Intel 3.2 G Dual Core Performance Preview

[classy]

Man, I expected more. A couple of real nice marks, but for gaming, not impressive at all. Once again its a "preview" but considering dual cores are similar to a current dual cpu setup, I would say the performance increase when tweaked won't bring to much of a difference IMO. It could be the chipset needs more refinement, oh well, its at the squad here Dual Core Intel.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Don't games have to be written to take advantage of dual cores? And since they are not currently, I don't believe you would notice any improvement other than being able to run additional apps at the same time.

 

[classy]

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
Don't games have to be written to take advantage of dual cores? And since they are not currently, I don't believe you would notice any improvement other than being able to run additional apps at the same time.

Yea thats true, but in the 2nd game they tested it was even slower than a similar single cpu running at the same clockspeed.

 

[Silversierra]

Everyone says intel's better at multitasking, and the dual cores are supposed to be even better, so what's this about?
" The dual-core machine was also just five seconds slower than the Athlon 64 FX-55 PC on our multitasking test,"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s...&u=/pcworld/20050404/tc_pcworld/120264
Athlon fx55 is beating intels dual core which is made for multitasking. Things are looking bad for intel. Then what happens when amd pushes out their dual core? Even worse for intel.

 

[Duvie]

Dont get too excited about games....Not much is around to take advantage of it, yet!!! key word yet....

The proof is in the pudding in the old INtel stronghold of encoding where most apps are alreday multithreaded so the performance should be huge.

I need to read the article later before I cast judgement..on a preview no less....

 

[Hyperlite]

our predictions are coming true....

 

[Sentential]

Not bad...

WMP encoder sees a 46 second drop from the 570J,

a little less than 100 points on the overall test in 3d05 against a 570J.

Its a good 450 points higher on 3d05 test and a little less than 200 points below on PCmark04.

Almost 200 points higher on PCmark04's CPU test over a 570J.

Most impressive results are on rendering which it appears to be 2X as fast as the FX55

In games it appears to be identical to the 540J which is also 3.2ghz

Seems to take off alot in the Sisandra tests. Almost a 1/3 faster than the FX55 in Drystone and 2X as fast in the whetstone tests.

_______

Overall from a 3.2E Im impressed. However 2 points they lack which are crucial. #1 Heat. #2 Overclockability. If those 8xx can crack 4ghz they would be unstoppable

 

[jiffylube1024]

It seems pretty good for what it is - twu 3.2 GHz CPU's. In the dual CPU aware programs (such as the media encoding), it thoroughly trashes the competition.

Of course the game performance is crap - games don't take advantage of dual core yet. In a couple of years they will.

I'm even more excited for AMD dual core, though.

 

[68GTX]

THG did little Overclocking in This Review.

 

[Pabster]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a lot of the performance depends on the applications being tailored to the technology. Remember in the old days when stuff that wasn't 3DNow! enabled ran slower than snot on AMD chips? Or in the early days of MMX when nearly nothing took advantage of the technology making people believe that the Intel chips at the time were a "waste"?

Clearly the P4 has an advantage already in the encoding arena. I do a lot of video encoding and the like with applications which are fully multi-threaded and really shine with the current HT technology and will likely shine even more with dual cores.

I guess I could care less if the dual core is 5fps slower in Doom 3. Just as long as it can get me 5fps more in the encoder

 

[Acanthus]

Doom 3 is SMP aware.

Edit: The timedemos do not use physics or AI which are used on the 2ndary thread, many reviewers have ignored this fact and used timedemos anyway which show singlethread CPUs in a better light.

Edit2: toms got their Pentium Extreme Edition to 4ghz. 4 threads at 4ghz would be a MONSTER encoder/renderer.

 

[Duvie]

http://www.hwupgrade.it/articoli/1193/2.html

remember this one as well...

ONe thing need to remember this is the uber expensive EE model with does have 4 logical cpus cause it has HT still in place.....the smithfields will not so expect some loss in those cinebench and enocing scores....In actuality the sandra scores woul be less then the half cause a cpu with HT on already gets a nice boost from it in the CPU/MM aspects....

