Journal of Pervasive 64 bit Computing

Core i7 gaming issue

I was at a friend's home, and he proudly showed me his Core i7 machine equipped with dual graphics card. He played BF3, with pretty high settings.

However, every 5 minutes or so, the screen froze for a few seconds, sometimes right in the battle. In one scene, the friend entered a train, facing some enemy dude with a knife. The friend was about to pull the trigger... Suddenly the screen froze, frenetic hammering on the keyboard could not instill life back to the on-screen characters.

The good thing was, the machine did not BSOD and the game resumed. But my friend (or his role in the game) found himself stabbed in the rear and fell to the floor... probably during the momentary freeze of time.

I wonder how many people have such experience.

INTC down, AMD up

AMD released its earnings yesterday.

INtel 4Q2011 PC revenue was sequentially down 5% from 3Q2011. The Thailand flood is said to cause some hard drive supply constraints.

AMD's 4Q2011 computing solutions revenue was up 5% from 3Q2011. However, AMD's GPU business was down somewhat. Overall, AMD achieved slight revenue growth from 3Q2011 to 4Q2011.

INTC stock trends down today, while AMD is up.

Users choose AMD Fusion over Sandy Bridge in blind tests

Interesting tests reported by http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1838/1/ . Users play similarly configured AMD and Intel systems and choose their favored PC.

136 choose AMD A8-3850, only 5 prefer Core i3-2105..

Intel does better with its Core i7-2700K. 40 users pick the Intel system, while 73 choose AMD FX-8150.

Personally, I have a FX-8150 system. Eight cores do more, and you got 2x bragging rights.

Do you have a 8-core machine? That is the question girls ask men these days.

AMD's market cap is only 3% of INTEL

At today's price, AMD's market cap is $4.3 billion. Intel's market cap stands at $130 billion. AMD's market cap is only 4.3/130 = 3.3% of Intel's.

With AMD's innovation and lead in computing technologies, it should worth at least 10 times more.

Intel is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the visual age. It focuses its energy on single threaded linear programming performance. But the world has shifted from such singular view and has broadened its horizons. AMD, with its eight-core CPUs and Fusion APUs, provides 10x the compute power of Intel's offerings(*), at a lower cost.

PS: A reader points to Intel's recent advancement in mobile with its Atom core. We should all commend Intel on achieving that kind of performance/power. But, AMD's Fusion core will likely beat Intel in that area soon.

PPS: No Intelers seem able to argue against this hard ratio: AMD APU = 10x Intel compute power.

* For instance, the LLano APU contains 400+ stream processors in addition to four stars cores.

Paul O almost fainted seeing this video

Trinity power: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsmTDb-Mlws

AMD says DX11 2.0 is hard, very hard.

That's why Intel had to fake it. See the infamous video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otcge1cn8Os tick tsk tick tsk ....

I guess it would be Apple's loss if they don't use AMD APUs in MacBooks.

Intel is mostly obsolete. Only the old and uninformed stick to Intel. The rest will use AMD's 8-core technology.

One reader posted a message saying Intel has a dual core 3GHz i7 at 17watts. That is almost laughable. The AMD Trinity has 4 Piledriver cores and 400+ DX11 v2 capable graphics cores. There is no comparison. The AMD APU has 10x more compute power.

PS: Reading the low IQ comments by the Intelers reminds me one thing that I have and Pat Gelsinger's mother wanted her son to have: a Ph.D. degree.

Intel faking DX11

Charlie caught Intel folks pants down trying to fake a modern GPU with VLC+IV Bridge.

DX11 is just too hard for Intel .

Even Anand and his Intel fobois are embarrassed watching Intel's top exec trying to fake turning the wheel resulting a mismatch of his moves and the video play.

Intel is mostly out of Supercomputing

Cray has four lines of computers, the XK6, XE6, XMT and the CX1000. The XK6, XE6 and XMT are giant machines with > 100,000 AMD Opteron CPUs. The CX1000 is just a small box for mom and pop shops.

Intel technology seems to be not only ill suited for enterprise computing, but also not tested for supercomputing.

The lesser educated may beg to differ. They say like AMD, Intel has four machines in supercomputer top 10-- number 2, 4, 5 and 7. AMD machines ranked 3, 6, 8 and 10.

But look closer. The so-called Intel machines actually rely on Nvidia's Fermi GPGPUs for their compute power.

