AMD Shanghai/Deneb Review Thread

[sundancerx]

lets stay on topic if you want to find a way to test for how smooth something is then make another thread.

ok, sorry for the off topic. i wasnt trying to derail the thread or try to flamebait anyone. i just grew tired reading about amd system being smoother/or more responsive. i just hope someone or some review site can put and end to this one. again im no expert, so i just offered my 2cents to quantify those "feel". i guess the burden of proof is on the amd side. sorry again.

[iandh]

ok, sorry for the off topic. i wasnt trying to derail the thread or try to flamebait anyone. i just grew tired reading about amd system being smoother/or more responsive. i just hope someone or some review site can put and end to this one. again im no expert, so i just offered my 2cents to quantify those "feel". i guess the burden of proof is on the amd side. sorry again.

I consider it very on topic as long as we continue to discuss how the Phenom/Phenom II system architecture may/may not effect gaming, and keep it civil and intelligent as we have so far.

I think I have explained quite well with what we need to aim for as far as testing, and unfortunately I don't know that this is something that we could easily measure with any benchmark on either side of the fence. We would probably need AMD/intel confidential debugging software and equipment to see how data routing is happening at the platform level, and I seriously doubt any of us will ever be given access to that type of thing to see how video games run, sadly.

Besides speculation, first hand experience, and logical reasoning, we are pretty much left to just trusting each other. I am an intelligent, truthful, and highly skilled individual. I work at an electronics manufacturer that interacts not only with the semiconductor industry, but with the military sector (ONR, ARL), and respected research institutions such as JHU. My current project partner is the group supervisor for the Space and Astrophysical Plasmas group at NASA/JPL and has a Ph.D. in Space Plasma Physics. We just had one of AMD's fellows visit last month to review some equipment they are purchasing from us.

I consider myself to be highly intelligent (never tested less than 99th percentile), and work on a daily basis with people that make me look like a blithering idiot moron. There are many times in research projects that we see behaviors which at first are not easily explained by the math or the data. That does not mean that those behaviors are any less real, or that we are somehow failing at our tasks.

A closed mind, or thinking you already know everything there is to know, is never a good place to be. There is not a single person on this site that knows everything there is to know about computer platforms.

[roofsniper]

I consider it very on topic as long as we continue to discuss how the Phenom/Phenom II system architecture may/may not effect gaming, and keep it civil and intelligent as we have so far.

yes it is but without any facts or anything that can prove anything it will go no where. i don't know how you can prove it but from what i have heard it makes sense. i said about a year ago about this whole phenom smoother thing that it had to do with the fast hyper transport speeds and the fact that the cpu has such low latency and it can just whip things out lightning speed. when you have things like super pi or something that sits in the cpu cache and doesn't really exit the cpu that often intel will get better performance. but with the way amd has designed their platform and made the connection speeds so fast it just seems obvious that it would be smoother. in games the gpu is making the frames the cpu just needs to process them. if they are being sent in at different rates because of the low I/O latency then it will not be as smooth even if you have more frames. if someone can find a way to prove this then so be it. possibly you could get an amd and intel system tuned up perfectly and take fps measurements every second and put them together. from what i would think the intel machine would have a more jagged graph/results while the amd one should have smoother results. if someone can find a way to prove this fine but it seems like all it is going to be is pages of people arguing back and forth because there is no data to present.

[iandh]

yes it is but without any facts or anything that can prove anything it will go no where. i don't know how you can prove it but from what i have heard it makes sense. i said about a year ago about this whole phenom smoother thing that it had to do with the fast hyper transport speeds and the fact that the cpu has such low latency and it can just whip things out lightning speed. when you have things like super pi or something that sits in the cpu cache and doesn't really exit the cpu that often intel will get better performance. but with the way amd has designed their platform and made the connection speeds so fast it just seems obvious that it would be smoother. in games the gpu is making the frames the cpu just needs to process them. if they are being sent in at different rates because of the low I/O latency then it will not be as smooth even if you have more frames. if someone can find a way to prove this then so be it. possibly you could get an amd and intel system tuned up perfectly and take fps measurements every second and put them together. from what i would think the intel machine would have a more jagged graph/results while the amd one should have smoother results. if someone can find a way to prove this fine but it seems like all it is going to be is pages of people arguing back and forth because there is no data to present.

I suppose we could record FPS with rivatuner and expand the graphs out, but it would be rather hard to show it at a decent resolution becuase this is something that happens momentarily over long periods of time, so to be able to view enough sub-second detail to accurately compare the two we would need an expanded graph the length of a schoolbus.


As I said before my hunch is as well that it has to do with platform architecture, but to actually view these things accurately on either side we would need access to equipment that we just can't have access to without signing an NDA, and even then we probably couldn't talk about the results and testing methods afterwards.

