according to mysql site, starting with 5.0.37, the mutex contention bug and the Innodb bug has been improved by a lot, which helps 8 core systems.
I was wondering that since 5.0.45 is available on mysql's website, why isn't the latest mysql being benchmarked? 5.0.26 still has that bug, and you can see it in the benchmark where a 8 core system is slower than a 4 core which is slower than a 2 core.
Now that we are benchmarking 8-16 core systems, the newest versions of software should be used to reflect the improved multithreading.
I currently have a 4 way 2.4ghz opteron as a production db server that I am considering upgrading. I'm trying to use the Anandtech benchmarks to help project how much performance gain we'll see in a new machine.
We're running Oracle but are considering moving to MySQL. So I am trying to compare the stat's in 2 Anandtech reviews to see how the new Barcelona cores compare to the Intel Woodcrest and Clovertown.
Ultimately I want to compare the Opteron 2350 vs Xeon 5345 and then the Opteron 8350 vs Xeon E7330 but I'm starting with what exists for benchmarks first so I can make sure I understand what I am reading.
The article in june 2006 uses 5.0.21, and there might also be a small change in tuning. The article in September 2007 uses the standaard 5.0.26 mysql version that you get with SLES 10 SP1.
The newest version 5.0.45 will give you performance like the above article: MySQL has incorporated the Patches we talked about (that Peter Z. wrote) in this new version.
Maybe it's too early for gcc optimizations but how about testing programs like oggenc, ffmpeg, blender, kernel compilation, apache with openssl, doom III and so on?
I read another review and they got these scores on the slightly lowerspeed 1.9 GHz Barcelona.
Barcelona 2347 (1.9Ghz)
37.5 Gflop/s
Intel Xeon 5150(2.6Ghz)
35.3 Gflop/s
It seems your Barcelona scores are way off for some reason.
The Xeons score is more or less identical.
This seems really weird. Normally the higher score is the correct one due to some bad optimizations. The rest of the article is great though.
This article seems to be very biased.
1) they choose faster Intel processors, 2 GHz Opteron. There are 2 GHz processors available across all the processors used in this analysis.
2) No mention of what compiler was used. Intel compilers earlier had a trick, which was not documented - any code optimized for Intel processors if used on non-intel processors (uhm! AMD), would disable all optimizations. Who knows what else they are doing now. And this gentleman used Intel optimized code on AMD to test performance. Who in the right mind measuring performance would do that?
3) Intel MKL was used for BLAS. Shouldnt they use ACML for AMD code? Again, who would do that when looking for performance?
4) Memory Subsystem - knowing that the frequencies are different, why were all the results not normalized?
5) They managed to comment that Tulsa and Opteron 2000 series are half the performance of core or Barcelona and hence should not be considered in the first page. But in Linpack page, it is mentioned that Intel chips ate AMD ones for breakfast. Of course, they did - peak of Xeon 5100 series is twice that of Opteron 2000 series. You dont need LINPACK to tell you that. Gives a very biased impression.
6) LinPACK results graph could not be any more wrong. The peak performance of each CPU considered is different ... obviously their sustained performance is going to be different. The author should have at least made the effort to normalize the graph to show the real comparison.
7) Since when is Linpack "Intel friendly"
The author says they didnt have time to optimize code for AMD Opteron ... why would you do a performance study in the first place if you didnt have the methodology right.
I didnt even read beyind LinPACK .. I would be careful reading articles from this author next time and maybe the whole site ... Its sad to see such an immature article. Whats worse is majority of people would just see the "fact" Intel is still faster than AMD.
Over all, a very immature article with false information cleverly hidden behind numbers. or could it be that this article was intended to be biased .... who knows.
quote: why would you do a performance study in the first place if you didnt have the methodology right.
quote: Memory Subsystem - knowing that the frequencies are different, why were all the results not normalized?
What about the bytes/Cycle in each table?
quote: The author should have at least made the effort to normalize the graph to show the real comparison.
Why is that the "real comparison"? If Intel has a clockspeed advantage, nobody is going to downclock their CPUs to be fair to AMD.
quote: ) Since when is Linpack "Intel friendly"
First you claim we are biased. As we disclose that the binary that we run was compiled with Intel compilers targetting Core architecture, it is clear that the binary is somewhat Intel friendly.
quote: why would you do a performance study in the first place if you didnt have the methodology right.
