Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part II: A Deeper Look
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 6, 2005 12:23 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
I'll admit, dual core has me excited for many of the reasons outlined in Part I. A big part is that personally, I've been using multiprocessor systems in my main computer for years. I've always appreciated the benefits of multiprocessor platforms, but recommending one for a desktop user has never been really feasible. Even the cheapest 2P workstation motherboards were at least twice the price of a desktop motherboard, not to mention the cost of the CPUs. The mass market had a short affair with multiprocessing in the days of the ABIT BP6 and the Celeron 300A, but in the grand scheme of things, that was barely a blip on the radar. Now, for the first time, both AMD and Intel are ready to bring the type of robustness of multiprocessor platforms to the desktop with their dual core offerings.
Part I focused on what dual core can offer, but now it's time for a much more practical look. We've never recommended Intel's Extreme Edition line of processors nor AMD's FX series, both supposedly marketed to gamers, but not purchased by any of our gaming readers. The processors that we recommend are usually much better values for the price, and thus, today's comparison isn't based around the most expensive dual core offerings, but rather the cheapest.
A point we made in the first article was that Intel's pricing strategy for dual core is extremely aggressive, with the cheapest 2.8GHz Pentium D soon to be introduced at $241. The problem is that at only 2.8GHz, the Pentium D won't have the strongest single threaded performance, which puts buyers in a sticky situation - do you buy an Athlon 64 3500+ for great single threaded performance or will the Pentium D give you a better overall multitasking experience? Intel doesn't do much to complicate the situation, as the Pentium D 2.8GHz will be close in price to the Pentium 4 630 (3.0GHz), which isn't much of a clock speed advantage. AMD will eventually have competitively priced dual core parts, but right now, AMD doesn't appear to be looking at the mainstream desktop market for dual core Athlon 64 chips.
The three chips mentioned above are the basis of the majority of today's comparison, but the decision is far from clear cut. Let's find out why.
Power Consumption
We'll start with power consumption - the contenders? A 90nm Athlon 64 3500+ vs. the Pentium 4 630 and the dual core 2.8GHz Pentium D. As always, we measured total system power at two states: idle and under a full load. For our full load test, we used a multithreaded application, 3ds max 7, performing the CBALLS2 render test from the SPECapc benchmark.
The K8 architecture simply lends itself to lower power consumptions than Intel's high frequency approach to computing with the Pentium 4 (especially Prescott). The move down to 90nm really reduced AMD's power consumption a lot, to the point where the 90nm Athlon 64 3500+ actually consumes less power under full load than the Pentium 4 630 at idle.
The Pentium 4 vs. Pentium D comparison is also interesting, as the 2nd core doesn't add all that much to overall system power consumption. In this case, we're looking at an increase in overall system power consumption by less than 15%. Intel still doesn't win in the power consumption department though; if you want something cool and quiet, AMD is still the way to go.
The Test
Our hardware configurations are similar to what we've used in previous comparisons.
AMD Athlon 64 Configuration
Socket-939 Athlon 64 CPUs
2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL Dual Channel DIMMs 2-2-2-10
NVIDIA nForce4 Reference Motherboard
ATI Radeon X850 XT PCI Express
Intel Pentium 4 Configuration
LGA-775 Intel Pentium 4 and Extreme Edition CPUs
2 x 512MB Crucial DDR-II 533 Dual Channel DIMMs 3-2-2-12
Intel 955X Motherboard
ATI Radeon X850 XT PCI Express
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segagenesis - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Since I mostly play games ill stick to buying the AMD64 3500+. Thanks. My definition of multi-tasking is using a whole other computer ;)The Pentium D seems pretty decent at multitasking as you would define running two things at once but I rarely do that sort of thing since its kind of dumb to encode a DVD in the background while playing a game. Or does encoding a DVD really interfere with browsing the web? I dont know... that and the heat factory output as if it was bad enough is now worse.
Woodchuck2000 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#23 - I'm assuming that a dual core A64 at 2.2GHz will blow a Pentium D out of the water at any of the launch frequencies! The Prescott core isn't really designed for multi-core operation, and needs some kind of arbitration logic and some funky-memory-controlling-thingy to work. As a result, the performance improvements in multi-threaded applications aren't anything like the theoretical extra 100% another core could bring. With A64 being designed for multi-core operation I'd expect the increase in performance to be nearer 85%.As regards the performance gap between the P4 630 and A64 3500+, the majority of the benchmarks shown here are designed specifically to show performance improvements in multi-core processors. The 630 is hyper-threaded and therefore logically multi-cored, if not physically so. As such the 630 will have artificially high performance compared with the 3500+ - in most single-application benchmarks, the AMD chip would thrash both Intel chips.
