Latest Processors Tested Under Linux

An anonymous reader writes "I don't run into reviews featuring Linux much but here's a great review I found posted on Linux Hardware. It features the latest Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 and AMD Athlon 64 FX-60. Since both of these are dual-core processors, they also decided to throw in the best single-core CPUs for comparison. This is a great review for Linux folk. It gives a look at what hardware you may want to consider for your next workstation."

Macs, right?

[countach]

>It gives a look at what hardware you may want to consider for your next workstation.

Aren't we all fawning over the possibility of running Linux on a new iMac now?

Re:Macs, right?

[macshit]

Aren't we all fawning over the possibility of running Linux on a new iMac now?

Er, no/kinda/um...

I have a pretty anemic system at present (450MHz PIII), and have recently started to do some ray-tracing.

For ray tracing, the sort of balls-to-the-wall systems in this review are the sort of thing you want, but frankly the idea of ending up with yet another giant space-consuming ATX box that sounds like a jet-engine at takeoff is sort of depressing.

FWIW, I think the current imacs are pretty icky too [I don't like the whole integrated monitor/system style in the first place, and the current imacs are not all up to Apple's standards of elegance -- they're just sort of thick and clumsy looking].

What I'd really like is a system that's as small and as quiet as possible, e.g. the mac-mini, but with a beefed up (dual core?) processor/memory-system. Obviously the heat management would need to be upgraded too, so it couldn't be as small as a MM, but it seems like with appropriate technology (liquid cooling to giant heat sink on the rear?), it needn't be anywhere as bloated as the typical ATX box.

Are there are any happy mediums like this out there? Systems that are reasonably small and quiet, but still somewhat fast for doing computation-bound problems?

I'm glad to see this review anyway though, I'm thoroughly sick of the typical "windows office productivity apps" benchmarking you see on other review sites...

Re:Macs, right?

[Daxster]

I like to think that laptops are pretty efficient at being small but not being limited computational-wise (relative to, eg, mini-itx).
Running a fairly quiet system isn't impossible ;-)

Re:Macs, right?

[i_should_be_working]

I have two of these Shuttles. [shuttle.com] Room for two 3.5" hard drives and an optical drive. But still small. I can fit one in my backpack. I also was considering the MacMini, but needed raw cpu power for simulations. Also I wanted more storage than laptop drives have.

The cooling is decent and keeps the temp low for one, but the other one has a Prescott that gets considerably hotter. Not too hot, but several degrees more than if it were just in a normal sized case. If I had known about Prescotts I wouldn't have got one and wouldn't have a problem.

Oh yeah, it's really quiet. 2 feet from my bed and doesn't bother me at all. Not as quiet as the MacMini though. Some of the Shuttles are more quiet than others, so it's helpful to read reviews.

Better looking in person

[Wabbit Wabbit]

FWIW, I think the current imacs are pretty icky too [I don't like the whole integrated monitor/system style in the first place, and the current imacs are not all up to Apple's standards of elegance -- they're just sort of thick and clumsy looking].

I originally thought the same thing, but as is often the case with electronics and automobiles, these look much better in real life than in the pictures you see on the web. I am continually amazed by this. If you get a chance, check one out in person.

Re:Macs, right?

[n0dalus]

For ray tracing, the sort of balls-to-the-wall systems in this review are the sort of thing you want, but frankly the idea of ending up with yet another giant space-consuming ATX box that sounds like a jet-engine at takeoff is sort of depressing.

I think you'll find that for ray-tracing, the 3d industry uses render farms of lots of less powerful computers. It's cheaper that way.

What I'd really like is a system that's as small and as quiet as possible...

Do what I did. Buy long shielded extension cable

Re:Macs, right?

[LWATCDR]

I just built a system using an AMD64 3200 Venice core. I was shocked by little noise it makes. I am using a standard cpu fan, 120mm case fan and a good but not great ps. While it isn't going to match the speed of these dual core monsters it is pretty dang snappy.

Re:Macs, right?

[sethstorm]

No way [ibm.com], no how [ibm.com]. The cheap solution is always going to leave something out - quality.

Re:Macs, right?

[maGiC_RS]

Just FYI, most of the distros have been supporting the PPC architecture for a long time.

Intel dominates in 1 out of 8 tests?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It seems to dominate in the 1 test that isn't designed around games or primitive single-threaded rendering or encoding applications. You know, real life programs geared towards professionals. They say that Intel is the loser, but it seems that AMD is the one who is scrambling from the pocket like Mark Rypien (so to speak).

Re:Intel dominates in 1 out of 8 tests?

[lubricated]

looks to me that amd wins the tests of doing stuff that people do. While intel wins some kind of synthetic benchmark.
I'll agree that they should have done many more multi threaded tests

Re:Intel dominates in 1 out of 8 tests?

[DrSkwid]

such as ?

Re:Intel dominates in 1 out of 8 tests?

[Carewolf]

But the Intel processors doesn't dominate the test. They just _barely_ win it (5% faster).

The single thread tests and gaming tests are won by AMD by a huge margin (25%-100%). In most of the multithread test the Intel processor just barely keeps up. This seems to all lead to the same conclusion: AMD has a faster basic design, but Intel has HyperThreading and when HT is suitable they cancel eachother out.