It not wrong. It is incomplete and we admit that more than once. But considering AMD gaves us a few days before the NDA was over, it was impossible to cover all angles.
quote: Why is that the "real comparison"? If Intel has a clockspeed advantage, nobody is going to downclock their CPUs to be fair to AMD.
That is true in the desktop scene but I am sure you know that servers is about performance/price and performance/w. Prices will declinge and we don't know what the price is tomorrow. It is ok to compare against a similarly priced cpu but a comparison against a
same frequency cpu is very interesting too.
Your LINPACK score just seems obscure. Somewhat Intel friendly compiler? LOL. If the compiler is so great why is the gcc score I read on another review 30% higher with the Barcelona(with a 1.9 GHz CPU)? That is just ridiculous. I thought this review was about architechture and what it can perform and not about which compiler we use and if it is true that optimizations is turned off in then Intel compiler if it is an AMD cpu then the score is worthless and the comparison is severly biased.
quote: Your LINPACK score just seems obscure. Somewhat Intel friendly compiler? LOL. If the compiler is so great why is the gcc score I read on another review 30% higher with the Barcelona(with a 1.9 GHz CPU)? That is just ridiculous. I thought this review was about architechture and what it can perform and not about which compiler we use and if it is true that optimizations is turned off in then Intel compiler if it is an AMD cpu then the score is worthless and the comparison is severly biased.
Which review? Did they fully disclose the compiler settings?
If the Intel compiler did fool us and turned off optimisations, we will update the numbers.
I take back what I said.
I mixed up 3 different reviews that does not correlate and is not comparable.
I did not realize that until now even though I looked at them again.
Optimizations put off on AMD processors was just hearsay and likely with the results presented but since I was wrong about the results that part is probably wrong too.
So now everything I have to say is, great article :)
Now I look forward to the tests with the 2.5GHz part and some overclock on it to see what a 2.8 or even a 3GHz part would do.
Sorry ... with all the discussion, your methodology is incomplete and leading to a biased result. Maybe there is code that is optimized for Intel processor - but the focus of the article is performance - thats what you intended it to be ... if not, please redo the article, change your deductions and focus it on code compatibility. No one measuring performance on their systems will use Intel Xeon optimized code on AMD processors. There are bunch of other compilers and performance libraries available. If not, please use a compiler that WILL optimize for both - pathscale, gcc and more ...
I agree with your processor frequency aspect ... however, neither did Intel have a high speed freq on the launch date. The way it should have been presented is "at same frequency ... there is not much difference in performance" "at higher clocks, Intel does have advantage that comes at a price" Is this the same deduction you brought out in your article? Far from it ... do you concur?
And your reasoning that you didnt have time to optimize the code is not acceptable. What was the point of this article - throw out some incomplete article on the day of the launch so everyone doesnt think AnandTech doesnt have a comment on Barcelona or maintain your high standards and put out a well written, mature and complete article based on results based from a rock solid testing methodology with critical analysis?
The article was leaning towards a dramatic touch than presenting a neutral analysis. And, please stop saying Linpack is Intel friendly. The code is NOT, the way you compiled it is optimized for LinPack!! There is a HUGE difference. A code can only be Intel "friendly" when it is written with special attention to make sure it fully exploits all the features that Xeon has to offer and not necessarily by any other processors. And, if you do read my email to you - you will notice my stand on that point and lot more.
So, I kindly request you to immediately take down this article with a correction or redo your article and change the focus. Maybe you had a different idea in your mind when writing it ... but the way it was written is not what you said you wanted it to be. All the comments you made now are not brought out in the article.
And of course, we didnt even get to the point where the test setup says "BIOS Note: Hardware prefetcing turned off" but in your analysis section it says
"but masterly optimization together with hardware prefetching ensures most of the data is already in the cache. The quad-core Xeon wins again, but the victory is a bit smaller: the advantage is 20%-23%."
That says enough about the completeness and accuracy of your article. The article is full of superlatives like masterly, meticulous to describe Intel processors. The bias cant be any more blatant.
Now, will you please take it down and stop spreading the wrong message!!! There is nothing wrong in saying it was an incomplete article and in the interests of accuracy we would like to retract our claims!! Stop sending the wrong message to your huge reader base and influence their opinion of a potentially good product!
Potentially... but not yet a good product, IMO. Hopefully AMD will have another stepping out sometime by the end of the year that may actually be competitive. As of right now, Barcelona isn't competitive with Intel offerings. The problem is that the target is moving as Intel will be releasing new chips by the end of the year.
