Another Look At Intel's Lynnfield Linux Performance

[sabby]

Why does it have to be BIOS-controlled? Give us back the Turbo button or at least bring back the tacky LCD MHz readouts

Had to reply since I got such a chuckle thinking about it... Funny that we went back from a nice push button/lcd combo to bios control. They should remember since it was with their cpu, perhaps the engineer weren't around in the push button days

[justapost]

justapost, what sort of cooling are you using? Curious about this turbo thing with the stock cooler in a closed case. Intel sending out monster coolers in the review kits is kind of questionable too, says to me "hey our stock cooling is crap, you'll have to buy something better if you want results like you see here".

I use the stock cooler but the board is not yet in a case. I just received an corsair h50 water cooling kit and plan to run those benches whom benefit from turbo again for comparison.

[Pepazdepa]

Why si that major distros force people on AMD64 opcodes when both AMD and Intel have unique abilities that surely can make a difference in cpu operations.

Thats not true. Only Debian (and its clones) use term AMD64 for 64bit x86 environment. Most of distributions use general term "x86-64" insted of "AMD64". No matter what term is used, it means 64bit x86 processor. No vendor optimizations.

[Apopas]

Not exactly accurate, I think. Intel had 64bit Itanium processors long before AMD thought of doing 64bit. The problem was that Intel's processors couldn't run 32bit code as far as I've heard.

Well Itanium 64 shipped during 2001 for enterprises, while AMD introduced Athlon 64 and Opteron during 2003 for both desktops and enterprises. So it wasn't that long before. Also, before Intel came IBM and even before SUN and even before others that made 64 bit processors. So Intel has nothing to note in history books while AMD is the one who brought 64 bit in desktops.

[numasan]

Thats not true. Only Debian (and its clones) use term AMD64 for 64bit x86 environment. Most of distributions use general term "x86-64" insted of "AMD64". No matter what term is used, it means 64bit x86 processor. No vendor optimizations.

Totally useless, but Gentoo also uses the term AMD64.

[Apopas]

Totally useless, but Gentoo also uses the term AMD64.

Actually, most of the distros use both expressions, gentoo including.

[jntesteves]

64bit and even 128bit microprocessors exist for more than 20 years now, you know. It only wasn't needed in a desktop until recently. All actual x86 processors with 64bit instructions processing capabilities are actually running with 48bit really. No need for full 64bit yet, so it's cheaper to produce those 48bit chips. Itanium came first than AMD64, and Microsoft had actually finished porting Windows to run on top of it. But since AMDs x86_64 architecture is backward compatible with x86 and the old operating systems and all the needed software that wasn't ported to the IA64 yet, it just fall into disuse.

[jntesteves]

About the article. To me, it still looks like the AMD Phenom II is the best bang for the buck. Some of the most prominent differences in those graphs seems to be related to other hardware, like the SSD Intel used for their tests. Looking forward to see Michael's results with the same hardware and the updated BIOS. For now I remain agnostic to these results.

And if you just had a Phenom II X4 in there it would be really nice to have in this comparison.

[nanonyme]

Itanium came first than AMD64, and Microsoft had actually finished porting Windows to run on top of it. But since AMDs x86_64 architecture is backward compatible with x86 and the old operating systems and all the needed software that wasn't ported to the IA64 yet, it just fall into disuse.

From what I've read about it sounded like yet another technologically superior design that got hit hard by practicalities. (who the heck wants backwards-compatiblity anyway )

[Apopas]

From what I've read about it sounded like yet another technologically superior design that got hit hard by practicalities. (who the heck wants backwards-compatiblity anyway )

Well, that's not true. In many cases Opteron was superior to Itanium.
Here are few of them from muhdzamri.blogspot.com :

1. Allows end users to run their existing installed base of 32-bit applications and operating systems at peak performance, while providing a migration path that is 64-bit capable.

2. HyperTransport technology - provides a scalable bandwidth interconnect between processors, I/O subsystems, and other chipsets. This feature is not available in Itanium.

3. Integrated DDR DRAM Memory Controller - this memory is integrated in CPU itself. For Itanium, the memory is outside of CPU. According to Mr Mohan,Itanium introduced FSB (Front Side Bus) to connect CPU to external RAM. This increases latency.

4. Low-Power Processors - the AMD Opteron processor offers industry-leading performance per watt making it an ideal solution for rack-dense 1U servers or blades in datacenter environments as well as cooler, quieter workstation designs. This is a critical factor for HPC environment.

The bottomline is Opteron is more scalable than Itanium in terms of speed. If we add more CPUs, the Opteron speed will increase as opposed to Itanium. To make things worse, the bandwidth between CPUs will be divided evenly.

These are distinctive features on AMD Opteron that made it suitable for SUN to bundle it for their server products. Although Intel is popular, for technical people, popularity is nothing. The technical side of it is more important and pricewise it is cheaper too.

And again, 64bit proccessor even Nintendo64 had. But AMD's design was the big leap, because it extended x86 processors to gain 64 bit capability rather than design a new stricly 64 bit processor, just like dozens of others had made in the past.