WMV 9.0 had an OK 36.4% increase....

3dmark05 cpu test (the only synthetic one worth looking at) had a 24.4% increase

Cinebench had a 79.7% increase but this will be less in non HT models...in above test the dual 2.4ghz AMD had a 87.2% increase versus same speed single core...

Doom3??? I though it was multithreaded but it may be in game plkay and not the test....

Sandra once again shows us why it is the biggest farce around. Look perfect 2x growth!! yeah right. No 2 cpu systems scales that perfect....




I think it looks good for a start. Dual core is going to be exciting for us non gamers right out of the gate. The bandwidth issues look like they are there with the new cpu. Way too low, which means Intel can get a healthy boost likely with a revised chipset....

 

[mamisano]

Man, I really can not wait to see what AMD Dual will do, considering it will be released close to current clock speeds and will get a much bigger jump in SMP apps then Intel's dual core. Considering that Intel has had HT to help in SMP apps, with Intel going dual-core w/o HT on the desktop levels the playing field. I expect to see AMD cpus to have a much larger increase in performance compared to Intel because of this.

 

[superkdogg]

Originally posted by: mamisano
Man, I really can not wait to see what AMD Dual will do, considering it will be released close to current clock speeds and will get a much bigger jump in SMP apps then Intel's dual core. Considering that Intel has had HT to help in SMP apps, with Intel going dual-core w/o HT on the desktop levels the playing field. I expect to see AMD cpus to have a much larger increase in performance compared to Intel because of this.

This is pretty close to what I'm thinking...

OK, so Intel takes their memory bandwidth hungry chip and makes it run 4 threads at once, making it really bandwidth limited.

On the other hand, AMD takes it's design which uses bandwidth very efficiently and for the first time gives it capability to execute multiple threads.


To me, this sounds like a recipe for AMD to make up the gap in multi-threaded apps like encoding (especially over the "regular" 2 cored Intels-not so much the EE's) while not sacrificing much of their lead in gaming which is due to architecture more so than clockspeed. I'm slightly bias wanting the little guy to keep building momentum, but it does seem to me that AMD might be winning this round as well.


EDIT: AT review is now up. MHO is that the EE is virtually junk! Why get one for twice the price of the "regular" dually which outperforms it in a lot of benches? The AT benches show that some of the more common multithreaded apps prefer 2 threads to 4 and make the plain one faster. This also bodes well for AMD's strategy to continue ignoring HT. To be slightly more objective, there are certain programs that allow the EE to simulate a 4 CPU system pretty well-and that's just downright cool! Buy 1 cpu, install 1 cpu into system with one hsf. Get 4 CPU-like performance in some apps...that's just cool, I don't care who you are. That's cool.

 

[Mingon]

Anands is up

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: Mingon
Anands is up

NOw that is a review!!!

Answered some questions...

HT efficiency in apps over 2 threads...multimedia seems to have issues more worstation type stuff like CAD seemed to not have issues...

 

[MrControversial]

Any app that forks more than 2 threads is in Intel's advantage since threads are inherently dependent on other threads and its parent process. While one thread has to wait on the other thread, the CPU basically just schedules the second thread and it goes back and forth with little difference in the results. Once you start talking 4 threads or more, that's when Intel is going to spank AMD, because not only do they have dual proc cores, some even have hyper threading. So we're not only talking simultaenous threads, but simultaneous processes forking off threads. We're talking about Intel being 4 times the theoretical processing on apps that fork more than two threads.

If Intel gets that marketshare with their pricing strategy, game developers will have little choice but to write for it and unless AMD has something up their sleeves, they'll get spanked because not only will Intel have the speed advantage, but the IPC advantage as well. The only thing that sucks about the Intel deal is that if you just bought a new P4, you'll have to buy a new board to use the new dualies. For those of us who just bought NF4 939's, it's comforting to know that it would be more economical to go with the AMD solution since all we have to do is download the latest BIOS for our chipset.