As far as Intel compilers are concerned, you do realize that Intel's compilers are better than GCC (which is NOT known for agressive optimizations and stellar performance) and are downloadable from their site. Code compiled with Intel compilers tends to execute faster on both Intel and AMD processors than code compiled with GCC in many cases.
As far as accuracy of the various reviews... it's AMD's fault for getting only a few systems to a few reviewers only 48 hours before the launch date. I believe this was intentional in order to delay any thorough testing of Barcelona in the short term. Plus, there's the whole bit about AMD requiring that reviewers submit reviews to AMD for sanitizing before publishing them, as well. I'm quite convinced that AMD knew (and knows) that Barcelona is a turd and are just trying to buy time by various nefarious methods so that they can have a little more time to get their act together. If it weren't for investors and the world pushing AMD to actually release on their (much delayed) launch date, I'm quite sure AMD would have rather waited a few months so they'd have a better stepping to debut.
This is exactly what I am talking about ... see the comments on Digg:
quote: And it's not looking pretty. Roughly same performance as the 2.33GHz Xeon in single and dual socket configurations; faster in some, slower in most, slightly less power consumption. We waited 18 months for this?!?
Yes, I would say anandtech.com has the most comprehensive, thoughtful, well organized, un-biased and current analysis of any site/content that currently exists. Many other sites even reference or simply use anandtech.com's analysis barely augmenting with their own.
I have definitely used them in the past for both personal purchases (enthusiast OC'ing) and business purchases of my production hardware environment. In each case I've used multiple sources but always find myself returning to anandtech.com.
I'd hate to see them delay the release of an article just because there was "just one more test to run". Like many things in life, sometimes it's more important to simply work with the information at hand (even if not quite complete) than to wait to make a decision. Some might call that "analysis-paralysis".
Ultimately it's up to me when making purchasing decisions to weigh all the information and consider how much issues such as you pointed out regarding "not quite complete" analysis would impact a real world scenario.
I applaud anandtech.com for all the work they do (and the LONG hours they must put in) in quantifying what in some cases is unquantifiable.
Now back to my original question - why do the Woodcrest/MySQL benchmarks taken approx 14 months apart vary by so much and for the worse? Did the benchmark used change or am I just misreading the benchmark?
Its great that you trust the site content so much. I know many people who do. That is why I was shocked to see the shortcomings in the article ... most of which are, I must say, basic to some extent.
I myself have been reading the site since many years and I know many colleagues who refer this site for just about anything ... hence my stand that they realize the importance of their work and publishings.
Maybe its your fondness for the site ... but the specific comments I made are very important and do affect real world results. For any one looking to make a cluster or build an HPC system - thats their real world. Just like database performance is real world to you.
Just to make it explicit... its not a flame war or anything like that ... it is to make sure that the data is correct and a relevant comparison is made.
quote: It not wrong. It is incomplete and we admit that more than once. But considering AMD gaves us a few days before the NDA was over, it was impossible to cover all angles
quote: 1) they choose faster Intel processors, 2 GHz Opteron. There are 2 GHz processors available across all the processors used in this analysis.
2 GHz Intel's were not available to us. And considering AMD's pricepoints, a 2 GHz Opteron 2350 are targetting 2.33 GHz Xeons. It is fairly accepted that AMD has to lure customers with a small price advantage.
quote: And this gentleman used Intel optimized code on AMD to test performance. Who in the right mind measuring performance would do that?
Because there is a lot Intel optimized code out there? Do you deny that there are developers out there that use the Intel MKL?
I don't deny people use MKL ... I dont agree that anyone targeting performance on AMD Opteron will use MKL. No one running HPL/Linpack for Top 500 submission would use MKL on Opteron. No one who wishes to test his Opteron for performance would use MKL to do so. No one wishing to have the fastest possible results from his Opteron will do so.
Even ISV's now provide code that is optimized for Xeon and Opteron separately.
and how offen do you read anandtechs Previews and reviews
unlike when intels core 2 came out all the hipe was real, to bad for AMD this time
this cpu is going to be good, problem is will it be able to compleat with Intels new cpu when it comes out
i still useing an amd system if your wundering and so all the rest of my pcs apart from my server as i just thow in an old P4 mobo to just file sharein house (all second hand parts apart from the hdds)
I wonder if it would be feasible for AMD to take the Intel approach, and slap two of there new native quad cores together and release an octal core CPU in the near future. Or would they remain the multi-core purists they have become... Similarly I wonder if 2 65nm Barecelona cores could even fit under that heat spreader... or come in under an acceptable thermal envelope.