Re:Intel dominates in 1 out of 8 tests?

[willfe]

It doesn't exactly "dominate" that one category, either; the Intel CPUs barely edge ahead of the AMD CPUs on that benchmark; the difference is negligible.

Remind me again how AMD is scrambling? Seems to me they're holding onto their dominance in the performance market to me...

Tests I'd like to see

[TheLink]

Well, it would be better if they also did the following tests:

openssl speed (see which crypto tasks/ciphers the CPUs are better at)
Building the linux kernel and modules
apache bench (ab, ab2) of apache serving static file with 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 concurrency
apache bench of apache running a simple perl cgi with 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 concurrency
(may wish to turn off logging for apache - to avoid disk write bottlenecks)

data compression and decompression:
gzip of a text file (cached in memory)
gzip of a

65nm vs 90nm

[DrSkwid]

Intel's dual core is on 65nm so not only is AMD generally faster but will reap MHz benefits when moving to 65nm later this year.

Go AMD !!

Fascinating picture!

[WasterDave]

The first picture in the article - showing the substrate against the gate. Are the very visible lumps in that ... ummmm .... atoms?

Re:Fascinating picture!

[Danny Rathjens]

The atomic radius of silicon is 110pm(.11nm) and the scale is 1.2nm. So they look about the right size. :)

Re:Fascinating picture!

[advocate_one]

wow, just think what the electric field gradient is across that baby!!!

iMac Duo Core + EFI

[iamstan]

The new iMacs do not use an antiquated PC bios, they use EFI. New game.

I Know it's Asking Too Much...

[bhima]

But AMD and Intel aren't the only manufacturers with interesting new chips which Linux runs on.

Freescale has the MPC8641D a dual core e600
IBM has their PowerPC 970 dual core
What about Sun's UltraSparc T1?

I'm just really tired of hearing the same old Intel vs. AMD fan boy flame wars.

And what I'd really like to here about is how well the compilers and or OS is actually using these new processor features or are they just being treated like faster 486s.

Bring Forth the Info

[willfe]

Okay, then :) Ignoring for the moment that nobody held a gun to your head and made 'ya read the "fanboy flame wars," let's talk about those other CPUs. Feel free to link to reviews or benchmarks of these CPUs, doing useful stuff like hosting lots of dynamic web sites, acting as file servers for big-ass files, running huge databases, or other things such machines are used for. Be sure to include price tags, please. I am actually pretty curious how these other chips and architectures stand up against Intel and AMD. Obviously the UltraSparcs aren't going to be running many games, but they can encode video like the others, so that'd be an interesting benchmark.

It should already be clear that the 64-bit CPUs (the AMD ones at least) aren't glorified 486 upgrades. Last I checked amd64 doesn't even have that obnoxious x86 legacy memory model crap (640k, then 384k, then 1MB-900(ish)MB, then high-memory to 2GB, then spiffy-uber-high-memory to 4GB or higher), and just has flat memory access. Other improvements supposedly include a wider, faster bus between CPU, memory, and peripherals, and better/faster memory access.

Obviously with dual-core any SMP-capable OS (even good ol' Windows) picks up major performance gains since, well, there's two CPUs. Even with non-multithreaded apps, you get performance gains since the OS starts new processes (and migrates them as needed) to the most-idle CPU.

What do these other non-Intel/non-AMD CPUs bring to the table for spiffy performance?

For what it's worth, I'm not flaming; I'm actually curious :)

Re:Bring Forth the Info

[bhima]

Hah! You're right... but until Slashdot employs a Bayesian automod system I at least have to scroll by those posts.

Anyway I had thought using video encoding as a good example but then I thought of the G4. Linux practically ignores the vector extensions for the G4, actually let me restate that: I don't think Linux uses AltiVec At.All.Ever.
I've seen the auto-vectoring code in GCC current it's a start but it absolutely isn't finished or even what I would call design complete.
I don't know of an encoding appli

Re:Bring Forth the Info

[swillden]

Anyway I had thought using video encoding as a good example but then I thought of the G4. Linux practically ignores the vector extensions for the G4, actually let me restate that: I don't think Linux uses AltiVec At.All.Ever.

I believe the latest ffmpeg uses AltiVec when compiled for a processor that supports it. I'm not aware of anything else that does, but video encoding with ffmpeg should.

Given that the PowerPC has been as long as it has and few applications take full advantage of it I have to pres

Re:Bring Forth the Info

[LWATCDR]

"The IBM PowerPC 970fx is a 64 bit processor... that's supposed to be an advantage but I don't think there is a single application on my PowerMac that takes advantage of that aspect of the G5. Maybe there is one but it's doing it secretly... A CoreData app, maybe???"
The PPC unlike the x86 is not registered starved. All things being equal you will tend to get lower performance from a 64 bit version of a program than a 32 bit version of a program unless that program works with data sets larger than 4 gigabyte

This people isn't skilled...

[DreadN]

How can they compare CPU power comsumption by TDP?! This is nonsense. An athlon FX57 merely goes over 60-70W, while a dual core P4 can reach a maximum power consumption over 150W.