AMD Phenom 9500 Linux Performance

[rkleemann]

Wow that seems very impressive .

Clients	Opteron 875	Opteron 2347	Xeon 5345
1	3.1s	         2.9s	         1.6s
2	6.7s	         6.5s	         12.6s
3	12.1s	        10.5s	         20.5s
4	18.1s	        14.9s	         44.6s

Ive gonna be happy with my phenom thats fort sure

Its also seems you need to run 4 vm to get the tlb bug appear, so i can safely run xen virtualization with atleast 2 vm system and the tlb fix disabled . Im considering a 64 bit Ubuntu 8.04 with a 32 bit linux and 32 bit windows vm:=)
After all it would be a shame not to use the virtualization functions of the Phenom.

This is very interesting, I'm also quite interested in seeing benchmark results against other quad-core processors. Like the Q6600 for example.

Now one question, mentioned above is the "Barcelona design"... is the Phenom a Barcelona series processor? In any way equivalent to either 875 or 2347?

I'm looking forward to the comparative benchmarks!

[bridgman]

Phenom is the desktop variant, Barcelona is the server variant. The differences seem to be in HyperTransport level, SMP support, and apparently some differences in the cache controller.

[rkleemann]

a question offtopic. I know linux has different options for virtualizations... there's xen, there's kvm, etc...

but what about vmware? I plan on running virtualization on Ubuntu with vmware server, and the phenom 9500. any comments on that?

[rkleemann]

Phenom is the desktop variant, Barcelona is the server variant. The differences seem to be in HyperTransport level, SMP support, and apparently some differences in the cache controller.

so i would imagine then that the Phenom numbers would certainly not be as good...? What sort of SMP support differences would there be?

I'd like to see a comparison to the Q6600, as well as with the server versions (Xeon 53xx).

[bridgman]

I think (but I'm not 100% sure) that Phenom numbers should be faster if anything.

From what I remember the smaller AM2-type packages don't include SMP support but the PhenomFX and Barcelone packages have more pins (1200+ IIRC) and presumably can include whatever is needed to support multiple CPUs on a board (ie 8+ cores).

Take all this with a grain of salt, of course -- I'm a graphics guy

[Thetargos]

Are we talking SMP = Symmetric Multi Processing here, or something else? If yes, how come AM2 CPUs don't support it, when they're dual core? Or did I miss something?

[rkleemann]

Are we talking SMP = Symmetric Multi Processing here, or something else? If yes, how come AM2 CPUs don't support it, when they're dual core? Or did I miss something?

I believe he meant SMP support on the motherboard, so you could put dual processors, and 8 cores

[bridgman]

Yeah, SMP isn't really a good term to use these days, is it. Any dual core or quad core chip is already doing SMP -- we need a new TLA for "more than one CPU socket on a board".

Looks like on amd.com we just call multiple-socket systems "2P" or "4P", and talk about "SMP up to 2 sockets/8 cores" :

http://http://www.amd.com/us-en/asse...Comparison.pdf

Also appears that "Barcelona" was the development code name for what is now called "Quad Core Opteron", while "Agena" was the code name for what is now called "Phenom".

I don't feel like I cleared things up very much

[Thetargos]

Actually, you did. So it seems to be time for getting back go the 'MP' jargon (multiprocessor)

[lxndr]

Looks like most of the Phenom problems have been overstated then, I was thinking of buying one when I came across the Phoronix article. Anyone experiencing the 'psychedelic-colours' bug in Ubuntu (see article)?