Page 8, 3DS Max 9 last paragraph:
"Dual 3GHz Opteron 2222 is capable of generating about 29 frames per hour", but then
"potential 3GHz Barcelona will be able to spit out ~35 frames per second". I think that is supposed to be ~35 frames per hour. Otherwise that is an extremely impressive speedup!
Kentsfield has 2*143mm^2 dies. Barcelona is 280+ mm^2. Penry would be even smaller, 2*100 mm^2. So unless AMD can increase the frequency to 3.0+Ghz soon and price their new quad-core processors higher than Intel's, AMD would be still in red unless it oursouces Athlon 64 to TSMC.
I thought that 2x00 series CPUs only supported one coherent hypertransport link, so would this mean that the "Dual Link" feature involving two HT links would require 8300 series CPUs?
Well, maybe the changed that and all links are active (to enable setups like this) and the CPU just refuses to comunicate more than one coherent hopa away..
Well, maybe the changed that and all links are active (to enable setups like this) and the CPU just refuses to comunicate more than one coherent hopa away..
Are you going to be re-doing the review with the shipping version (stepping BA) anytime soon?
I'm most curious to see if the improvement of 5%+ claims are true...
I think Barcelona will be a success in the server world. It's performance is around 20% faster than equivalently clocked xeons with the exception of certain programs like fritz and the linpack intel library where it is around 5-10% slower. But since it scales better than the xeon chips it should negate that and increase it's lead on others as core/sockets increase. add to that it's power efficiency tweaks and aggressive pricing, AMD will be able to hold off intel in the server world.....maybe.
With 2.5Ghz Barceys coming up that would be equivalent to around 3-3+ Ghz xeons. So AMD was right that they need to get to 2.6 Ghz....AMD needs to ramp up clock to get the highest-end performance crown, but for now, their offering offers a nice balance of performance and power efficiency for the price.
The article should have mentioned the performance penalty Intel chips are suffering from with regards to FB-DIMMS. While it's true they should be benchmarked in servers with with memory, it's also widely rumored that they are going to be offering choices in the near future. This memory has a really big impact on a lot of benchmarks, so when looking towards the future, or desktop, it's important to keep in mind the importance of Intel using different memory. I don't think even Intel is stubborn enough to stick with this seriously slow, and power hungry memory. Maybe as a choice it's fine, but it must be clear to them that offering something else as well as FB-DIMMs is very desirable in the server space. Then again, look at how long they stuck with Rambus.
AMD won't compete against Intel's Tulsa chips anymore. They will have to compete against Tigerton Xeon MP and the newly introduced Clarksbro chipset.
On the DP server platform, Intel will introduce Harpertown and Seaburg chipset. Seaburg chipset features 1600MHz bus with significantly improved memory controller performance. We'll see how it all turns out but as of now, Barcelona is a bit late to be competitive.
You should not forget the Penryn. 2.5Ghz Barcelona will face to 3.1+Ghz Penryn. According to result from this article, I expect the performance of 2.5Ghz Barcelona will reach between 2.8 ~ 2.9Ghz Penryn. So wait till (hopefully) next year to see that AMD becomes the performance king. BTW, talking about the multi-processor servers, AMD will lead w/o much difficulties, I expect, thanks to the scalable architecture.
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46 Comments
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tshen83 - Monday, October 1, 2007 - link
according to mysql site, starting with 5.0.37, the mutex contention bug and the Innodb bug has been improved by a lot, which helps 8 core systems.I was wondering that since 5.0.45 is available on mysql's website, why isn't the latest mysql being benchmarked? 5.0.26 still has that bug, and you can see it in the benchmark where a 8 core system is slower than a 4 core which is slower than a 2 core.
Now that we are benchmarking 8-16 core systems, the newest versions of software should be used to reflect the improved multithreading.
swindelljd - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
I currently have a 4 way 2.4ghz opteron as a production db server that I am considering upgrading. I'm trying to use the Anandtech benchmarks to help project how much performance gain we'll see in a new machine.We're running Oracle but are considering moving to MySQL. So I am trying to compare the stat's in 2 Anandtech reviews to see how the new Barcelona cores compare to the Intel Woodcrest and Clovertown.
