AMD's dual core Opteron & Athlon 64 X2 - Server/Desktop Performance Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on April 21, 2005 9:25 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Development Performance - Compiling Firefox
Our Quake 3 compile test was getting a bit long in the tooth, so we're introducing a brand new test: compiling Firefox. We followed the instructions diagramed here. 
The Real Test - AnandTech's Multitasking Scenarios
Before our first dual core articles, we asked for feedback from the readers with regards to their multitasking usage patterns. Based on this information, we formulated some of our own benchmarks that would stress multitasking performance. We've already gone over the impacts of dual core CPUs on subjective interactions, so we'll just point you back to previous articles for our take on that if you haven't read them already. In the end, we know that dual core CPUs make our systems much more responsive and provide the same sort of smooth operation that SMP systems have done for years. But, the question now is: who has better multitasking performance? AMD or Intel? And that's exactly what we're here to find out.We started with a test bed configured with a number of fairly popular applications:
Daemon ToolsWhat's important about this list is that a handful of those programs were running in the background at all times, primarily Microsoft's AntiSpyware Beta and Norton AntiVirus 2004. Both the AntiSpyware Beta and NAV 2004 were running with their real time protection modes enabled, to make things even more real world.
Norton AntiVirus 2004 (with latest updates)
Firefox 1.02
DVD Shrink 3.2
Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta 1.0
Newsleecher 2.0
Visual Studio .NET 2003
Macromedia Flash Player 7
Adobe Photoshop CS
Microsoft Office 2003
3ds max 7
iTunes 4.7.1
Trillian 3.1
DivX 5.2.1
AutoGK 1.60
Norton Ghost 2003
Adobe Reader 7
Cygwin
gcc
mingw
Doom 3
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
144 Comments
View All Comments
Zebo - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
It's all good Jep. I was mainly hoping you'd link me to a real live X2 over at xtreme which is why I persisted;)Minotar - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
All I can say is WOW!!! AMD keeps kicking more and more ass!!!!!!Jep4444 - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
why would i make this up? im just saying what i was told, for all i know that person made it upPS if anyone tries to comment and i dont respond within the next 3 days, its cause i wont be on, not cause im backing out of what i said
Zebo - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
Frankey Jep I'm not buying it. It would cost AMD signifigantly more to make these dual 1MB L2 cores different at the core level. 8XX, 2XX, 1XX, and X2 are identical except for tracing in the pakageing and pins to make them function differently. Check out Tomshardware's recent CPU article about AMD manufacturing and you'll see what I'm talking.Jep4444 - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
im not trying to start a rumour, im very much pro AMD(and if you knew me, i generally dislike attention)all im saying is dont decided it'll be so fast until we see the real thing
Son of a N00b - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
#107......rumor.....looking for attentin....engineering sample...of course rushed....BIOS........shhhh jep...........period:-P
Filibuster - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
If you've actually read through this entire thing, congratulations!Jep4444 - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
#98 what i heard is from word of mouth, not from the site itselfwhile it is true they don't OC very well, apparently the Athlon X2 was rushed and so its functionality wasn't as good as the Opteron 875
from what i hear they don't multi-task nearly aswell as the Opteron does but single threaded performance should still be up to par
the Athlon 64 has had changes made to the ALU amongst other places which would differentiate it from the Opteron aswell
keep in mind i have no actual proof of this and i would love to be wrong but the guys at XS generally know what they're talking about
UzairH - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
AT should run the doom 3 tests again, this time not using the timedemo but actual gameplay run-throughs. If Doom3 uses a seperate thread for physics then dual-core should definitely benefit.fitten - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link
#102 ++