Anandtech benches Nehalem

[Donnie27]

No need for such garbage like that. Even though I may or not always agree with Donnie27, he almost always presents his arguments concisely and more often than not factually. So please attack his argument not him. [/soapbox]

Thanks but don't bother with him. It's what happens when we stop being dispassionate consumers and start loving big faceless companies. Intel or AMD, MOST others in the tech industry wouldn't piss on us to put us out how if we were on fire

[mstp2009]

you just can't stop, do you. over and over every thread talking about that price.... you forget what price was asked for EE garbage during that time?
no one dreamed of such a single to dualcore performance increase when netburst was around.

get one with your life, we know you couldn't afford such a good cpu at that time and you still have nightmares from that.

Wow. You're an a$$.

[Loser777]

From the looks of the roadmap, it looks like the difference between Nehalem and Core 2 won't be as big as Core 2 and Prescott, as the roadmaps shows Penryn remaining in the lower-high end before being phased out while Prescott was immediately moved to low-end before being phased out.

[perkam]

"I have come, Master, to the dark side of the post count force"

Perkam

[Kingcarcas]

Wow just wow, 50% increase in multi-threaded apps on a primitive platform I wouldn't like to be an AMD employee right now, the pressure is on. I wonder what kind of PPD we're talking about with the 8 physical core version in F@H SMP.

Thanks but don't bother with him. It's what happens when we stop being dispassionate consumers and start loving big faceless companies. Intel or AMD, MOST others in the tech industry wouldn't piss on us to put us out how if we were on fire

They will not give your wife a ride to the hospital while she is labor, i don't see why people have to be fanboys.

[alucasa]

I believe some people have to be fan boys because they do not wish to see their chosen path to be overtaken by something they look down. I guess it all has to do with invisible prides.

Well? I bought Barcelona chips and I was utterly disappointed by them. I am sticking to Intel since they do deliver so far. I will gladly switch to AMD when they deliver. However, at this point, AMD chips are not something I'd want to spend my hard-earned my cash on.

I mean, comon ! Barcelona at 1.8ghz uses a little over 80w. Harpertown at 2.33 ghz uses 80w.

[Buckeye]

"I have come, Master, to the dark side of the post count force"

Perkam

You are now... DarthPerkam

My the post count force be with you !

[Donnie27]

Wow just wow, 50% increase in multi-threaded apps on a primitive platform I wouldn't like to be an AMD employee right now, the pressure is on. I wonder what kind of PPD we're talking about with the 8 physical core version in F@H SMP.

They will not give your wife a ride to the hospital while she is labor, i don't see why people have to be fanboys.

Yepp, you're more than likely right!

[Donnie27]

I believe some people have to be fan boys because they do not wish to see their chosen path to be overtaken by something they look down. I guess it all has to do with invisible prides.

Well? I bought Barcelona chips and I was utterly disappointed by them. I am sticking to Intel since they do deliver so far. I will gladly switch to AMD when they deliver. However, at this point, AMD chips are not something I'd want to spend my hard-earned my cash on.

I mean, comon ! Barcelona at 1.8ghz uses a little over 80w. Harpertown at 2.33 ghz uses 80w.

That's why I said, when AMD ships something better many folks will jump to them. I remember when I bought a 3500+ to replace my Northwood. I'd said if I was such an Intel fan, why would I buy a 3500+. Still have that 3500+ and never really did replace it with a Dual Core

If K10.5 or 11 or whatever AMD calls it, is faster than or cheaper than Nehalem at the same speed, I'm on it like stink on $#it! First and foremost, I'm a fanboy of my wallet.

[Eastcoasthandle]

Hmm, mixed results in that review. I have to wonder if it's just the issue with the:
-memory
-program optimizations
-diminishing returns

[disruptfam]

Hmm, mixed results in that review. I have to wonder if it's just the issue with the:
-memory
-program optimizations
-diminishing returns

preview you mean...