Cray expects to double its revenue in 2012, on the strength of Bulldozer.

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Intel Sandy Bridge Gamers Fragged by Llano

If you are satisfied with VGA gaming, then the Intel platform is sometimes also playable, as Anand often reminds you.

Now, when I try to donate my old VGA monitors, no charity wants them. How embarrassing.

It seems even the Occupy Wall Street folks are doing 1080p these days.

At that HD resolution, You go Sandy Bridge, you are fragged by the 400 stream processors of Llano.

Watch the following video by PCPer. See it yourself.

PS: The truth sometimes hurts...

AMD Bulldozer Opteron pwns Intel Xeon in Enterprise

It is well understood that AMD Bulldozer is designed for the enterprise. Its 16-cores are like the big guns of the battleship which (unlike the single shot Remington rifle) deliver a heavy payload. Indeed, when it comes to mission critical enterprise applications, the Bulldozer simply destroys Intel Xeon. We are not talking about the Cinebench and SuperPI that AnandTech is good at, but TPC-C, SPEC JBB2005, SAP ERP, etc, for the commercial enterprise of the capitalist world. AMD beats Intel by such a big percentage, it opens a performance gap that Intel will struggle to overcome.

First, SAP Enterprise Resource Planning.

The Opteron 6200 achieves 31720 SAPS. The Xeon X5690 struggles for 28480 SAPS. The Opteron achieves 5805 users and the Xeon X5690 handles 5220.The Opteron is indisputably 10% faster.

Second, TPC-C -- Transaction Processing Performance Council Online Transaction Processing.

An HP DL385 armed with 2x AMD Opteron 6200 system achieves 1.208 million tpmC, while an HP DL380 with 2x Xeon X5690 gets 1.024m tpmC. The Bulldozer Opteron bulldozed Xeon X5690 by a healthy 18%.

Some lesser educated writers say the AMD server is 18% faster, but 33.8% more expensive ($0.87 for the Opteron system vs $0.65 per tmpC for Xeon ). These lesser educated writers fail to notice that the price difference is due to the fact that the AMD system can handle and has more storage. The AMD system has 90 big SSDs, costing 1.124 million USD. The Intel Xeon system has fewer SSD drives costing $0.485 million USD. That alone is a $639,000. cost difference. If you put the same number of SSDs into the Xeon system, it would cost $1.3 million, resulting in a $1.27/tmpC price/performance.

In other words, an equally populated Xeon system is 18% slower and 46% more expensive than the Opteron in transaction processing.

Third, SPEC JBB2005 -- Enterprise Java Server Benchmark. This benchmark runs a 3-tier enterprise environment.

The 2p Opteron 6200 system scores 1.254 million bops. The 2p Xeon X5690 does 0.9753 million bops. The Bulldozer Opteron smashes Xeon X5690 by 28.6%.

When we go to 4p, the Opteron 6200 scales almost linearly, attaining 2.427 million bops.

These results are consistent with our previous observation that the Opteron 6200 is 30% faster than the Xeon X5690 in integer performance gauged by SpecInt2006_rate.

Clearly, Bulldozer has an inherent advantage over Xeon. Some users noted that even on desktop, when you don't use applications specifically optimized for Intel, the Bulldozer wins.

How do Intelers argue against these hard numbers? Some of them say the Xeon X5690 is a four-year old obsolete chip, so the comparison to the all new Bulldozer is unfair again. Well, I tend to agree. Why stuck with old generation technology when you can have the younger, higher performing and less costly Bulldozer? Agree?

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Bulldozer Opterons totally frags Intel Xeon in SPEC benchmark

Some readers complain that I was quoting AMD's press release on Bulldozer Opteron's towering performance numbers. Now, the numbers have been validated and published on Spec.org. Let's have a look at the highest scores for the Bulldozer.

In SpecFp2006_rate, a 2P Bulldozer Opteron server achieves a score of 403. Simply put, there is no 2P Xeon can match this score.

In SpecInt2006_rate, a 2P Bulldozer gets a score of 543. This is almost 30% higher than a 2P Xeon X5690.

Some readers say it's not fair to compare the 16-core Opteron to the 6-core/12 thread Xeon. They missed the whole point of measuring performance per watt. The 6-core Xeon consumes 130watts. The 16-core Opteron consumes the same amount of power. With more cores, the Opteron can simply do more within the same thermal footprint.

How will Intelers argue against these hard numbers?

