Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part II: A Deeper Look
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 6, 2005 12:23 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming Multitasking Scenario 1: Heavy Downloading
In the first article, we ran under the assumption that gamers wanted to have as little running in the background while playing a game. While that ended up being true for a lot of folks, we also received quite a bit of feedback asking for some pretty intense multitasking tests while gaming. The requests were far more intense than even the most strenuous setup that we came up with, but because of the demand for such benchmarks, we spent some time putting a few together. Note that this is by no means supposed to be an exhaustive comparison of all gaming scenarios. We are working on creating more and we apologize if your desired scenario didn't make it into this review, but keep sending in suggestions on how you play and we'll do our best to model some benchmarks after how you use your computer.
The first test basically performs all of the tasks from our first Multitasking Scenario, with the exception of DVD Shrink. We have Firefox loaded, but with all 12 tabs from the third test, iTunes is running and playing a playlist, and Newsleecher is downloading headers. We kept Newsleecher in this test simply because it's the best way for us to be able to have a fairly CPU/disk intensive downloading task running in the background while still maintaining some semblance of repeatability. So, replace Newsleecher with BitTorrent or any other resource-consuming downloading that you may be doing and you're good to go.
Of course, Norton AntiVirus 2004 and Microsoft's AntiSpyware Beta were also running in the background.
First, we ran our Doom 3 benchmark:
The tables have now been turned. While the Athlon 64 held a 30% lead with no multitasking, it's now outpaced by both Intel processors, with the Pentium D holding a 25% performance advantage.
It's no surprise that having two cores yield less of a performance impact to having more applications run in the background.
Doom 3 was actually quite playable on both machines; although, loading the game and the levels took a lot longer on the A64, and there's a lot of stuttering during the actual game.
The Pentium 4 platform was quite a bit better, but there is a definite reduction in performance. Obviously, the Pentium D did the best out of the group, but you still notice the performance drop.
Next, we ran the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory benchmark:
Once again, the Pentium D is ahead of the Athlon 64, but the improvement in minimum frame rates is particularly impressive. The Pentium D offers twice the minimum frame rate of the Athlon 64 in this scenario.
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segagenesis - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#45 - The Athlon 64 still lags behind on encoding cabability and its been shown over the past year. However some of the content tested was designed specifically for P4 optimization so its hard to get a reliable result. Who knows... until we see the new AMD64 core with SSE3 we cant really pass judgement.Quanticles - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
AMD needs to send Anandtech one of their dual-cores with a DFI nForce4 SLI board.That'd shut a lot of people up.
If AMD owns single thread, then why wouldnt they own dual core. People would be throwing money away buying intel's dual core.
Spearhawk - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
The first graph on the DVD Shrink/Game bench still seems a bit suspect. Why would the P4 outperform the PD and the A64 when under normal circumstances the A64 should be superior in singlethread and the PD in multithread?Anway, great article. I'm really looking forward to seeing what AMD has to offer since while I'd greatly like improved multitasking I'd also like a good gaming CPU.
Marlin1975 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
What about overclocking the Dual core chip???Regs - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Ah, I mis read it. You used the Intel 955X.I have to ask then, is it because of AMD's onboard memory controller that they don't have to manufacture another motherboard for the dual core CPUs? If so, you think AMD was thinking about this scenero (dual cores) well before the first clawhammer came out?
That would sound impressive. Compared to Intel's dual press hots.
segagenesis - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#37 - Well im hard pressed to really want one when my current setup is still sufficient. That and I have my heart set on AMD64 for gaming. Even at DVD backup I can do a movie in about an hour even with full quality under DVD Shrink. And really, I would use DVD Rebuilder which is very much single threaded and in my book Quality > Speed. Takes about 6-7 hours but better results than DVD Shrink could have wished for.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
RegsThe nForce4 Intel Edition platform was unrelated to the Intel dual core platform, it was just something I was working on at the time.
The platform arrived DOA, I'm guessing it's an error on NV's part.
Take care,
Anand
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
"AMD's dual core will be quite impressive, even more so than Intel's. Don't look at performance as the only vector to measure though... "You like to tease us, don't you? :)
Regs - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Hey Anand, I noted that you said in Part one that the Intel Dual core was one of the most stable config's you ever had. However in part two and quote, "After recovering from Part I and realizing that my nForce4 Intel Edition platform had died, I was hard at work on Part II of the dual core story. "Was this human error or was it a manufacturing error?
michael2k - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
#26: Actually, encoding a DVD should be a multi-tasking event in of itself!Task1: DVD creation; menu's, transitions, etc
Task2: DVD encoding; background rendering of menu's and transitions
Task3: DVD encoding; background rendering of the actual menu
Task4: Burning of DVD; you should be able to start burning the DVD before the encoding in task 2 or 3 is complete, as long as the burner is properly buffered