[Donnie27]

Not One Nehalem, but Two

Nehalem itself is very stable but it has only been in Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer hands for a relatively short while now, so the only truly mature motherboards are made by Intel. Unfortunately since Intel didn't sanction our little Nehalem excursion, we were left with little more than access to some early X58 based motherboards in Taiwan. Thankfully we had two setups to play with, each for a very limited time.

We had access to a 2.66GHz Nehalem for the longest time, unfortunately the motherboard it was paired with had some serious issues with memory performance. Not only was there no difference between single and triple channel memory configurations, memory latency was high. We know this was a board specific issue since our second Nehalem platform didn't exhibit any issues. Unfortunately we didn't have access to the more mature platform for very long at all, meaning the majority of our tests had to be run on the first setup (never fear, Nehalem is fast enough that it didn't end up mattering).

So many folks have called Anand a lie, say he's a newbie or a tool or etc.. worse. Same things were said about him last time. Out of 100's AMD Fanboys flame him, I saw about 10 gave apologies and or retract their statements. Many just continued to bury their heads in the said and pretend otherwise. Remember to come back months from now and do the I told you so or say you're sorry if he's right.

someone said this is all because i was running vista 64, but i find it hard to believe that me running vista 64 is going to make my penryn performance 10-20% better clock for clock on every single benchmark used than his penryn performance.

Please ceevee, setup your ram for single channel mode? Then test? If not ceevee, anyone with a 9450 do it please.

[perkam]

Very well said Donnie, and if that ever does happen I'll be right behind you!

If I'm not mistaken, Dunnington vs Instanbul will occur before Montreal vs Nehalem ?

For those who don't know dunnington, it's basically a Nehalem with six cores and more cache.

Perkam

[Donnie27]

Very well said Donnie, and if that ever does happen I'll be right behind you!

You, me and most folks in this forum since most of us a Consumers and not loyalists.

[perkam]

Perkam - Although I wrote that with a bit of sarcasm I did mean it! I am interested simply in having fun, trying and testing new hardware, and of course performance. However I'm not knowledgable enough with either camp to compare any future products from either company despite spending more time than I should researching it, lol!

Hence my Darth Vader post...this way of getting post count indeed belongs to the dark side

[Periander6]

If I'm not mistaken, Dunnington vs Instanbul will occur before Montreal vs Nehalem ?

For those who don't know dunnington, it's basically a Nehalem with six cores and more cache.

Perkam

Dunnington is due out in 2H of this year, it is a native penryn based 6 core with more cache. It will be going against Shanghai in the 4s space. In 2s Intel will be offering Gainestown, a 2s tweaked version of the Nehalem desktop also due in 2H of this year. Istanbul (6 core) is due out in 2H 2009, that's also when Beckton, the 4s 8 core Nehalem monstrosity is also supposed to be coming out. Montreal is no longer on AMDs roadmap. Instead they have 6 and 12 (on an MCM) cores on a new socket coming out in 1H '10. All of these AMD processors will have Barcelona-esque cores. Bulldozer is not due out till 2H '10 (some doubt even that).

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont...heet_Final.pdf

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2...3/kaigai_3.pdf

[duploxxx]

If I'm not mistaken, Dunnington vs Instanbul will occur before Montreal vs Nehalem ?

For those who don't know dunnington, it's basically a Nehalem with six cores and more cache.

Perkam

although dunnington may have a shared L3 like Nehalem .... it is for sure not "basically" the same as nehalem.

no memory controller and old fsb system, no smt. its a tigertown + L3 cache for the remaining space.

they can put cache wherever they can (maybe before the usb 3.0 bus ) but they will never be able with this architecture to come up with a decent 4s system.

[nemrod]

Ye, and take PCI, Parallel, ATA, Serial, PS2, Floppy etc with it. Its abit sad to see brand new boards with some 35-40 year old hangaround tech on it

When you have a good soft paid much more than several pc, you're happy to be able to put the hardware key... (just one example, you could find much more)

[JumpingJack]

Not true! Only multithreaded Lame was “Intel’s edition” 3.97a, real distribution wasn’t MThreaded ‘cos testing showed that MThreaded version produced lower quality of sound (everything is elaborated on LAME community forums)… iThunes is nowhere threaded!