They resort to the usual low IQ, low education ad hominem attacks. Just read their comments on my blog, and see how low they are.

Bulldozer shows its muscle in server benchmarks

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/New-AMD-Opteron-TM-Processors-iw-4190901655.html?x=0&l=1

2x AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6282 SE (2.6GHz): SPECint®_rate score= 526.

2 x Intel Xeon processors Model X5690 (3.46GHz, 130watt) : SPECint®_rate score = 421.

Not surprisingly, the Bulldozer Opteron destroys Intel Xeon in other enterprise benchmarks, in some cases, 89% faster than the popular Xeons.

AMD FX 8150 clearly beats Sandy Bridge i7-2700K

In PCMark 7 Professional Edition, AMD's Bulldozer FX 810 clearly beats Intel i7-2700K.

See http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1751/9/

AMD FX Excels -- real user experience

Richbo
10/18/2011 8:54:21 AM
Tech Level:
Ownership:
Verified Owner

The future of HPC

Pros: Amazing price to performance for HPC applications. Multithreading capabilities. Abundant overclocking capabilities. Significantly outperforms basic dual slot CPU workstations.

Cons: Most AM3+ motherboards currently on the market will require a BIOS update to support the FX series. In order to update the BIOS you’ll need to have a prior-generation AM3 compatible chip installed in your motherboard prior to performing the update. However I'm sure this issue will be resolved in the near future by the motherboard manufacturers.

Other Thoughts: Our company makes cellular image analysis instrumentation and software that takes advantage of the multi-threading capabilities of multi-core CPUs. Since our analysis software runs hundreds of parallel image analysis algorithms that are heavily multi-threaded the CPU is generally maxed out. We’ve been looking for a low cost alternative solution for our customers to replace their current expensive dual-slot Xeon CPU workstations. In early testing with our software my current configuration of a single non-overclocked FX-8150 (ASRock 990FX Extreme 4 motherboard) running Windows 7 64-bit is outperforming our dual-quad core Xeon E5600 workstations by as much as 27%. What makes this even more impressive is that our software code is optimized to use the Intel performance primitives. The results are encouraging considering the BIOS, C++ compilers and Windows scheduler haven’t yet been optimized for the Bulldozer architecture. Once the software catches up this chip should be even more ama

8 core sells--- Newegg sold out

All 8-core AMD FX chips have been sold out. See http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007671%20600213783&IsNodeId=1&name=Zambezi

Given the choice between i7 2600k and the AMD FX 8-core processor, many have no hesitation to choose the 8 core chip. Eight is 2x of four. Simple math.

It is glorious to have eight cores.

A FX 8150 user noted that the FX is faster than i7, and I copied it here despite the expectation that it will hurt Intel fanbois' feelings:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103960

Pros: 8 true cores. Yes, some use shared resources, but it is still 8 cores. Like another review I just read; You can do much more with more cores.

Fast! Handbrake encoding is crazy fast. This so far has beat my friends I7 2600K by almost 100 FPS in Handbrake.

Cons: I own zero stock in AMD.

As noted before, the AMD FX 8150 is 20% faster than Intel i7 980X in the CPU Hash benchmark.

At AMDZone, a user made the choice between AMD and Intel a moral issue, because "[e]ach time you buy an intel processor you are supporting a criminal who has enough money to buy its way out of a courtroom."

No doubt. Intel copied the AMD64, multi-core and Direct Connect architecture from AMD and is laughing to the bank with all these AMD innovations.

BTW, I bought a HP dm1z running the E450 APU today to show my support for AMD.

AMD FX Destroys i7 980X in Properly Optimized SHA1 code

As shown in this review, the AMD FX 8150 is 20% faster than Intel i7 980X in the CPU Hash benchmark. As the benchmark page explains:

This test measures CPU performance using the SHA1 hashing algorithm defined in the Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 180-3. The code behind this benchmark method is written in Assembly, and it is optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variant by utilizing the appropriate MMX, MMX+/SSE, SSE2, SSSE3, or AVX instruction set extension.

Since SuperPI and Cinebench are such a widely used tools, AMD should spend some effort and optimize them for AMD FX.

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My suggestion to AMD: Core count sells...

Why people are spending precious $ on slow CPUs such as Atom which can’t even do 720p? They are fast enough for typical word processing jobs. I bought a 1GHz C50 APU powered netbook and installed virtual machines on it. It served me well on a trip. I even did some development work on it. It is not very fast, but fast enough.