[roofsniper]

to actually view these things accurately on either side we would need access to equipment that we just can't have access to without signing an NDA, and even then we probably couldn't talk about the results and testing methods afterwards.

what do you need?

[iandh]

what do you need?

As I said before we would likely need access to confidential AMD/intel internal testing software and equipment... for instance we use Prime95 to test our CPU's for stability, but I bet you that isn't what AMD and intel use to do their binning and stability tests.

They likely have written their own testing routines. For instance, when developing a chipset, how would they determine that packets of data were being sent back and forth correctly, and more importantly if they weren't, how would they diagnose the problem and fix it without custom written testing (or at least data aquisition) software?

That also brings up the problem of if we were to somehow prove that one system ran "smoother" than another, how would we determine why this is the case without access to these things?

you made very good logical points and if i have half of your knowledge and experience, i would be very happy. i have bachelor's degree in electrical engg and little background on electronics too, but i worked on a manufacturing company for almost a decade now. i feel like my technical background is buried and i need to dig way deep just to be able to have little conversation with you guys.

I was in no way trying to act like I was smarter than you or anyone else here, this forum is filled with quite a few sharp people and I am not so arrogant to think that I somehow am special... I was more trying to make the point that I am a very qualified observer and have a highly technical background.

I actually have a little EE under my belt as well but never have gotten around to finishing a degree because I've been so busy with work. I was hired in high school at 17 and now have been there for ten years.

[roofsniper]

As I said before we would likely need access to confidential AMD/intel internal testing software and equipment... for instance we use Prime95 to test our CPU's for stability, but I bet you that isn't what AMD and intel use to do their binning and stability tests.

anything more specific? also it might not be much of a tool but has anyone used cpuid's perf monitor? its kinda handy although it doesn't always work perfect as i have found a few bugs myself.

[sundancerx]

I consider it very on topic as long as we continue to discuss how the Phenom/Phenom II system architecture may/may not effect gaming, and keep it civil and intelligent as we have so far.

I think I have explained quite well with what we need to aim for as far as testing, and unfortunately I don't know that this is something that we could easily measure with any benchmark on either side of the fence. We would probably need AMD/intel confidential debugging software and equipment to see how data routing is happening at the platform level, and I seriously doubt any of us will ever be given access to that type of thing to see how video games run, sadly.

Besides speculation, first hand experience, and logical reasoning, we are pretty much left to just trusting each other. I am an intelligent, truthful, and highly skilled individual. I work at an electronics manufacturer that interacts not only with the semiconductor industry, but with the military sector (ONR, ARL), and respected research institutions such as JHU. My current project partner is the group supervisor for the Space and Astrophysical Plasmas group at NASA/JPL and has a Ph.D. in Space Plasma Physics. We just had one of AMD's fellows visit last month to review some equipment they are purchasing from us.

I consider myself to be highly intelligent (never tested less than 99th percentile), and work on a daily basis with people that make me look like a blithering idiot moron. There are many times in research projects that we see behaviors which at first are not easily explained by the math or the data. That does not mean that those behaviors are any less real, or that we are somehow failing at our tasks.

A closed mind, or thinking you already know everything there is to know, is never a good place to be. There is not a single person on this site that knows everything there is to know about computer platforms.

you made very good logical points and if i have half of your knowledge and experience, i would be very happy. i have bachelor's degree in electrical engg and little background on electronics too, but i worked on a manufacturing company for almost a decade now. i feel like my technical background is buried and i need to dig way deep just to be able to have little conversation with you guys.

[knopflerbruce]

ok, sorry for the off topic. i wasnt trying to derail the thread or try to flamebait anyone. i just grew tired reading about amd system being smoother/or more responsive. i just hope someone or some review site can put and end to this one. again im no expert, so i just offered my 2cents to quantify those "feel". i guess the burden of proof is on the amd side. sorry again.

I'm switching from 940 to am2 to 775 from time to time, and the most "smooth" setup of those 3 is the am2 setup. Not too much difference, though, and I have a hard time proving anything, but that's just my .02.

What burden of prrof are you talking about, btw? That AMD are smoother than Intel? If the opposite is true, I'd like to see some proof there as well.

[sundancerx]

I'm switching from 940 to am2 to 775 from time to time, and the most "smooth" setup of those 3 is the am2 setup. Not too much difference, though, and I have a hard time proving anything, but that's just my .02.

