Linux Shootout: Opteron 150 vs. Xeon 3.6 Nocona
by Kristopher Kubicki on August 12, 2004 2:35 PM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Opstone
Since our use of Ubench in the previous article clearly infuriated many people, we are going to kick that benchmark to the side for the time being until we can decide a better way to implement it.
In the meantime, a reader suggested we give Blue Sail Software's Opstone benchmarks a try. In this portion of the review, we will use their precompiled optimized binaries of the Scalar Product (SP) and Sparce Scalar Product (SSP) benchmark. The SP benchmark is explained by the author:
"The 'SP' benchmark calculates the scalar product (dot product) of 2 vectors ranging in size from 16 elements to 1048576 elements for both single and double-precision floats. Although the Gflops/sec. for every vector length is recorded (in the resulting output log file), the average of all these values is reported. This benchmark is indicative of the performance of many raw floating-point data processing apps (movie format conversion, MP3 extraction, etc.)"
Note that we ran the P4 optimized binaries on the Nocona, which did not provide x86-64 enhancements. Running the AMD64 binaries on the Xeon yielded poor results. The P4 Opstone binaries are the only 32-bit binaries used in this analysis.
Below is the SSP benchmark, as explained by the author:
"The 'ssp' benchmark also calculates the scalar product of 2 vectors, except that these vectors are sparsely populated (only the non-zero value elements are stored) ranging from a 'loading factor' (non-zero/zero elements) of 0.000001 to 0.01 for both single and double-precision floats. Since the data is not contiguous in memory, the performance is much lower than regular 'sp' and is measured in Mflops/sec. There is not much difference in performance between different loading factors as this benchmark really challenges the ability of the processor to perform short bursts of calculations coupled with lots of conditional testing. It is this reason that the P4 with its longer pipeline does not generally perform as well as the Athlon64. This benchmark is indicative of the performance of many 3D games as the processing is similar (short bursts of calculations with numerous conditional testing)"
There is a general distrust of synthetic benchmarks, so take this portion of the analysis only with a grain of salt. We see a tale of two processors in these graphs; generally the Xeon performs better in the raw operation SP benchmark, while the Opteron performs better in the condition testing SSP benchmark. We would be lead to believe the Intel processor does content integer content creation better than the Opteron, and visa versa with floating point applications. However as we see in the rest of the review, this is not always the case.
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johnsonx - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Crap, now I mixed myself up... none of the charts seem to show the Opteron going from a loss to a win. Indeed, the Opteron is slower than XEON across the board in the Blowfish section.johnsonx - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Kris,Kudos on a good follow-up article, though I felt the original had far more merit than most others did. It must've been difficult to decipher the valid and constructive criticism from all the blather.
That said, I did notice some oddity with the John the Ripper results:
You say "Had we left the default -O2 compilation, Blowfish hashing would have been faster on the Xeon processor than the Opteron. However, as soon as we use -O3, the Opteron outperforms the Xeon processor."
However, the only graph that shows the Opteron going from a loss with -O2 to a win with -O3 is the bottom MD5 graph. Perhaps you meant to say MD5 then in your comments, or are some of the graph numbers wrong?
snorre - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Congratulations with a much better review this time, although your conclusions are almost as bad as the sloppy old review. Based on the results I'd expected something more like this:"Without a doubt, the Opteron 150 trounces over the 3.6GHz Xeon in real world benchmarks."
BTW, AMD's Opteron 150/250 is directly comparable with Intel's Xeon 3.6GHz in 1-way & 2-way systems.
BTW 2, the Performance Test Configuration table on page 1 is unreadable (white text on white background).
TauCeti - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Hi Kristopher,ref#21
Ok, rereading your sentence i agree :)
So before a nice old J. Beam integrates the hours of my day into peaceful, cushioned oblivion, let me assure you that from my point of view you did a very good job today.
You endured a continuous datasphere bashing and gave your best to adress criticism in a constructive way.
Have a nice trip.
Tau
NesuD - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Nice save Kris, Glad to see you square it all up.datacipher - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
"When the 3.6F actually shows up at newegg with a price, then i will tell you for sure what it competes against :)"OK, fair enough. Thanks for the replies...
kaoman - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Nice article and better benchmarks.But what I dont understand with the first article's controversy.. if the 3500+ costs ~ $350, and assuming the 3.6F costs ~ $450 by late August (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=770923), AND that the performance of the 3.6F EQUALS the Xeon 3.6, what was wrong with the first article's choice of proccessors comparison? The whole apples-to-apples analogy WORKS in the sense that both chips are 64bit x86 processors. If the 3.6F = Xeon 3.6, who cares which one is used to compare to the Athlon64? And that was the basis of the article. A name or price tag doesn't make a processor comparison any more or less proper when the CPUS are identical. Granted I don't know for a fact if they are, but I'm taking Kris's word for it.
DAPUNISHER - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Now that is what I call great damage control :-) Way to turn it around KK, now go enjoy your vacation!I have been among your leading critics after that train wreck you posted, but you have definitely shown the necessary focus and ability to except criticsm be it constructive or otherwise, and rebound quickly, good job.
Lynx516 - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Ah I hadnt noticed you put it there but you have to realy know what you are looking for to be able to see that it is not the standard GCC 3.3.3 compiler. Maybe put a small note at the bottom of the compiler section in bold saying "This is not the standard GCC compiler" or the like as most people will not notice that it isnt standard. but I have to say its nice to see Linux getting such a large main steam coverage.Well done again.
Lynx
AMDScooter - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
This should have been the first 64bit article.It is well written and makes sense, a real 180 from that last debacle. Good job! I do however still have issues with the use of synthetic benchmarks. Why bother tossing them in at all when the real world tests in this very review show how utterly useless they are? The AMD chip tracks a mud hole in the a$$ of the Xeon in all but the synthetic tests. This only gives the AMD zealots more ammo for the possibility of some sort of bias toward Intel, and in this case I would tend to agree with them. Keep up the good work :)