In looking at this article from June 2006( http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2772&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2772&am... ) , 2x3ghz Woodcrests (4 cores, right?) run the MySQL test at about 950 QPS (queries per second) for 25,50 and 100 concurrent sessions.
However this recent article in September 2007 ( http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3091&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3091&am... ) appears to show the same 2x3ghz Woodcrests running 700,750 and 850 QPS for 25,50 and 100 connections respectively. That represents a 20% or so DECREASE in performance of the same chip in the last 12 months.
What am I missing?
Ultimately I want to compare the Opteron 2350 vs Xeon 5345 and then the Opteron 8350 vs Xeon E7330 but I'm starting with what exists for benchmarks first so I can make sure I understand what I am reading.
Can someone please help set me straight.
thanks,
John
JohanAnandtech - Monday, September 17, 2007 - link
The article in june 2006 uses 5.0.21, and there might also be a small change in tuning. The article in September 2007 uses the standaard 5.0.26 mysql version that you get with SLES 10 SP1.The best numbers are here:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...
The newest version 5.0.45 will give you performance like the above article: MySQL has incorporated the Patches we talked about (that Peter Z. wrote) in this new version.
Jjoshua2 - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
I like this benchmark alot as I am a fan of computer chess. Higher was spelled wrong on the graph on that page in Hiher is better.Schugy - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Maybe it's too early for gcc optimizations but how about testing programs like oggenc, ffmpeg, blender, kernel compilation, apache with openssl, doom III and so on?erikejw - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
I read another review and they got these scores on the slightly lowerspeed 1.9 GHz Barcelona.Barcelona 2347 (1.9Ghz)
37.5 Gflop/s
Intel Xeon 5150(2.6Ghz)
35.3 Gflop/s
It seems your Barcelona scores are way off for some reason.
The Xeons score is more or less identical.
This seems really weird. Normally the higher score is the correct one due to some bad optimizations. The rest of the article is great though.
kalyanakrishna - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
This article seems to be very biased.1) they choose faster Intel processors, 2 GHz Opteron. There are 2 GHz processors available across all the processors used in this analysis.
2) No mention of what compiler was used. Intel compilers earlier had a trick, which was not documented - any code optimized for Intel processors if used on non-intel processors (uhm! AMD), would disable all optimizations. Who knows what else they are doing now. And this gentleman used Intel optimized code on AMD to test performance. Who in the right mind measuring performance would do that?
3) Intel MKL was used for BLAS. Shouldnt they use ACML for AMD code? Again, who would do that when looking for performance?
4) Memory Subsystem - knowing that the frequencies are different, why were all the results not normalized?
5) They managed to comment that Tulsa and Opteron 2000 series are half the performance of core or Barcelona and hence should not be considered in the first page. But in Linpack page, it is mentioned that Intel chips ate AMD ones for breakfast. Of course, they did - peak of Xeon 5100 series is twice that of Opteron 2000 series. You dont need LINPACK to tell you that. Gives a very biased impression.
6) LinPACK results graph could not be any more wrong. The peak performance of each CPU considered is different ... obviously their sustained performance is going to be different. The author should have at least made the effort to normalize the graph to show the real comparison.
7) Since when is Linpack "Intel friendly"
The author says they didnt have time to optimize code for AMD Opteron ... why would you do a performance study in the first place if you didnt have the methodology right.
I didnt even read beyind LinPACK .. I would be careful reading articles from this author next time and maybe the whole site ... Its sad to see such an immature article. Whats worse is majority of people would just see the "fact" Intel is still faster than AMD.
Over all, a very immature article with false information cleverly hidden behind numbers. or could it be that this article was intended to be biased .... who knows.
JohanAnandtech - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
What about the bytes/Cycle in each table?
Why is that the "real comparison"? If Intel has a clockspeed advantage, nobody is going to downclock their CPUs to be fair to AMD.
First you claim we are biased. As we disclose that the binary that we run was compiled with Intel compilers targetting Core architecture, it is clear that the binary is somewhat Intel friendly.
It not wrong. It is incomplete and we admit that more than once. But considering AMD gaves us a few days before the NDA was over, it was impossible to cover all angles.
erikejw - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
That is true in the desktop scene but I am sure you know that servers is about performance/price and performance/w. Prices will declinge and we don't know what the price is tomorrow. It is ok to compare against a similarly priced cpu but a comparison against a
same frequency cpu is very interesting too.