What burden of prrof are you talking about, btw? That AMD are smoother than Intel? If the opposite is true, I'd like to see some proof there as well.

what im trying to say is that, since these feelings of "smoothness" on amd rigs dont show up on charts and benchmarks (and is very hard to quantify/qualify based on a few comments i read here), pro intel people will just easily dismiss this as a myth.
now if you are pro amd and you really really want this smoothness feel taken as one of the advantages of using amd system, then i think its expected that you are the ones to initiate actions, expreiment on different testing methods, find other benchmarking methods that may quantify this so called smoothness thingy. thsis is what i meant by burden of proof relies on amd. and until then, no amount explanation no matter how logical they maybe will convince hardcore fanboys on the opposite side, that indeed, its not just a myth.
sorry, im no english expert, but i hope you got my point.

[QuietIce]

what im trying to say is that, since these feelings of "smoothness" on amd rigs dont show up on charts and benchmarks (and is very hard to quantify/qualify based on a few comments i read here), pro intel people will just easily dismiss this as a myth.
now if you are pro amd and you really really want this smoothness feel taken as one of the advantages of using amd system, then i think its expected that you are the ones to initiate actions, expreiment on different testing methods, find other benchmarking methods that may quantify this so called smoothness thingy. thsis is what i meant by burden of proof relies on amd. and until then, no amount explanation no matter how logical they maybe will convince hardcore fanboys on the opposite side, that indeed, its not just a myth.
sorry, im no english expert, but i hope you got my point.

While I understand your basic point here I can see what would happen on the other side of the fence. Us AMD guys actually find a way to measure this "smoothness" and show it as a "bench". Meanwhile, the Intel boys go back to their clubhouse and start talking about the AMD-biased program we're using and how it's not a true benchmark and yadda, yadda, yadda!

Hardcore guys simply won't believe AMD is better (P4 sales of 2004-2006 is enough proof of that!) and the fence riders are going to buy whatever PR is best at the time of purchase. I doubt if anything will ever change that ...

[accord99]

While I understand your basic point here I can see what would happen on the other side of the fence. Us AMD guys actually find a way to measure this "smoothness" and show it as a "bench". Meanwhile, the Intel boys go back to their clubhouse and start talking about the AMD-biased program we're using and how it's not a true benchmark and yadda, yadda, yadda!

Which would at least be a lot better than what supporters of the "smoother" have now, which is no quantifiable evidence at all. At the moment, it's no better than the people trying to sell $1000 power cables for audio or those who still think vinyl records sound better.

Hardcore guys simply won't believe AMD is better (P4 sales of 2004-2006 is enough proof of that!) and the fence riders are going to buy whatever PR is best at the time of purchase. I doubt if anything will ever change that ...

And a lot of the P4 sales comes from AMD's inability to build and sell 200 million processors a year.

[Uncle Jimbo]

Which would at least be a lot better than what supporters of the "smoother" have now, which is no quantifiable evidence at all. At the moment, it's no better than the people trying to sell $1000 power cables for audio or those who still think vinyl records sound better.


And a lot of the P4 sales comes from AMD's inability to build and sell 200 million processors a year.

I have been involved in high end tube audio design for over 25 years. Many component effects were verified by blind testing when no one had any technical justification. Selection of components with specific characteristics can make an obvious difference, but the science to explain those differences is sometimes hard to find. Audio cabling is one area where some work has been done - copper stranded wire develops surface oxides which can have diode effects, which cause nonlinear transmission. Creating speaker cables from wire wrap (which are silver coated and gas tight) virtually eliminates those effects. You will see cables made with multiple gauge wire, transmission line designs, and other exotic stuff, each with advocates and some science. This is mostly art, but hand-selected parts put together with rules that are part witchcraft can still produce results that are clearly superior, even if the makers don't know exactly why.

In multisocket servers, AMD has shown superior performance in virtualization, many database applications and in some web serving, even though Intel wins on benchmarks. Look at the differences in Nehalem versus previous Intel hardware - Intel did not reduce the L2 cache by a factor of 10, or add on-die memory control, just for fun. They did it to be more competitive.

If a majority of large sample of users feel that some combination of AMD components produce a 'smoother' gaming experience, there are probably technical reasons for that. It is probably also dependent on the game engine and a ton of other parameters that are not well controlled, because users don't know what to control. A group of disciplined (and unbiased) amateurs could probably get to a better understanding of why that is true, but it would take a good sample of different systems, and some thought about what to test. This kind of forum could be a place to do that, if the testing group gets away from thinking they know the answer, and just follows the data.

[roofsniper]

would be nice to test it, we made another thread for it too. if we can find some unbiased testers and find a good testing method it would be nice but at this point we can't think of a good testing method and no matter what people come up with intel users will say that it is biased and won't work. so it would be nice to find some unbiased people willing to give it a test.

[Uncle Jimbo]

duplicated for some reason - original is above