For my regular desktop, the CPU is a Phenom II X4 at 3.4GHz. The CPU is plenty fast for most tasks. To improve response time, the money is better spent for moving the system partition to a SSD, so OS and programs load fast…

If AMD can die shrink the Phenom II from 45nm to 32nm thus reducing power consumption along the way, I will be happy to buy a new one. A Phenom II 1090T at 80 watts would be very attractive.

When you have a new design coupled with a new process, the risk factors just multiply. Die shrinking should be one of the key strategies AMD adopt to react faster to market demand and reduce risk & cost.

Still, I will buy a 8 Core 3GHz processor just for the numbers. The bigger the better. 8 is greater than 4 and core count sells.

It is undeniable that the FX 8150 is indeed faster than i7 2600k on some benchmarks. There was some improvement. So it is not all negative.

From what I see, the AMD FX has a major memory bottleneck. Its memory write speed is substantially lower than Intel’s i7.

Intel copied the AMD64, multi-core and Direct Connect architecture from AMD and is laughing to the bank with all these AMD innovations. AMD engineers are very creative, but they have to work harder to create something much faster. Or they will end up jobless and have their names associated with a chip that disappoints the AMD support base and amuses the Intel camp.

AMD FX does frag Sandy Bridge after all

Real tests show that the FX 8150 is actually about 20% faster than i7 2600k.

Using the Cineform Neoscene professional transcoder, the AMD FX8510 took 692 seconds to encode a 30GB AVCHD video, Intel i7 2600k took 867 seconds. AMD FX 8150 is 25.2% faster.

Using the Cinema 4D (11) render, the AMD FX 8150 is 19.8% faster than i7 2600k.

Check the benchmarks here (http://quinetiam.com/?p=2356).

AMD FX did win some benchmarks against i7 2600k

There are a lot of negative sentiment about the AMD FX CPU. Many of us expected a wonder weapon that destroys everything Intel. It didn't happen.

Now, if you look at the benchmarks, the FX did score some points against the core i7 2600k. So, the results are software-compiler dependent.

It will be interesting see some Linux+GCC benchmark results.

AMD's Netbook APU Supports Virtualization!

I am running VirtualBox on the Acer Aspire 722 netbook to host some VMs, and am surprised to find that the tiny Ontario APU actually supports not only 64 bit but also AMD-V!! This allows my Windows VM to run in dual core mode.

I think the APU supports nested paging also.

This is great.

In comparison, Intel's stuff is a crap. A Intel based notebook I bought last year has some important visualization feature missing. Now, the tiny Acer netbook with AMD will accompany me in my travels -- it is not super fast, but it has all the important features.

It will take Intel at least two more years to catch up with the current AMD technology.

AMD : Unlimited Growth

There is one small detail people may have missed during AMD's earnings call. AMD will say bye to SOI. According to interim CEO Thomas Seifert: "At the 28-nanometer node, all of our products will be based on bulk process technology, providing increased flexibility to work across these 2 committed and valued partner."

What does it mean? It seems TSMC will be able to FAB more of AMD's CPU parts which traditionally use SOI technology.

AMD stock seem have only one way to go: UP!

Technology: Fusion for server, desktop, notebook, media center, tablet and game console -- one chip low power solution

Competition : years behind, poses no foreseeable challenge

FAB capacity: unlimited, with GlobalFoundries and TSMC bulk process

UP potential: New CEO, Bulldozer desktop, Bulldozer server, Trinity, Tablet, ARM license, Apple...

Price Target: $$$

The writing is on the wall. Even perpetual naysayer Hans Mosesmann upgraded AMD to "outperform", saying “[APU] is an important segment of the market in which AMD can expand into areas such as tablets and even smartphones over time."

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AMD should just get Rick Bergman as CEO

AMD is very very bullish about its future. Six millions Brazos sold in 2Q11. Half of AMD CPUs in 3Q will be Fusion. Bulldozer will be out next month (August). AMD is working on a tablet CPU based on Trinity. Fusion is the future.

Investors can't trust any outsider to run this great technology company.

It was an insult to everyone to even approach Pat Gelsinger, an old Intel guy who left Intel allegedly due to the failed Larrabee project.

Richard Bergman

There's Interlagos, which is our server-based products, which will begin shipping initial production next month. Likewise, there is a desktop version called the Zambezi, which is geared more towards the desktop enthusiast market. That will also begin initial production and shipments next month.