Is there any chance of adding benches for the 630 with HT disabled (or at least giving us an idea of performance.)? We've got a vanilla A64 versus a HT 630 and Dual-core system. It'd be good to see how a single core performs for reference.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Jeff7181I really can't say more, but you are barking up the wrong tree with those assumptions :)
AMD's dual core will be quite impressive, even more so than Intel's. Don't look at performance as the only vector to measure though...
marcusgarcia
We did look at HT performance when it came out, but the problem is that HT doesn't improve performance in all cases. Look at the Gaming Multitasking Scenario 2 tests, HT reduced performance significantly - most likely because DVD Shrink and Doom 3/Splinter Cell were both contending for floating point resources that were in use. Dual core solves this problem by having two complete sets of execution units, so there's no worry about contention between threads for shared resources.
As far as Half Life 2 goes, it is still single threaded so its performance characteristics would be no different than what you see here.
mlittl3
I've been looking into running VoIP or some sort of voice chat program in the background, the problem surfaces in trying to put together a reliable, repeatable workload. Dual core will most definitely help there, but how much - I do not know.
I haven't given up yet :)
BruceDickenson
Glad to have you on-board and thanks for the kind words :)
Woodchuck2000
The new dual core chips are still LGA-775, but they do require a new motherboard (unlike AMD's solution which just requires a new BIOS). Currently Intel's 945 and 955 chipsets will support dual core, and tomorrow I should have a nForce4 SLI Intel Edition board that will support dual core as well. The new NVIDIA chipset does support dual core, but it's up to motherboard makers to implement support for it in their designs.
Check with the motherboard maker to make sure that dual core is explicitly supported by the board, it should say so somewhere in the manual or on the box.
Take care,
Anand
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#22... Anand said a 2.2 GHz Athlon 64 won't compete with the 2.8 GHz Pentium D. That either means a 2.2 GHz dual core Athlon 64 will have lackluster performance, or it will be AMD's new enthusiast line like the FX is right now, which means it would be competing with the Extreme Edition chips, not the regular line.I guess there's a 3rd possibility. He was referring to dual core Opterons which obviously won't compete with the Pentium D any more than the Opteron competes with the Pentium 4 right now.
Woodchuck2000 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Just out of interest, does anyone know what socket do the new cores use? Will the new nVidia chipset support the new cores (it was hinted at briefly, but not stated explicitly...)?#19 - What's your source for those assertions? I've heard reports that AMD have got samples running at well over 2GHz and since the K8 architecture is natrually better suited to multiple cores I'd have expected blistering performance. BTW, does anyone know if the AMD cores will be based on the new Venice rev? Is SSE3 a given?
BruceDickenson - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Hey all, long time reader, this is my first "post"/comment...Just had to say this is one of the most interesting articles I've read in a long time. I loved the NCQ tangent, it almost felt like you were part of a conversation when you read how Lal Shimpi analyzed the anomaly in his testing.
Loved it! Thanks AT!
marcusgarcia - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
14# again.Forgot to say in the last post, my rant is about HT, not dual cores.
I know 2-cores won't make THAT difference on these trivial things (who needs another 2.8ghz for simple stuff?)...but..HT is benefiting GREATLY from it, yet noone mentioned it and didn't even try this sort of test when HT was launched.
When you see the 3.0 HT doing better than a AMD 3500+ (supposedly 500 points faster), you gotta ask how badly would it beat the AMD 64 3000+, which happens to cost almost the same than the P4 3.0 ghz...which happened to destroy the much faster AMD on the test.
That pretty much sucks and leave us with the impression that people either:
a - wanted to benefit AMD
or
b - were too ingenuous to think on these tests when doing HT tests (which can't be true because i always wanted them)
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Errr... correction...1.) The dual core 2.2 GHz Athlon-64's will be less than impressive and won't even perform in the same class as a Pentium D @ 2.8 GHz.
2.) The mainstream Athlon-64 dual core chips will be running at much less than 2.2 GHz, and the 2.2 GHz dual cores will be the FX line, which compete with the Extreme Edition Pentiums.
marcusgarcia - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
14#Completely wrong.
1º: Outlook checks 8 pop accounts for mail and apply it's rules to it every minute or so.
2º: MSN with webcam can eat quite some CPU, specially because i play on the dark with the "low light filter" turned on, which happens to eat quite some CPU.
3º: For every file opened/closed both the AVG and the MS anti-spyware are going to have a check if that's malicious and if the action is allowed.
When i close everything and run 3dmark01 i get around 300 - 600 more points out of it from my 12200 points score.
PS: don't forget IE, which is usually opened here or on tom's hardware (or both and some more), which happen to have a lot of those huge flash banners.
I think that DOES make *a lot* of difference.
Add to that the fact of many people using skype while gaming, mainly on FPS and RTS, which can make all the difference.
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
"Let's just say that the dual core Athlon 64 running at 2.2GHz won't be compared to a dual core Pentium D running at 2.8GHz."So you leave two possibilities.
1.) The dual core 2.2 GHz Athlon-64's will be less than impressive and won't even perform in the same class as a Pentium D @ 2.8 GHz, but rather dual core Extreme Edition chips.
2.) The desktop dual core Athlon-64's will be running at much less than 2.2 GHz.