Lame MP3 is indeed multithreaded, you can download a copy of a multithreaded version today, either Intel compiled or MS Compiled. iTunes is indeed multithreaded. (Oddly, Intel compiled LameMP3 improves pheonom performance several percentage points over the MS compiled version).

Photoshop is partially MThreaded… some filters, and some picture manipulation functions do use MThreading, but it’s not in big extent… unfortunately.

You are either multithreaded or not, there is no partial. This does not mean spawning uber threads for every task will be necessary, but it is indeed multithreaded -- as is most all of the Adobe software catalog.

iTunes most certianly is multhtreaded... oddly on my quad, when importing 300 gigs of lossless WMA .. average CPU utilization was about 57%... (just about over 2 cores)

EDIT: Here is a quick file convert using iTunes, notice 50% utilization with 22 threads

In Lost Planet, only some levels are MThreaded (Cave), WiC can’t see beyond 2 cores, so as Crysis who’s struggling to use second core more effectively. UT3 has the best MT optimization and will use a mush cores you can throw, but scaling beyond three cores is dropping rapidly. Not to mention 3DMArk who’s only using singlethread for graphic test!
who cares about superpi?

Lost Planet is indeed multithreaded throughout, even in Snow... 'levels' are data, engine is code. A game developer does not set a 'this level is multithreaded' switch when generating the maps. This is easy to prove, run lost planet in window mode, open task manager play and watch your CPU report. The loading on LP even on Snow loads 70-80% of the CPU (total) on a quad core.

I agree, UT3 is probably the best game engine out utilizing multicore. I published data in this forum showing that a few months ago.

My original point is ... software has been moving rapidly toward a mulithreaded base. I have been surprised at how quickly (relatively speaking) software has been moving toward multithreaded code ... when quads first arrives, maybe 10-15% of software was multhtreaded, that percntage is now well over 50% and going up.

Jack

[BrowncoatGR]

Lame MP3 is indeed multithreaded, you can download a copy of a multithreaded version today, either Intel compiled or MS Compiled. iTunes is indeed multithreaded. (Oddly, Intel compiled LameMP3 improves pheonom performance several percentage points over the MS compiled version).



You are either multithreaded or not, there is no partial. This does not mean spawning uber threads for every task will be necessary, but it is indeed multithreaded -- as is most all of the Adobe software catalog.

iTunes most certianly is multhtreaded... oddly on my quad, when importing 300 gigs of lossless WMA .. average CPU utilization was about 57%... (just about over 2 cores)




Lost Planet is indeed multithreaded throughout, even in Snow... 'levels' are data, engine is code. A game developer does not set a 'this level is multithreaded' switch when generating the maps. This is easy to prove, run lost planet in window mode, open task manager play and watch your CPU report. The loading on LP even on Snow loads 70-80% of the CPU (total) on a quad core.

I agree, UT3 is probably the best game engine out utilizing multicore. I published data in this forum showing that a few months ago.

My original point is ... software has been moving rapidly toward a mulithreaded base. I have been surprised at how quickly (relatively speaking) software has been moving toward multithreaded code ... when quads first arrives, maybe 10-15% of software was multhtreaded, that percntage is now well over 50% and going up.

Jack

That's more or less correct. Most software today is multithreaded to some degree but most of it also scales very badly to 2 threads. A smaller percentage scales well to up to 2 threads and some select software scales to 4 threads and above.
I can confirm that Photoshop is not fully multithreaded. You have to keep in mind that Photoshop is really not a single program but a suite that includes and integrates a wide variety of image manipulation programs. I use it at work and in the operations that we use the most, CPU utilization does no go above 50% on the E8400 in that PC.
As for lame, the MT version is no longer beeing developed and is not recommended for use. It's not really surprising that Intel's compiler does better than MS'. The compiler MS makes is utter garbage. On iTunes i think he meant that encoding is not multithreaded, at least thats how i understood it. From your edit it seems it's actually MT though.

