gotta love it.
dave
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gotta love it.
dave
It would appear that none of these board manufacturers should put a "Quadcore ready" sticker on their boxes! Perhaps a sticker that should read, "Not quite ready for Quadcore yet" would be more appropiate :D
Of course I'm sure in a couple of weeks/months they'll have things figured out.
It seems to be BIOS issues...
Thanks tsuehpsyde. :D That score shows exactly what I was thinking - problems with cores communicating. Cache-2-Cache would help here but I doubt it runs in Windows.
The biggest advantage of the K10 over Core 2, its L3 cache, memory bandwidth, Crossbar, HT links and IMC is supposed to show up in all this where Intel is touted as FSB/NB being the bottleneck.
If you were to believe those results as conclusive, it would seems the L3/IMC/HT are the bottleneck and AMD needs desperately to move to the FSB/large L2 ASAP! :p: :D
That's just far lower than what you could expect with 2x 2400MHz K8s, that get around 90ns latency and 5200MB/s averaging until 64x 8KB, where they get 3000MB/s thereafter, mainly due to a lack of shared L2 cache.
2x Xeon QC 2400MHz gets a peak of 43350MB/s for quite a while during those tests before it drops to around 5000MB/s late at the end. Me thinks the test is very L2 cache size dependent.
Can any of you guys ask your AMD contacts/reps if any of those results are OK/decent or off the mark? They should know for sure how good it "possibly" is, if much..
L3 cache decreases the latency between the IMC and the memory ;)
Please God say it's only the bios....
Its only the bios, but the latentcy of the l3 is a little bit of an issure from what I've read. The communication between the cores is also suppose to be an advantage.
anyway...
it's interesting. Dave and S7 could give better info on this, but I THINK that there weren't so many issues in the transiton from single to dual core opterons, am I right?
That would lead to the conclusion that the problem with this is coming not exactly from the quad-core feature, but from the K10 plattaform itself. In terms of compability of bios, of course, but it's not the number of cores that is the issue.
And that last move would lead to one of the discussions I've read about the problems AMD got: it's worst mistake was to try to push at the same time 65nm, K10 and quad-core. Of course, they had no other option, specially when the initial project from K8Ls were down (if this rumour is true, of course). But it seems that the price of pushing everything at the very same time is still being paid... :(
While you make some valid points here, IMO, the issue isn't with the die shrink or additional cores. The problem seems to lie within Barcelona's new "power-saving" features. For example: the current bioses are incorrectly identifying P-states on these chips as well as underclocking the northbridges since dual power planes have yet to be implemented. It also didn't help that AMD had issues getting fully functional procs to the mobo makers due to poor initial yields. Realistically, I think we're about a month away from seeing Barcelona running smoothly on our current platforms :(
This is looking like a fiasco.. and judging by some benches I did on A64 2.2 GHz with 3x HTT andt 1x HTT will have a significant impact on performance, more so because my A64 was one core while barc is 4 cores. I don't know what to say about the cores entering power saving mode, but obviously that would have a dramatic effect on performance.
It's clear the mobos aren't ready.. at BEST 1 month till issues are resolved, probably 2 months before anything K10 based is available in regular retail channels.
BIOS and Kernel Developer’s Guide (BKDG) For AMD Family 10h Processors:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont...docs/31116.pdf
Maybe this PDF can help a little.
I just wonder how much of a mistake they made by trying to make Barcelona drop in compatable. I applaud them for doing so, but things mayb be smoother right know if they hadn't.
AFAIK, AMD stated "less than 38 cycles" for the L3 cache latency, and stated it's squarely dependent on the NB speeds > far quicker than going to RAM... or it's supposed to be if they all sync correctly. :p:
I wonder if HP, Dell, IBM and Sun systems are having similar issues...
I can say one thing; during the time AMD took for releasing this, Intel worked and made up it's deficit in every other sector it was weaker on, and Penryn just adds to that further. Right now, even the FP lead by the K10 is no where near what it used to be with 1st Gen Optys, per clock basis.
Aneeeee-way.... keep up the good work fellas. I'd hate to have to mess with fixing this without any immediate benefits. :D
I want to say, that I've written an article about tweaking A64 memory controllers (and not only them). And about tweaking Barcelona in particular. You are welcome to read and send your feedback ;)
But the only issue is that it bases on another article about WPCREDIT. It's on Russian at the moment. If you need it (or any other issue there), I can work on a translation. :)
Nice work, Antimony. :)
Are there english versions of these articles?
http://people.overclockers.ru/antinomy/record4
http://www.overclockers.ru/lab/15689.shtml
thats is why amd introduce ht3 for k10. the l3 cache located inside the northbridge. do you want faster northbridge speed? oc the l3 cache for good hehe
@DaveGraham ........Good Morning Dave:) whats the verdict on this ATM will Barcelona be dampered in performance on the current boards?
I really want to get away from Overclocking for a while "no time" lately because of work and life so what would be my best bet if I choose not to wait for middle or late 2008 for new board from SM a Dual Dual socket F or what?