... And as Thomas mentioned, there is an inflection point coming with the 28-nanometer process technology... And the Trinity part, that's a product geared for 2012. We put out a pretty interesting power specification.

Thomas Seifert

in 2013, we plan to introduce an optimized tablet APU capable of redefining what users will expect from a tablet...We will put a very convincing tablet roadmap in front of us.

This video (link) shows AMD is out for blood.

Shocking: Student banned from college classes for Intel Core i7

This is truly shocking. A student was banned by two professors from classes because his $1099 Intel Core i7 notebook overheats and makes a lot of noise. It seems that Intel's 32nm has fusion technology too -- thermally.

http://reviews.bestbuy.com/3545/2821755/hp-pavilion-laptop-intel-core-i7-processor-17-3-display-steel-gray-reviews/reviews.htm

See also, Core i7 MacBook Pro 2011 overheats to the boiling temp of 92 C when multitasking (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2769886?start=0&tstart=0). It seems Intel's fusion tech is indeed thermal in nature.

Copied below:

Posted by: aeb91

from portland, or

on07/16/2011

Value for Price

1.0

Display

4.0

Performance

1.0

Convenience

1.0

i purchased this computer going into my first year of college as a journalism student. i needed a computer with an i7 processor, and chose this one because of its portability compared to other computers with the same specifications. i've never regretted anything more. this computer was the bane of my school year. after spending over 1,000 dollars, i was left with a computer that not only paled in comparison to my old 300 dollar toshiba, but also was completely unusable.

the fan was so noisy that two of my professors banned me from using it in class. and despite all the fan noise, the computer still overheated two or three times a day, despite being on a cooling fan. most of the time, it was too hot to touch when i wasn't running anything more than microsoft word. forget running photo shop or premiere pro like i needed for my classes. this computer was completely useless to me.

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AMD APUs are amazing

The APUs are amazing pieces of technology. I just bought an Acer Aspire 722 Netbook with a C50 APU (1GHz dual core). Without GPU acceleration on VLC, 720p video is fine, but 1080p stutters. But with GPU acceleration enabled, 1080p is super smooth, and the CPU usage dropped to around 30%.

Now you naysayers may not know what 1080p is, but just remember this simple fact: no Intel netbook can even do 720p Youtube (unless it's equipped with Nvidia ION2). Not too long ago, I made the mistake of buying a DELL netbook for around $400, and was dismayed to find that it couldn't handle even 720p Youtube. What a piece of junk. Luckily, there were people on ebay who are willing to buy that junk for half of the price. So I sold it before it became totally wasted.

The more amazing thing is battery life of the new AMD APU netbook. I tried to run down the battery on this little thing, and eventually got tired and it still had 1 hour 30 minutes left.

Another advantage of AMD APUs is it is fully AMD64 capable. I also have a Lenovo Intel Core Notebook, and the Intel CPU can't fully handle VirtualBox, it is missing some feature for 64 bit virtual machines. Again this deficiency makes the Intel notebook useless, because one of my virtual machines is 64 bit Linux...

Choose AMD the technology leader and not the Intel copycat, you will be better off.

Be young, have fun, get AMD Fusion. (disclosure, I do not run AMD's marketing division).

BTW: did I say HD video image quality is much better on AMD too?

See what others say about AMD Fusion

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pavilion+Laptop+/+AMD+A-Series+Processor+/+14%22+Display+/+4GB+Memory+/+320GB+Hard+Drive+-+Pewter/2715258.p?id=1218346636604&skuId=2715258#tabbed-customerreviews

Paul O smashed his chair seeing this picture

DX11 Vision APU compute for the People of America.

Intel simply does not have the know-how.

Bulldozer engineering sample frags Sandy Bridge

Read it here. The 3.2GHz Bulldozer leads Sandy Bridge by about 36%.

http://www.fudzilla.com/processors/item/23381-bulldozer-performance-figures-are-in

Just realized how obsolete Intel has become

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/pc-components/3289363/amd-a8-3850-apu-review/

AMD LLANO APU 39x faster than Intel in graphics.
LLANO APU supports modern DX11, Intel does not.
LLANO APU supports 3D video, Intel does not.
LLANO APU supports OpenCL acceleration via GPU, Intel does not.
LLANO APU runs 1080p video at 66 watts, Intel needs 72 watts.

Intel is obsolete.