Your LINPACK score just seems obscure. Somewhat Intel friendly compiler? LOL. If the compiler is so great why is the gcc score I read on another review 30% higher with the Barcelona(with a 1.9 GHz CPU)? That is just ridiculous. I thought this review was about architechture and what it can perform and not about which compiler we use and if it is true that optimizations is turned off in then Intel compiler if it is an AMD cpu then the score is worthless and the comparison is severly biased.
JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Which review? Did they fully disclose the compiler settings?
If the Intel compiler did fool us and turned off optimisations, we will update the numbers.
erikejw - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
I take back what I said.I mixed up 3 different reviews that does not correlate and is not comparable.
I did not realize that until now even though I looked at them again.
Optimizations put off on AMD processors was just hearsay and likely with the results presented but since I was wrong about the results that part is probably wrong too.
So now everything I have to say is, great article :)
Now I look forward to the tests with the 2.5GHz part and some overclock on it to see what a 2.8 or even a 3GHz part would do.
kalyanakrishna - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Sorry ... with all the discussion, your methodology is incomplete and leading to a biased result. Maybe there is code that is optimized for Intel processor - but the focus of the article is performance - thats what you intended it to be ... if not, please redo the article, change your deductions and focus it on code compatibility. No one measuring performance on their systems will use Intel Xeon optimized code on AMD processors. There are bunch of other compilers and performance libraries available. If not, please use a compiler that WILL optimize for both - pathscale, gcc and more ...I agree with your processor frequency aspect ... however, neither did Intel have a high speed freq on the launch date. The way it should have been presented is "at same frequency ... there is not much difference in performance" "at higher clocks, Intel does have advantage that comes at a price" Is this the same deduction you brought out in your article? Far from it ... do you concur?
And your reasoning that you didnt have time to optimize the code is not acceptable. What was the point of this article - throw out some incomplete article on the day of the launch so everyone doesnt think AnandTech doesnt have a comment on Barcelona or maintain your high standards and put out a well written, mature and complete article based on results based from a rock solid testing methodology with critical analysis?
The article was leaning towards a dramatic touch than presenting a neutral analysis. And, please stop saying Linpack is Intel friendly. The code is NOT, the way you compiled it is optimized for LinPack!! There is a HUGE difference. A code can only be Intel "friendly" when it is written with special attention to make sure it fully exploits all the features that Xeon has to offer and not necessarily by any other processors. And, if you do read my email to you - you will notice my stand on that point and lot more.
So, I kindly request you to immediately take down this article with a correction or redo your article and change the focus. Maybe you had a different idea in your mind when writing it ... but the way it was written is not what you said you wanted it to be. All the comments you made now are not brought out in the article.
Thank you for your time.
kalyanakrishna - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
And of course, we didnt even get to the point where the test setup says "BIOS Note: Hardware prefetcing turned off" but in your analysis section it says"but masterly optimization together with hardware prefetching ensures most of the data is already in the cache. The quad-core Xeon wins again, but the victory is a bit smaller: the advantage is 20%-23%."
That says enough about the completeness and accuracy of your article. The article is full of superlatives like masterly, meticulous to describe Intel processors. The bias cant be any more blatant.
Now, will you please take it down and stop spreading the wrong message!!! There is nothing wrong in saying it was an incomplete article and in the interests of accuracy we would like to retract our claims!! Stop sending the wrong message to your huge reader base and influence their opinion of a potentially good product!
fitten - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Potentially... but not yet a good product, IMO. Hopefully AMD will have another stepping out sometime by the end of the year that may actually be competitive. As of right now, Barcelona isn't competitive with Intel offerings. The problem is that the target is moving as Intel will be releasing new chips by the end of the year.As far as Intel compilers are concerned, you do realize that Intel's compilers are better than GCC (which is NOT known for agressive optimizations and stellar performance) and are downloadable from their site. Code compiled with Intel compilers tends to execute faster on both Intel and AMD processors than code compiled with GCC in many cases.
As far as accuracy of the various reviews... it's AMD's fault for getting only a few systems to a few reviewers only 48 hours before the launch date. I believe this was intentional in order to delay any thorough testing of Barcelona in the short term. Plus, there's the whole bit about AMD requiring that reviewers submit reviews to AMD for sanitizing before publishing them, as well. I'm quite convinced that AMD knew (and knows) that Barcelona is a turd and are just trying to buy time by various nefarious methods so that they can have a little more time to get their act together. If it weren't for investors and the world pushing AMD to actually release on their (much delayed) launch date, I'm quite sure AMD would have rather waited a few months so they'd have a better stepping to debut.
kalyanakrishna - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
This is exactly what I am talking about ... see the comments on Digg:http://www.digg.com/hardware/Finally_AMD_s_Barcelo...">http://www.digg.com/hardware/Finally_AMD_s_Barcelo...
