Strange trend with GPU and CPU combo

[Cheffy]

This comes from an old article, but would seem to add some backup to the idea its down to a system bottleneck:



http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...is,1572-8.html

if the 275gtx and 4890 are both scaling like their older siblings, in pcie limited situations the ati card should handle it much better, so any platform advantage in bandwidth/latency will not show up on the ati card. but, would show prominently on the nvidia card.

easy enough to test also, see if the cards scale nicely if the # of slots is reduced. if the pattern persists, or becomes more pronounced - nail in coffin. if the change has little effect, its not pcie limitations

[informal]

Our friend justapost did his own i5(turbo on) Vs Phenom II tests and this is his post at phoronix forum:

I received an i5 750 today, together with an GBT P55-UD4 mobo. I compared it with my 955BE + GBT GA-MA785GMT-UD2H. Only mobo and cpu differ between setups. Both used 4GB OCZ Plats at 1333MHz CL7 and an nvidia 8800GT 1GB gfx. As os I choose sidux 2009-2 dist-updated. I left all power saving features on and also enabled turbo on the 750. cpufreq-acpi seems to ignore the two and one core increases. The chip ran at 2.8GHz most of the time.
http://global.phoronix-test-suite.co...5168-12682-147
I plan to run the full universe suite and more clock vs. clock comparisons in the next days.

this is a comment on his results:

Similar results with Michael's tests which show Phenom to beat i5 in general, whether the windows' benchmarks shows the opposite...

These are his results,note that his OS is different from the one Phoronix used.

[Zucker2k]

Our friend justapost did his own i5(turbo on) Vs Phenom II tests and this is his post at phoronix forum:

this is a comment on his results:

These are his results,note that his OS is different from the one Phoronix used.

Sidux what.....? Have you made the switch from Windows to Sidux $@%*&%^ yet? I do get your point, lynnfield runs poorly on some unstable alpha linux OS platform.

OS: Debian unstable
Kernel: 2.6.31-0.slh.3-sidux-amd64 (x86_64)
Desktop: KDE 4.3.1
Display Server: X.Org Server 1.6.3.901 (1.6.4 RC 1)
OpenGL: 3.0.0 NVIDIA 185.18.36
Compiler: GCC 4.3.4
File-System: ext3
Screen Resolution: 1600x1200

[informal]

Sidux what.....? Have you made the switch from Windows to Sidux $@%*&%^ yet? I do get your point, lynnfield runs poorly on some unstable alpha linux OS platform.

Yeah more excuses. BTW your selective replying skills are now becoming better . Still haven't replied to the post I made the other day . To sum it up again,across a whole range of Windows apps,the difference on average between stock i7-870 and stock 965BE is 6%.Think about it .

[Zucker2k]

Yeah more excuses. BTW your selective replying skills are now becoming better . Still haven't replied to the post I made the other day . To sum it up again,across a whole range of Windows apps,the difference on average between stock i7-870 and stock 965BE is 6%.Think about it .

The "pot" calling the "kettle" black? Well, according to the link in that post I "selectively" replied to, a Q9550=i5 750=PH II 965! I'm sure you agree that the 1% that separates the first two from the third cpu is within the margin of error? I mean you're known to shave off as much as 3-4% in other cases. The fact is that you would go to lengths to muddy the numbers, even if it means shooting yourself in the foot. There is also one very simple fact, if you sum up all the tests in all reviews, the i5 750 is the all around better processor. This is not saying AMD's flagship processor is bad; it simply means it is bested by Intel's latest low end mainstream cpu. The i5 750 compared to the 965 BE you get:

Same or better performance
Lower price
Lower power consumption
A far more robust and feature-rich selection of motherboards

What's not to like?

[informal]

Yeah and following your logic the i5 750 is be all end all of all the desktop models since it is only 7% off from the 870 with SMT and turbo and a few percents more off from the rest of the high end. The point is that the 965BE is not that far behind the whole Nehalem line,it loses by a hair in many tests and by a lot in select few which twists the overall performance rating towards the i5 and i7. Turbo boost,although very good future that AMD will also use, makes the 750 actually not the 2.66Ghz CPU as it never actually works at that clock.This is not bad since you get higher clock out of the box,but paints a wrong picture when someone says 2.66Ghz lynnfield is as fast as 955BE or 965BE.

To sum it up,one more speed bin from AMD and they will cover the 3Ghz Bloomfield equivalent ,they really don't have to be more competitive than this .They will have IPC boosted(a la Deneb) 32nm shrink of 10h so that will tide them over quite nicely until bulldozer launches.

[Zucker2k]

Yeah and following your logic the i5 750 is be all end all of all the desktop models since it is only 7% off from the 870 with SMT and turbo and a few percents more off from the rest of the high end. The point is that the 965BE is not that far behind the whole Nehalem line,it loses by a hair in many tests and by a lot in select few which twists the overall performance rating towards the i5 and i7. Turbo boost,although very good future that AMD will also use, makes the 750 actually not the 2.66Ghz CPU as it never actually works at that clock.This is not bad since you get higher clock out of the box,but paints a wrong picture when someone says 2.66Ghz lynnfield is as fast as 955BE or 965BE.

To sum it up,one more speed bin from AMD and they will cover the 3Ghz Bloomfield equivalent ,they really don't have to be more competitive than this .They will have IPC boosted(a la Deneb) 32nm shrink of 10h so that will tide them over quite nicely until bulldozer launches.

I really don't understand what "logic" you're talking about. The TRUTH is, depending on what particular app you're running, the difference (% in chips performance) actually varies greatly, eg. most apps capable of taking advantage of 8 threads. And please stop whining about the turbo, it's what you get with Intel's latest. You never hear anyone complaining about the fact that the 965 BE is running at 3.4Ghz at stock ALL THE TIME. Even assuming the best case scenario, the i5 750 is running at only 2.8Ghz with four threads, while the 965BE has a 600mhz advantage, but you won't hear me complaining because that's what you get - that's why one would buy the 965BE over a 940BE for example. Is the i5 750 bad because it packs technologies that allow it to perform better than advertized in certain scenarios?

Don't talk about the future as if AMD's competitors will be sitting on their hands doing nothing. Besides, the NOW is what matters, not to mention Intel's 32nm chip production has taken off and 6-core chips are clocking past 6.3Ghz already (though you didn't hear that from me).

[beta]

Sidux what.....? Have you made the switch from Windows to Sidux $@%*&%^ yet? I do get your point, lynnfield runs poorly on some unstable alpha linux OS platform.

sweet ignorance

[justapost]

Sidux what.....? Have you made the switch from Windows to Sidux $@%*&%^ yet? I do get your point, lynnfield runs poorly on some unstable alpha linux OS platform.

Ehh, I picked sidux because it uses the latest kernel and gcc, and I expect this system is better optimized for lates hardware than older debian or ubuntu releases. Turbo works fine it seems but I need to do more testings.
Michael from phoronix had problems with iinconsisten results using an ubuntu alpha release, my results are repeatble consistent. The packages in debian unstable are not alpha versions from git repositories, normaly they are just the latest available stable versions.