Dual Core Linux Performance: Two Penguins are Better than One
by Kristopher Kubicki on July 1, 2005 5:55 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Gaming Benchmark 1: Heavy Downloading
It's not uncommon for us to fire up BitTorrent and start downloading the next SUSE ISOs (only 8GB per release!). Killing time for the 20 to 30 hour download requires some serious gaming, and Doom3 always wants to be played. Although this is a very similar benchmark to Anand's Doom3 gaming benchmark, we are using a GeForce 6600GT while he uses a 6800 Ultra. The two are not comparable.
Doom3 is running at 1280x1024 with 4xAA and 8xAF on the NVIDIA 1.0-7664 drivers. We first ran this test without the extra baggage from the multi tasking.
Now we re-ran the demo with the steps below:
- Open FireFox 1.0.4 and load all 5 web pages.
- Open XMMS and start playing a Nine Inch Nails CD ripped to Ogg
- Open Thunderbird for news
- Login to our news server and start downloading headers for our subscribed news groups
- Load up Doom3 and run timedemo "demo1" - record FPS
Very much like the DVD burning test on the previous page, the dual core systems had no difficulty crunching away at Doom3 while downloading our news headers in the background. The Pentium 4 660 is penalized as much as 16%! Our game play on the dual core machines was actually very solid as well when compared to the Athlon 64 3500+ and the Pentium 640. Constantly during writes to the disk the entire game would almost lock up. The Pentium D 820 did well but its low(er) clock speed assured that it could not out perform the Athlon 64s that do slightly better in this test than Pentiums to begin with.
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xtknight - Friday, July 1, 2005 - link
Why was FireFox 1.0.2 used on Win32 and 1.0.4 used on Linux? Just wondered.KristopherKubicki - Friday, July 1, 2005 - link
Something is wrong with the graph on the Compilation test (the -j3 for the dual core Athlon was in the Pentium 660 slot). We only ran -j3 on the dual core chips. I redid the graph and it should be rendering correctly now.Kristopher
suryad - Friday, July 1, 2005 - link
#34 great question. I was about to ask that but you beat me to it.smn198 - Friday, July 1, 2005 - link
#22 Give him a break - The removal of the 2nd xbox vs ps article meant that this had to come out a day early.Kocur - Friday, July 1, 2005 - link
Well, Kris, do you have any theory of why single core Athlons seem to perform better with regard to single core P4s than X4200+ with regard to dual P4s?
In my opinion there are two possibilities.
1. HT slows both 640 and 660.
2. X4200+ does not stretch its wings.
In my opinion you should have adressed this problem in the article as we have learnt to expect the opposite.
Kocur.
n yusef - Friday, July 1, 2005 - link
I tink tis article is fair. The Pentium D 820 is good for the price, if you don't already have a S939 mobo and RAM. It's not as ceap as you would think, becuase if the extra ~$100 for more expensive RAM, motherboard, and aftermarket HSF, but it's still cheaper for a whole system. For someone like myself who already has a S939 mobo, and DDR1 RAM, the X2s are a better bargain. The make -j3 tag should have been on all of te CPUs (it even makes non-HT single core CPUs faster), especially the 4200+.When you get a chance, please get a 4400+, or lower your 4800+s (Anand's actually) multi to x11 so we can see how much cache affects a dual-core CPU (each core is sharing the same memory bandwidth that only one had to itself before, so even an A64 might be bandwidth limited).
TheMatt - Friday, July 1, 2005 - link
One comment I always have with these tests is why do you never see pbzip2? On *any* dual, quad, etc. machine I use, I always pester the admin to install pbzip2: http://compression.ca/pbzip2/ .I was hoping I'd see it here to see if it gives the same speed-up with dual-core as it does with my SMP machine. I'd suggest to anyone here to try it out, it's a great program.
fishbits - Friday, July 1, 2005 - link
"If you can't admit that the D820 is a good performer at its price, then I don't know what's going on with you, but nowhere did he slam AMD along the way."The D820 is really good for the price, especially if ram/mobo weren't issues. But saying you "pay through the nose" for the AMD chip and not the D840 at virtually the same price was pretty stunning.
"In our opinion, the Pentium D 820 is really an underdog in this roundup"
What the heck does that mean? The 820 looks like a really good multi-tasking performer for the dollar. How does that make it an "underdog?"
We've gotta give the guys a little slack on various errors, but in "Final Thoughts?" Should the concluding paragraphs where judgement and recommendations are handed out be read two or three times before releasing them? Or maybe by at least a second set of eyes?
JGunther - Friday, July 1, 2005 - link
#29Gaming bechmarks are the ONLY benchmarks in this article where the Pentium D doesn't occupy the top spot. Find me another review site that shows this to be the case.
The D820 is definitely a good performer for its price, I'd never say otherwise. But there's no denying that Kris and his articles are slanted. There are no slams, but little statements like this:
"At $558 you pay through the nose for the additional performance of the Athlon 64 X2 4200+."
Attempt to portray AMD as the culprit, but the fact is, you pay through the nose for that additional performance whether you're looking at the 4200+ or the D840 (the latter of which is is actually the more expensive of the two).
Anand once said that visitors to his site, he found, were about 50/50 Intel or AMD users. Though statistically, it could go either way, there is no doubt in my mind that Kris' primary computer at home runs an Intel chip. It's written all over his articles.
Tegeril - Friday, July 1, 2005 - link
I don't see his analysis showing the Pentium CPUs "on top" at all. He specifically states that the AMD offering beats the pants off of Intel as usual in gaming, that the memory costs on the Intel boards are higher, and that the D820 and D840 don't suck quite as much as people want it to. He simply says that at the price point of $252, the D820 becomes a tempting option.To sacrifice minimal overall performance and save $290 - memory costs is probably a very good suggestion and is warranted by the analysis. It's pretty impartial from here.
If you can't admit that the D820 is a good performer at its price, then I don't know what's going on with you, but nowhere did he slam AMD along the way.