Now, please retract your observations.
kalyanakrishna - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
Johan,Comment by swindelljd below ...
I believe you underestimated the impact your article has on purchasing decisions of the customers. :)
I hope customers do continue to look at AnandTech as a source of impartial, genuine and correct data on performance of new technologies.
As Spiderman's uncle would say "With great power, comes great responsibility". :) :)
swindelljd - Thursday, September 13, 2007 - link
Yes, I would say anandtech.com has the most comprehensive, thoughtful, well organized, un-biased and current analysis of any site/content that currently exists. Many other sites even reference or simply use anandtech.com's analysis barely augmenting with their own.I have definitely used them in the past for both personal purchases (enthusiast OC'ing) and business purchases of my production hardware environment. In each case I've used multiple sources but always find myself returning to anandtech.com.
I'd hate to see them delay the release of an article just because there was "just one more test to run". Like many things in life, sometimes it's more important to simply work with the information at hand (even if not quite complete) than to wait to make a decision. Some might call that "analysis-paralysis".
Ultimately it's up to me when making purchasing decisions to weigh all the information and consider how much issues such as you pointed out regarding "not quite complete" analysis would impact a real world scenario.
I applaud anandtech.com for all the work they do (and the LONG hours they must put in) in quantifying what in some cases is unquantifiable.
Now back to my original question - why do the Woodcrest/MySQL benchmarks taken approx 14 months apart vary by so much and for the worse? Did the benchmark used change or am I just misreading the benchmark?
thanks,
John
kalyanakrishna - Thursday, September 13, 2007 - link
John,Its great that you trust the site content so much. I know many people who do. That is why I was shocked to see the shortcomings in the article ... most of which are, I must say, basic to some extent.
I myself have been reading the site since many years and I know many colleagues who refer this site for just about anything ... hence my stand that they realize the importance of their work and publishings.
Maybe its your fondness for the site ... but the specific comments I made are very important and do affect real world results. For any one looking to make a cluster or build an HPC system - thats their real world. Just like database performance is real world to you.
Just to make it explicit... its not a flame war or anything like that ... it is to make sure that the data is correct and a relevant comparison is made.
thanks.
flyck - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
When will there be an update available? :).
JohanAnandtech - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
2 GHz Intel's were not available to us. And considering AMD's pricepoints, a 2 GHz Opteron 2350 are targetting 2.33 GHz Xeons. It is fairly accepted that AMD has to lure customers with a small price advantage.
Because there is a lot Intel optimized code out there? Do you deny that there are developers out there that use the Intel MKL?
kalyanakrishna - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
I don't deny people use MKL ... I dont agree that anyone targeting performance on AMD Opteron will use MKL. No one running HPL/Linpack for Top 500 submission would use MKL on Opteron. No one who wishes to test his Opteron for performance would use MKL to do so. No one wishing to have the fastest possible results from his Opteron will do so.Even ISV's now provide code that is optimized for Xeon and Opteron separately.
JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Ok, point taken. Give us some time, and we'll follow up with new compilations of Linpack.kalyanakrishna - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link
Thank you. Appreciate the effort.leexgx - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
and how offen do you read anandtechs Previews and reviewsunlike when intels core 2 came out all the hipe was real, to bad for AMD this time
this cpu is going to be good, problem is will it be able to compleat with Intels new cpu when it comes out
i still useing an amd system if your wundering and so all the rest of my pcs apart from my server as i just thow in an old P4 mobo to just file sharein house (all second hand parts apart from the hdds)
phaxmohdem - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
I wonder if it would be feasible for AMD to take the Intel approach, and slap two of there new native quad cores together and release an octal core CPU in the near future. Or would they remain the multi-core purists they have become... Similarly I wonder if 2 65nm Barecelona cores could even fit under that heat spreader... or come in under an acceptable thermal envelope.Accord99 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
It won't fit on Socket F:http://www.madboxpc.com/news/am2/AMD_barcelona.jpg">http://www.madboxpc.com/news/am2/AMD_barcelona.jpg
fic2 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
Page 8, 3DS Max 9 last paragraph:"Dual 3GHz Opteron 2222 is capable of generating about 29 frames per hour", but then
"potential 3GHz Barcelona will be able to spit out ~35 frames per second". I think that is supposed to be ~35 frames per hour. Otherwise that is an extremely impressive speedup!