[JumpingJack]

That's more or less correct. Most software today is multithreaded to some degree but most of it also scales very badly to 2 threads. A smaller percentage scales well to up to 2 threads and some select software scales to 4 threads and above.
I can confirm that Photosop is not fully multithreaded. You have to keep in mind that Photoshop is really not a single program but a suite that includes and integrates a wide variety of image manipulation programs. I use at work and in the operations that we use the most CPU utilization does no go above 50% on the E8400 in that PC.
As for lame the MT version is no longer beeing developed and is not recommended for home use. It's not really surprising that Intel's compiler does better than MS'. The compiler MS makes is utter garbage. On iTunes i think he meant that encoding is not multithreaded.

Photoshop is multithread... does it spawn 4 threads at every task, every time ... no... but it is compiled multithreaded. Software is compiled with one executable (generally), external functions are available through linked libraries -- photoshop has one compiled exe and loads all the libraries at load time. The 'wide variety of manipulation' programs as you term it above -- these are called functions in programmer terms ...

I just posted a screen shot of a conversion (this is encoding) showing iTunes multhithreaded....

Jack

[DIE-TEMP]

That's why I said, when AMD ships something better many folks will jump to them. I remember when I bought a 3500+ to you place my Northwood. I'd said if I was such an Intel fan, why would I buy a 3500+. Still have that 3500+ and never really did replace it with a Dual Core

If K10.5 or 11 or whatever AMD calls it, is faster than or cheaper than Nehalem at the same speed, I'm on it like stink on $#it! First and foremost, I'm a fanboy of my wallet.

Yeah, so you say.

In many of your posts you dis amd with comments like "When they release something that doesn't suck".

IMO no neutral user would say such nonsense.

No CPU created in the last 10years "sucks" as you say. If left to us mere users we'd have nothing at all....how sucky is that?

People who purchase a new component (or those who speak of ANY new cpu architectures) and then immediately slate it's predecessor as being "sucky" and "crap" are children.....plain and simple.

[Nedjo]

JJ i don't want to go in off with this thread, I'll just repeat facts: only MT-able LAME build was Intel's 3.97a... all community supported builds (including the latest 3.98 beta, a re NOT multithreaded! What's true is that each build is compiled with latest Intel's compilers and they're faster with each build, but they are not multithreaded.

Speaking about photoshop, smome filters, and some picture manipulation algorithms are multithreaded, but not majority! Thus why PS is only partially multithreaded. regarding the iTunes, as you shown it can't see beyond two cores, so we can go on and argue about meaning of "multi" in multithreading...

as a word of advice, don't use taskman and don't run games in window to track load on CPU! Use RivaTuner logging ability and time graph!

[GoThr3k]

Yeah, so you say.

In many of your posts you dis amd with comments like "When they release something that doesn't suck".

IMO no neutral user would say such nonsense.

No CPU created in the last 10years "sucks" as you say. If left to us mere users we'd have nothing at all....how sucky is that?

People who purchase a new component (or those who speak of ANY new cpu architectures) and then immediately slate it's predecessor as being "sucky" and "crap" are children.....plain and simple.

QFT

[BrowncoatGR]

Photoshop is multithread... does it spawn 4 threads at every task, every time ... no... but it is compiled multithreaded. Software is compiled with one executable (generally), external functions are available through linked libraries -- photoshop has one compiled exe and loads all the libraries at load time. The 'wide variety of manipulation' programs as you term it above -- these are called functions in programmer terms ...

I just posted a screen shot of a conversion (this is encoding) showing iTunes multhithreaded....

Jack

Obviously simply compiling code with support for multiple threads will by itself not make the result use multiple threads. You need to write code with MT in mind for that to work or use some auto-vectorization programs. But if you want to play the semantics game, most functions in Photoshops code base have yet to be optimized for multithreading. BTW i know what a function is