Analysis
- Our benchmark results show that AMD's latest 90 nm E revision cores clearly are the faster products when it comes to a head-to-head comparison with 130 nm devices. Memory controller improvements and SSE3 support have an obvious effect.
- Today, dual-core chips can only be considered a reasonable choice at the entry level or the mainstream segment, or if computing density in server racks is your primary goal.
- The dual cores in the professional space still are expensive and their price/performance ratio does not hold a candle to a dual-processor single-core machine (leaving computing density aside).
- Right now, going for a dual processor machine using single cores will deliver the best bang for the buck.
Conclusion
Investing in a fast dual-core system for performance reasons does not pay off today. Any of the professional class dual-core chips such as AMD's dual core Opteron models or the Intel Xeon dual-core 2.8 GHz are as expensive as two equivalent single-core processors running at the same clock speed. At the same time, the price difference still is large enough to purchase a professional dual-processor motherboard with its more expensive registered memory you will require - and you might still be saving some money. Furthermore, you will get two processor sockets so you can upgrade to two dual-core devices in the future.
The whole affair becomes particularly delicate if you take a look at both AMD and Intel's desktop premium dual-core offerings, such as the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ or Pentium Extreme Edition 840. Again, their prices are high enough to purchase a workstation class motherboard, registered memory and two single core processors that deliver the same performance.
While most users would not want to opt for a Socket 604 Xeon motherboard due to the limited popularity of the processors, several Opteron motherboards based on the professional version of NVIDIA's nForce4 platform are available. The platform can accommodate the common socket 939/940 cooling devices and NVIDIA's platform driver. It also provides dual x16 PCI Express slots as well as all state of the art features.
If it has not already become obvious, AMD and Intel's premium dual- core devices are hugely overpriced. The future does belong to multi-core chips as the two chip giants make clear. But to get there, thread-optimized software that really takes full advantage of multi-core technology is required. In order for software developers to create the requisite software, the volumes must be there. And in order for that to happen, multi-core prices have to come down a lot.