 

[Duvie]

BUt with it only occuring in the expensive EE model....as one review site stated:

"Pentium 4 is dead, and in its place we get two flavours of dual core processor for the desktop. The king of the heap is Pentium Extreme Edition which has dual cores with Hyper-Threading so one physical processor appears as four virtual processors. This will inevitably be the US $999 part that looks good on paper but doesn?t get bought so Intel came up with the bright idea of a dual core part called Pentium D that doesn?t have Hyper-Threading. It runs on the same 800MHz FSB and has the same cache but it appears as two virtual processors, just like the current Prescott. No doubt Pentium Extreme Edition will move to a 1066MHz FSB, which will allow Intel to enable HT in Pentium D but for now it all looks like a bit of a marketing nightmare.

By the time the games come around to making themselves work with 2 threads let alone 4 threads we may already be talking about quad cores.....

 

[slash196]

I have to say, I was VERY impressed by the gains made by the dual core chips, even at reduced clockspeed. I can't wait to see what a shiny new AMD dual core will be capable of. I'm also interested in overclocking capabilities.

EDIT: Well, mainly I was impressed by the power of the idea, more than Intel's execution of it. Just sandwiching two cores together seems...sloppy. I simply can't wait to see how AMD does in some head-to-head dual core showdowns.

 

[superkdogg]

Mr. C,

Can you explain why you think that the 4 or more threaded apps will really "spank" AMD dual cores even after reading the review AT in which lame, divx, xvid and WME all got WORSE with the EE vs. the equivalent dual core, not HT model?

In the 3D rendering apps and the very demanding multitasking scenarios I would agree with your assertion, but since your statement as written flies in the face of several benchmarks I would say that you have succeeded in being true to your name.

 

[Jeff7181]

We're talking about Intel being 4 times the theoretical processing on apps that fork more than two threads.

What a load of crap. Hyper-Threading CANNOT double performance because resources are still shared between threads.

 

[Fenuxx]

Well, seeing as how Prescott's didn't perform well at low speeds (below about 3.6GHz), with their insane 31-stage pipe, this isn't a surprise at all. The Prescott architecture needs high speeds to REALLY shine, and seeing as how Intel hit a brick wall as far as clock speeds go, its really pointless.

To me, the real "showing" of dual-core will be with a dual-A64, and dual-Pentium M (Dothan) setup. With dual-Prescotts, its just blah.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: geforcetony
Well, seeing as how Prescott's didn't perform well at low speeds (below about 3.6GHz), with their insane 31-stage pipe, this isn't a surprise at all. The Prescott architecture needs high speeds to REALLY shine, and seeing as how Intel hit a brick wall as far as clock speeds go, its really pointless.

To me, the real "showing" of dual-core will be with a dual-A64, and dual-Pentium M (Dothan) setup. With dual-Prescotts, its just blah.

Good point... I wonder if they had to increase cache latency even more for dual cores...

 

[MrControversial]

Originally posted by: Duvie
BUt with it only occuring in the expensive EE model....as one review site stated:

"Pentium 4 is dead, and in its place we get two flavours of dual core processor for the desktop. The king of the heap is Pentium Extreme Edition which has dual cores with Hyper-Threading so one physical processor appears as four virtual processors. This will inevitably be the US $999 part that looks good on paper but doesn?t get bought so Intel came up with the bright idea of a dual core part called Pentium D that doesn?t have Hyper-Threading. It runs on the same 800MHz FSB and has the same cache but it appears as two virtual processors, just like the current Prescott. No doubt Pentium Extreme Edition will move to a 1066MHz FSB, which will allow Intel to enable HT in Pentium D but for now it all looks like a bit of a marketing nightmare.

By the time the games come around to making themselves work with 2 threads let alone 4 threads we may already be talking about quad cores.....

Good point.

 

[dannybin1742]

they should have compared a dual xeon vs this dual core i'm guessing every benchmark would have been almost identcle

also makes me wonder how sweet amds' dual cores will be, because at 2.2 or 2.4ghz they blow away the p4s in most things


here is what i want to see

dual core p4 (normal and EE) vs dual xeon at same clock vs fx55 vs dual opteron at 2.6

anyone else? i know anand should have all the hardware to do this already