AMD's dual core Opteron & Athlon 64 X2 - Server/Desktop Performance Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on April 21, 2005 9:25 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Multitasking Scenario 2: File Compression
For our next test, we simulated what would happen if we performed two disk intensive tasks at the same time: zipping the source code to Firefox while importing a 260MB PST file into Outlook 2003. You'll note that this is a slightly modified version of the test that we originally created. We modified the test by archiving the Firefox source instead of a single smaller file; the reason being that we wanted a more realistic test (from a file size/count perspective) as well as the ability to discern better between contenders.We ran the same Firefox and iTunes tasks from the last test again, and then did the following:
1) Open Outlook.
2) Start importing 260MB PST.
3) Start WinRAR.
4) Archive Firefox source.
WinRAR remained the application in focus during this test.
Here, we looked at two metrics: how long it took WinRAR to compress our test file, and how many emails were imported into Outlook during the time that WinRAR was archiving. Let's have a look at the results:
Update: AnandTech reader manno pointed out that the metric we should be looking at here is emails imported per second while the archive task was running. Looking at these numbers, Intel actually comes out ahead with the Pentium D 840, with AMD in second place. All of the dual core chips outperform the single core Athlon 64 FX-55 by a huge margin, and once again, we see that Hyper Threading isn't always beneficial as the Extreme Edition actually runs slower than the regular Pentium D here.
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patrick0 - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
If they would have the dual-core in stores in June, I would buy one, but this isn't the case, so I'll buy San-Diego 4000+.I'll upgrade when quad-core will be out.
Barneyk - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
oh, you cant edit your comments...Anyway, im really excited about this development of computing, not having good multitasking ability feels so outdated, i've been crying about that for years, and fianlly its here...
Well, almost, and its probably another year before i can afford it, but still... :)
Barneyk - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
testjvarszegi - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
Again, the lack of technical superiority of AT's "experts" is obvious. On SQL Server, you're not supposed to prepend stored-procedure names with "sp_", as it introduces a performance penalty. This is basic knowledge. Some have remarked before on how their .NET "experts" code like, um, transplanted ColdFusion "experts". :)Visual - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
a minor error: on page 12 right above the graph it says "The Dual Opteron 252's lead by 19% over the closest Xeon, which was the Quad Xeon 3.6 GHz 667MHz FSB" but the slowest xeon is the 3.3 GHz one.mechBgon - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
Zebo... hehe, yep :Djustly - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
An outstanding article about AMDs duel core, just what I would expect from Anandtech (to bad I had to go to techreport.com to read it).Zebo - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
Hahaha makes Chetta's drool: Looks just like you MECH.:)MACKTEK - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
I appreciate the article but am disappointed by the misleading title... AMD's dual core Opteron & Athlon 64 X2 - Server/Desktop Performance Preview. The 939 is not equal to 940. Also, the article clearly saysCOMPARE ATHLON 64 X2... right on the 1st page. In fact the article does not admit to "not having a real x2" until page 13. I love reading anandtech's articles and visit frequently... Perhaps a better title would have been... Preview of Athlon64 X2 using an Opteron CPU.
mechBgon - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/mechBgon/drool.jpg#82 says "and corporate PCs could work perfectly and more with a K5-K6/P2-P3."
Ahhh, this again. You obviously haven't worked with a fully-armed installation of McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i. *evil grin* Hope you enjoyed your stay in 1999... welcome to 2005.
;)