JohanAnandtech - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
No, it is "per second". We used a Octalcore 2THz Barcelona there.... Thanks, fixed that one :-)
phaxmohdem - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
Got SuperPi times for that beast? ;)Roy2001 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
Kentsfield has 2*143mm^2 dies. Barcelona is 280+ mm^2. Penry would be even smaller, 2*100 mm^2. So unless AMD can increase the frequency to 3.0+Ghz soon and price their new quad-core processors higher than Intel's, AMD would be still in red unless it oursouces Athlon 64 to TSMC.Phynaz - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
Isn't this intentionally crippling the system?JohanAnandtech - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
No. Just check what Intel and other companies do when they submit Specjbb scores for example. With HW prefetch on, you get about 10% lower scores.nj2112 - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Was HW prefetching off for all tests ?lplatypus - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
I thought that 2x00 series CPUs only supported one coherent hypertransport link, so would this mean that the "Dual Link" feature involving two HT links would require 8300 series CPUs?mino - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Well, maybe the changed that and all links are active (to enable setups like this) and the CPU just refuses to comunicate more than one coherent hopa away..mino - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Well, maybe the changed that and all links are active (to enable setups like this) and the CPU just refuses to comunicate more than one coherent hopa away..MDme - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
Let the games begin!Viditor - Thursday, September 13, 2007 - link
Are you going to be re-doing the review with the shipping version (stepping BA) anytime soon?I'm most curious to see if the improvement of 5%+ claims are true...
MDme - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
I think Barcelona will be a success in the server world. It's performance is around 20% faster than equivalently clocked xeons with the exception of certain programs like fritz and the linpack intel library where it is around 5-10% slower. But since it scales better than the xeon chips it should negate that and increase it's lead on others as core/sockets increase. add to that it's power efficiency tweaks and aggressive pricing, AMD will be able to hold off intel in the server world.....maybe.With 2.5Ghz Barceys coming up that would be equivalent to around 3-3+ Ghz xeons. So AMD was right that they need to get to 2.6 Ghz....AMD needs to ramp up clock to get the highest-end performance crown, but for now, their offering offers a nice balance of performance and power efficiency for the price.
Now time for the Phenom to get it's act together.
TA152H - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
The article should have mentioned the performance penalty Intel chips are suffering from with regards to FB-DIMMS. While it's true they should be benchmarked in servers with with memory, it's also widely rumored that they are going to be offering choices in the near future. This memory has a really big impact on a lot of benchmarks, so when looking towards the future, or desktop, it's important to keep in mind the importance of Intel using different memory. I don't think even Intel is stubborn enough to stick with this seriously slow, and power hungry memory. Maybe as a choice it's fine, but it must be clear to them that offering something else as well as FB-DIMMs is very desirable in the server space. Then again, look at how long they stuck with Rambus.JohanAnandtech - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
well said. I don't think AMD will have that advantage for a long time in 2P space :-)JackPack - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
The problem is, 45nm Harpertown and 1600 MHz FSB will be rolling in soon.Barcelona would have looked great 6 or 9 months ago. But today, it's a little weak unless they can raise the frequency fast.
Viditor - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
True, but so will HT 3.0 and the newer mem controller for the Barcelonas...
jones377 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
You got your work cut out for you now :)IntelUser2000 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
AMD won't compete against Intel's Tulsa chips anymore. They will have to compete against Tigerton Xeon MP and the newly introduced Clarksbro chipset.On the DP server platform, Intel will introduce Harpertown and Seaburg chipset. Seaburg chipset features 1600MHz bus with significantly improved memory controller performance. We'll see how it all turns out but as of now, Barcelona is a bit late to be competitive.
wegra - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
You should not forget the Penryn. 2.5Ghz Barcelona will face to 3.1+Ghz Penryn. According to result from this article, I expect the performance of 2.5Ghz Barcelona will reach between 2.8 ~ 2.9Ghz Penryn. So wait till (hopefully) next year to see that AMD becomes the performance king. BTW, talking about the multi-processor servers, AMD will lead w/o much difficulties, I expect, thanks to the scalable architecture.