The only way the 2800+ is going to be any slower is if the binary it
>>ran had the 1.4x speedup problem. Email your source and have them test with one
>>of my binaries. You could also take the dual 2800+ results and multiply them by
>>1.214 (21.4% diff between 1.7 and 1.4).
>>
>>Also you say the + numbers are optimistic.. How so? My 1900+ at 1.8GHz (2200+)
>>is on par with a P4-3GHz in Crafty. A 2600+ (Stock) could beat the P4-3.25GHz in
>>the results list I have AND have room to spare.
>
>
>I don't say that.  AMD said that.  And they are scaling their numbers back.
>They
>were using a raw estimate that every 66mhz increase in clock speed gave them
>100mhz
>of effective speed increase compared to the PIV.  They discovered this failed at
>the
>beyond 2000 mhz clock frequencies and was "optimistic".  Again, I assume they
>know
>what they are doing since they make the things...
>
>
>
>>By the way, AMD is currently working on Quad Opteron systems and there are test
>>boards available. I don't know if you remember what I said in a previous message
>>(not in this thread) but Opterons are going to have dual-channel DDR and memory
>>banks and that dedicated bandwidth PER CPU.
>>So if you have four CPU's and you're running 200MHz(400DDR) memory w/ dual
>>channels thats 6.4gb/s per cpu. Total you'd have 25.6gb/s bandwidth. Oh, don't
>>forget the CPU has it's own memory controller.
>
>
>Right... and how are you going to read data out of memory where each bank has
>100+ns
>latency?  I know how supercomputers do it.  I don't think you are going to see
>4-port memory
>banks in a machine at that price point...
>
>Theoretical max is a nice concept.  Attainable thruput is more interesting.  At
>present, Intel
>seems to be leading that list by a significant margin.  Whether they will in the
>future or not
>I don't know, as I try to not evaluate "vaporware".  But for the moment, they
>are on top in the
>bandwidth war...  as Linpack and other normal memory-intensive applications show
>time after
>time.
>

Take a look at this:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DownloadableAssets/MPF_Hammer_Presentation.PDF
>
>
>I hope they can deliver a quad opteron for a resonable price.  They were talking
>about quad
>K7's two years ago and not a single instance has shown up yet.  Intel talked
>about the 8-way
>boxes a while back and delivered a kludge there, using a "fusion" chipset to tie
>two 4-way
>clusters of processors together into a single 8-way box, but with terrible
>memory performance.
>They tried to offset that by only offering 2M L2 caches, but that drove the
>price up and didn't
>help memory-bound large applications at all...  I hope the quad opterons don't
>end up in
>never-never land as the 8-way boxes did..

Here's a picture of a Quad opteron system if for some reason you think it's
never going to happen...
http://www.amdzone.com/articleimages/cpu/hammer/4popt.JPG
There are many Dual Opterons out as well..

>If I recall, the 4=way dual 2.0ghz xeon is the fastest PC-class machine around
>right now,
>by a wide margin.  And the heavier the load placed on it, the wider that gap
>becomes...



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