For those who don't feel like searching the table:
SpecInt (Integer performance test):
Company Name System Name Base Peak
Intel Corporation Intel D850GB motherboard(1.5 GHz, Pe 524 536
Advanced Micro Devic Gigabyte GA-7DX Motherboard, 1.33GHz 482 539
Intel Corporation Intel D850GB motherboard(1.3 GHz, Pe 473 483
Advanced Micro Devic ASUS A7V Motherboard, 1.3GHz Athlon 438 491
SpecFP (Floating-Point performance test):
Company Name System Name Base Peak
Intel Corporation Intel D850GB motherboard(1.5 GHz, Pe 549 558
Intel Corporation Intel D850GB motherboard(1.3 GHz, Pe 503 511
Advanced Micro Devic Gigabyte GA-7DX Motherboard, 1.33GHz 414 445
Advanced Micro Devic ASUS A7V Motherboard, 1.3GHz Athlon 348 374
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The Athlon's floating point performance is looking rather pathetic. The 1.3GHz P4 beats the 1.33GHz Athlon!
The Athlon's integer performance is more robust. Averaging the base and peaks together, the 1.3GHz P4 still beats the 1.3GHz Athlon!
Be aware that this is an industry accepted benchmarking application. Spec is the standard by which all CPUs are judged. There is no bias. AMD gets to run their own benchmarks on their own equipment and submit the results.
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The only barrier to owning a P4 at this point is price. And that barrier will be coming down before the end of this month. I look forward to it.
THIS IS NOT A BASH AGAINST INTEL, I repeat THIS IS NOT A BASH. But I just want to point out Spec's disclaimer:
The results published by SPEC have been reviewed by the SPEC organization prior to publication. However, these are submissions by member companies and the contents of any SPEC reporting page are the submittor's responsibility. SPEC makes no warranties about the accuracy or veracity of this data.
This is a highly respected, industry accepted benchmark. Are you trying to make the libelous statement that Intel fudged the numbers? I don't think so. Look at the numbers submitted by other companies using the same CPUs, they are close to the same numbers. Are you now saying that they _all_ fudged their numbers? I wouldn't bet on that.
These are real scores, not fakes. If I were to pick and choose which benchmarks were likely to contain mistakes, it would be those done by third parties.
In addition, you'll see legal disclaimers on _all_ benchmarks indicating that the numbers don't necessarily mean anything. It's similar to what you see on late night television... "For entertainment purposes only." This is only because noone wants to be sued.
Nice...if SSE2 catches on, then AMD will be back where it was with the K6-2. Unless, of course, AMD gets their own SSE2 implementation working by that time...
In any event, SSE2 will definitely be an improvement over the old stack-based FPU.
Kelledin
<font color=red>"Step away from the gimp suit and put your hands on top of your head."</font color=red>
Because you happened to point out the disclaimer on this one benchmark without reminding everyone that a similar disclaimer is on every other benchmark they'll ever read. You insinuated that this disclaimer somehow affects the validity of the results of this benchmark. If this wasn't your intention then I apologize, but ask why you pointed it out. It's no different than the disclaimers you'll read on all the other benchmarks.
Oh yes all high Raystone, you have brainwashed us and we will now go and buy a P4 to run SPEC benchmarks all day and see those beautiful fake number! All hail Raystone!!
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All your RAMBUS are belong t............ ahh screw it
because of the fact I myself am familiar with the benchmark and know its acclaim. I am merely trying to make sure people aware of the fact that it too is not perfect.
(in fact, I used these very same spec results in determining my next CPU, P3 or Athlon)
Also, the reason I don't quote disclaimers for other benchmarks is that everyone should be taking those
numbers with a grain of salt anyway.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by kurokaze on 04/12/01 11:58 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
That's a nice troll there, Grizely1. At least I hope that was a troll. I don't see how anyone could take your claims seriously considering you can't even spell my name correctly. These are not fake numbers. I assure you they are quite real. If you'd like to test it yourself, feel free to download the spec benchmark and run it on a P4. Until you show the numbers to be off, we can safely assume that the numbesr submitted by multiple companies with P4 machines are right on.
The one question I've had on these is if SSE2 optimizations were used, or if you can just take an off-the-shelf compiler and get these numbers. Nothing wrong with SSE2, except that I don't know how to code it personally :-(
I welcome the price cuts also, although I would wait for the new socket.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.
I'm sorry for jumping all over you if that was a joke. There are way too many flamers on this board and you can't tell who's being serious. I just want a serious discussion on the merits of the CPUs, that's all.
These results were obtained compiling with the Intel C/C++ Compiler 5.0 and Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 (for libraries). These are both commercially available compilers. You don't have to do anything special to use SSE as the Intel compiler will automatically build it with SSE if you enable this option..
The common method of CPU optimizations is to use function pointers or a class hierarchy that allows you to duplicate the important code into multiple source files, and then build each source files targetting a different CPU. You then link them together into the resulting executable and you choose which function/class hierarchy to use at runtime based on the current CPU.
This allows you to target every CPU fully, simply recompiling the important core module once for each CPU. A simple compile of the one .cpp file with the Intel compiler will optimize it for you, adding SSE if you desire, for the Intel CPU you select.
An interesting note is that binaries (programs) built with the Intel compiler are better optimized for AMD cpus as well (with SSE turned off). This is shown by the fact that AMD used the Intel compiler for their benchmarking as well. (Go to the page listing the results and click on the 'html' link to the right of the score.)
My understanding is that compilers can do some basic SSE optimizations, but for more complicated code you generally have to get down into assembly language by hand. That's my question really. Is this straight from an off-the-shelf compiler, with no in-line assembly.
I've seen header files abstracting some 3DNow assembly, but it's still pretty ugly. I hope to learn more now that I'm not working on an antique cpu :-)
Besides, Intel compilers aren't available on my platform of choice.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.
As opposed to 3DNow, this is straight off the shelf C/C++ code with no inline assembly required. The reason for the inline assembly with the AMD toolkit is AMD doesn't make a compiler. Using MMX/SSE/SSE2 is much easier. It's all natively built into the compiler.
By chance is your platform of choice Linux? The Intel C/C++ Compiler for Linux is going into Beta in May of this year. All the linux coders are going to want this one. "gcc" has really crappy optimizations thus far for anything beyond the Pentium.
