Linux and EM64T; Intel's 64-bit Suggestion
by Kristopher Kubicki on August 9, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Audio Encoding
Lame was compiled from source without optimizations. We only ran ./configure and make, without any flags. We realize that some people would like to verify our binaries and sample files for their own benchmarks. In order to save bandwidth and prevent copyright infractions, we will provide our test files and binaries under limited circumstances to serious inquiries. We ran lame on a 700MB .wav file using the command equivalent to the one below:# lame sample.wav -b 192 -m s -h >/dev/null
Encoding time, lower is better.
POV-RAY
Although POV-RAY is limited in application (particularly when compared against Mental Ray), it does provide a free open source solution for basic rendering. POV-Ray 3.50c was our choice of render engine for this benchmark. For benchmark specifics, we run the exact benchmark as specified by the POV-Ray official site. We use the precompiled RPM for this test.Render Time in Seconds, less is better.
POV-Ray does not have multithread support, so we were not surprised to see the HyperThreading configuration slowing down to the configuration without HT. We see the Athlon 64 processor pull way ahead; render tasks are extremely CPU and memory dependant. With the memory controller on the CPU, Athlon 64 becomes the stronger offering in this situation.
GZip
To throw in some rudimentary tests for GZip, we used the included GZip 1.3.5 to compress the .wav file from the benchmark above. We do not want to limit our I/O on writing to the hard drive, so the operation is performed as below:# time gzip -c sample.wav > /dev/null
Intel wins their first bout of the analysis, albeit not by much. We will find a recurring pattern later on with integer based calculations and the Nocona Xeon processor. 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.
Database Performance
We will run the standard SQL-bench suite included with RPM MySQL 4.0.20d.
Of all our benchmarks, the SQL-bench becomes the most baffling. The extremely threaded database application performs particularly poorly with HyperThreading enabled. The Althon 64 outperforms Intel again in this benchmark, and a lot of it is almost certainly accredited to the on die memory controller again.
Update: We copied the 32-bit marks from our benchmark in previous testing instead of the 64-bit. You can view the previous articles here from a month ago. The graphs have also been updated.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
275 Comments
View All Comments
ss284 - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Its 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
Xspringe - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Jup, 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.
dougSF30 - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
These 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 9, 2004 - link
My previous comment (#91) was in repronse to johnsonx's reaction (#69).mrdoubleb - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Just 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:
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1441/index.html
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".
dali71 - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
The message is clear...Kristopher has failed!(Sorry, had to be said for old times sake;) )
ten9 - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
The makefile used in TSCP on the A64 is totally screwed up!Read this comment on aces:
http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=115093868
They get: Nodes per second: 281583 (Score: 1.158)
on a non-overclocked AXP 2500+ on a single channel Via board
ashay - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
Any 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.
Zebo - Monday, August 9, 2004 - link
With 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 9, 2004 - link
While 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.