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Subject: Re: Athlon 64 or Intel P4 3.2 EE: which ?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 19:52:03 12/10/03

Go up one level in this thread


On December 10, 2003 at 22:07:23, Peter Kasinski wrote:

>On December 09, 2003 at 20:25:37, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On December 09, 2003 at 15:05:29, Peter Kasinski wrote:
>>
>>>On December 08, 2003 at 15:31:51, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On December 08, 2003 at 14:32:15, Aaron Gordon wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On December 08, 2003 at 13:08:41, Slater Wold wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On December 08, 2003 at 12:55:36, Leen Ammeraal wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I saw the Athlon 64 based
>>>>>>>"PC Vobis Power 64 3200+ XD" (euro 1299).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>How does this compare with an Intel P4 3.2 EE ?
>>>>>>>Which would you prefer for chess?
>>>>>>>Leen
>>>>>>
>>>>>>According to http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/CCAM/a64fx_51_launch.shtml, the
>>>>>>3.2EE would be faster.
>>>>>
>>>>>Shame they only tested (except for UT2k3) applications where the P4 does decent.
>>>>>As I said in a previous post.. where is DVD2AVI (where an Athlon does best for
>>>>>Mpeg encoding). It is much faster than XMpeg for me (on my XP). Also, in Povray
>>>>>(a renderer a normal person would use, rather than drop $4000 for one of the
>>>>>ones they use to test) the Athlon is a good 50%+ faster than the P4. In 64bit
>>>>>mode it is something like 3 times faster. The Athlon FX is even faster than the
>>>>>XP. Expecially for chess, which I believe what he was asking about in the first
>>>>>place.
>>>>>
>>>>>Go test Fritz, Shredder, Crafty, etc. on a 2.2GHz FX. You'll see in 32bit mode
>>>>>you'll gain 20-30% over an Athlon XP (which is already faster than a P4 for
>>>>>chess).
>>>>>
>>>>>About PCMark and 3DMark (all made by madonion/futuremark).. they're all bunk.
>>>>>PCMark is biased towards the P4 and now that ATI slapped them with some cash
>>>>>they're biased towards ATI. If you don't believe me, try this. Get a Pentium 2
>>>>>400MHz (yes, 400MHz) and a Radeon 9700 pro, 9800, whatever. Now, put a Geforce4
>>>>>ti4600 in a P4-3.2EE, Athlon FX 2.8GHz, you name it.. doesn't matter. The
>>>>>Pentium 2 400MHz will get a higher 3DMark. Why? Well, thats what happens when
>>>>>you dump a ton of cash on a company.. they do what you want.
>>>>>
>>>>>The semi-technical reason why it is like this was something nvidia found out.
>>>>>They found that the way futuremark did the pixel shaders was ridiculous. Adding
>>>>>a specific loop (or something like that, you can search for it on google) that
>>>>>only the ATI chips could do.. and the entire test setup was this crap. In real
>>>>>life, and in any other 3D program the Geforce4 on the faster CPU would
>>>>>absolutely kill the P2-400MHz with the 9700 Pro. This is an example of the crap
>>>>>companies do to fool customers.
>>>>>
>>>>>I've done the testing (P4-2.53 @ 3.32ghz and limited testing at 3.5ghz) for
>>>>>chess and other programs, my Athlon XP at 2.5GHz beat it in 95% of the tests and
>>>>>ALL of the chess programs. An Athlon FX 2.2GHz is 20-30% faster than an XP at
>>>>>2.2GHz, so you can figure it'd be equal to an XP 2.64-2.86GHz.. which is
>>>>>definitely faster than any P4 (even if they clocked it up to 4GHz and more) to
>>>>>date. If you want the fastest, go for this:
>>>>>http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000268
>>>>>
>>>>>Plus, if you get a P4-3.2EE what do you think you'll be doing when lots of the
>>>>>chess programs go to 64bit, and most of everything else? You'll end up buying an
>>>>>Athlon FX.. the P4 will get smoked even more when 64bit stuff hits the scene.
>>>>>You can get one now and when everything switches over you won't have to upgrade
>>>>>at all. If you do go with a P4-EE you'll just be one of many who wonder why it
>>>>>isn't as fast as the 'review' pages say.
>>>>>
>>>>>If in doubt, test it yourself.. I did.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>I agree about the amd64 speeds.  IE a 1.8ghz opteron is faster than my
>>>>2.8ghz xeon by a significant margin.  One cpu test puts the 1.8ghz opteron
>>>>at a bench speed of 1,639.241 nps.  My 2.8ghz xeon weighs in at 1,079,714
>>>>nps.  Add .4ghz to reach 3.2, and add .4 to reach amd's 2.2, and the
>>>>amd is going to be 50-60% _faster_...
>>>
>>>Bob, could you please clarify if there is any special recompiling involved, or
>>>do these numbers represent Crafty's performance in the version as is - from your
>>>site.
>>>
>>>Thanks,
>>>PK
>>
>>Version 19.5/19.6, exactly from my web site.  19.7 will have a linux-amd64
>>makefile target so that you can use _exactly_ what I use to compile as well,
>>if you have an opteron with the Suse 9 release.
>>
>>BTW, I finally got a PGO compile to work.  It was slower.  Not by much,
>>but it was slower.  Oddball result for sure.  (-fprofile-arcs and later
>>-fbranch-probabilities).  You can _not_ PGO on multithreaded code, however,
>>it will wreck the .da files horribly.
>>
>>I can post my amd makefile target if you want...
>
>Thank you, this answers my question.
>By the way - do you know what the new 2Mb cache does to the Xeon chip?
>How might it alter the above prediction?
>
>Thanks,
>PK


2mb xeons have been around for years.  My quad 700 has 1mb L2 for example,
and 2mb xeons were available, just way too pricey.  I have run on them,
and the speed advantage was maybe 10%, while the cost per cpu was about $5,000
when I did the test.  the 512K processors were $1K and the 1mb L2 cache
processors were about $2400.

When I bought my 700's the 1mb versions were 1300 bucks, but the 2mb
versions were still stuck up at 4,000+...

It wasn't worth the cost. although if cost were no object, 2mb is certainly
faster.



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