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Subject: Re: Question about comparison pentium4 Xeon2 and opteron

Author: Joachim Rang

Date: 03:43:00 06/21/04

Go up one level in this thread


On June 21, 2004 at 06:14:58, Uri Blass wrote:

>On June 21, 2004 at 05:51:40, Joachim Rang wrote:
>
>>On June 21, 2004 at 05:24:33, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>I talk with a person and he tells me that Xeon2 is new technology and it is
>>>better than opteron but it simply does not fit the price that I agree to pay for
>>>it.
>>>
>>>He tells me that there are graphs that tell that Xeon2 is better.
>>>When I tell him that people in this forum told me that pentium4 is relatively
>>>bad he tells me that he does not trust them(note that he does not deal with
>>>chess programs).
>>>
>>
>>that's the point. Xeons are fine for certain applications and in generally I
>>would say not worse than Opterons (but not better neither and much more
>>expansive).
>>
>>For certain applications Xeons will outperform Opterons significantly and for
>>others (such as chess programs) Opterons will outperform Xeons significantly.
>>That is what all people in that board are telling you, so no need to ask other
>>people who know nothing about chess performance.
>>
>>
>>>He also claims that the Athlon64 is the same quality as the pentium4 that I can
>>>get.
>>>He agrees that the opteron is better than normal pentium4 that I can get.
>>>
>>
>>this is all wrong. You can't no more make such general statements, since the
>>performance for different purposes very widely. In general the P4 has also its
>>merits and performs in some multimedia applciation very well, but for chess...
>>
>>>I am interested to know if there is some graph that shows that the opteron and
>>>even the athlon64 is better than the xeon2.
>>>
>>
>>look at the benchmarks given in this board and here:
>>
>>http://www.beepworld.de/members39/computerschach2/chessmarks.htm
>
>As far as I can see the leader is xeon and not athlon and the xeon is more than
>twice faster in nps than second place so the reason is not having 2 processors
>against one.


This is misleading: the 1st entry is with two processors and HT enabled so
apparently using 4 processors. Fritz than pushes the nps in the sky but that
does not mean that it reaches greater depth (probably the contrary is true).

DualXeon 3,565    2953 kn/s    Jens H. (Deep Fritz8, 2 CPU)

The "realistic" value is the 4th one:

DualXeon 3,565    1326 kn/s    Jens H. (Fritz8; 1 CPU)

And that is an overclocked Xeon, so a standard Xeon @ 3.2 GHz would give 1190
knps. Compare that to 1405 with AMD 64 @ 2.2 GHz!

HT is not helping chess programs as Bob pointed out here some time ago. It can
increase the nps but it won't increase time to solution, since the faster nps
are elliminated by more SMP-Overhead (in fact time-to-solution may be even
worse).

>>
>>
>>>Note that I probably decided to go for the opteron and not for the athlon
>>>because people tell me that I cannot get responsibility for the athlon64 and are
>>>against it.
>>>
>>
>>What does that mean? The guarantee is the same, why you can't get responsibility
>>for an AMD 64?
>
>I do not know.
>
>People tell me that I can get responsibility only for parts and not for all the
>computer but I agree that if I go for opteron248 not from IBM there is the same
>problem.
>
>I still did not buy opteron with the same speed with responsibility only for the
>parts.
>
>It probably can cost me near 2000$ instead of total price near 5000$ that was
>for opteron directly from IBM(I still do not know the total price and people try
>to get details for me).
>
>Uri


If you buy a complete system (even an assembled one according to your wishes)
you have guarantee and responsibility for the whole system according to the laws
in your country. IBM may extend the respnsibility in duration and service
quality, but every complete system you are buying should come with
responsibility.

regards Joachim



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