I feel sorry for Intel... NOT!!! - Page 2

Sharakkhal: Those links are exactly the kind of hype I was talking about in the first place and I don't believe a word of it to be frank. Based on my own experience with HT, I'm pretty confident that disabling it gives the best possible computing performance. For instance, I've tried running two seti clients at once with HT enabled but it didn't go any faster than running one client with HT disabled. Actually, running one seti client with HT disabled was over 10 hours faster completing one dataset compared with running two seti clients with HT enabled. A real dual CPU system beats a HT enabled system hands down on everything, including heavy multitasking.

And you don't need both 64-bit OS & 64-bit apps to make use of 64-bit, especially since 32-bit apps actually runs both faster & smoother on a 64-bit OS.

So true.

People act like these companies are their best friends. Bottom line is that they wouldn't hesitate to bend us over in a New York minute to get every last dime out of us.

AMD charged more than Intel back in the 1GHz race. A 1GHz Athlon cost MORE than the P3. Why? You could hardly find an Intel piece, and AMD could get them out. So if you wanted a 1GHz proc, guess who you had to go to?

Buy what you think is best. If you like AMD's offering, buy it. If you like what Intel offers, buy it.

I think this comic sums it up best:

Pic

AMD was just as guilty pimping MHz as the be all end all in processor management. When they beat Intel to 1GHz, they pretty much said "we're better because we have more MHz than Intel."

Well, once the P4 started ramping up and Intel ran away with MHz (marketing/performance aside) and AMD couldn't scale their procs as high, suddenly it didn't matter.

It only mattered to them when they had it. When they didn't, it was time to de-emphasize it.

That obviously didn't work, so they came up with the PR ratings. Some times they were accurate, sometimes they were overrated, sometimes underrated.

Now that Intel's hitting a wall and Pentium M is their main seller in laptops and people didn't get why a Celeron of the same MHz couldn't keep up with a P4, MHz wasn't going to cut it anymore. Now Intel's doing their model rating. (3xx, 5xx, 7xx). Not perfect, but it's easier to draw distinctions between lines.

AMD's going to get confusing with the XP, Sempron and Hammers all having xxxx+ ratings. Maybe they need to add the model numbers as well.

Super

Kinda like 64 bitness right now.

I disagree to a point.

For most apps, you won't see a performance increase.

However, the systems feels a lot smoother when it comes to multitasking. My PC doesn't stutter when I'm doing something like video encoding while I do something else.

There are apps that can take advantage of it. HT makes a BIG difference when I encode and convert video to different formats. We're talking at least a half hour difference.

Super

That's true.

Hyperthreading works best when you have a "large" thread and a "small" thread accessing the processor resources. This allows the processor to work more efficiently.

Problems arise when you have two "large" threads trying to utitlize the processor resources. If they both require over 50% individually, the processor's going to bog down and you'll see a performance hit.

While HT will never be as good as a true dual processor solution, it makes a good "1.5" proc workstation.

That's not computing experience, that's wasting CPU cycles. If you want to find aliens, watch Star Trek.

I doubt anyone would ever claim a HT CPU to outperform a dual CPU system, that's just silly. What hyper-threading does do, is allow for more than one normal program to use a single CPU more efficiently. I'm not saying you can run Far Cry and Doom 3 at the same time, but you are able to multitask better.

My response was to your misinformation. That's the exact opposite of the truth. The OS decides (or a user by giving priority, or using a third-party program to increase efficiency) which virtual CPU a process uses, not the individual program. There is no need to drastically re-write the program for that to occur. If you want the one program to use both virtual CPUs (or real CPUs) at the same time, then you have the option of re-writing the program with that in mind.

I have no doubts that 64-bit is coming, to all processor manufacturers, and I'm not on the side of any of them. Only an idiot supports one side and constantly puts down the others while trying to convince everyone else to follow that one company (without the others, there's no competition and you should know what that means). But when people who are blindly on one side or the other start spewing fanboi crap like this, it just irritates me.

We all know to what fundamentalism leads us

Beleave me, any CPU today is fast enough for multitasking!!!! Infact the test made at I think it was Aces hardware showed Athon 64 multitasking with better performance than P4 HT untill you had a redicoulous amount of applications open at the same time where HT were sighty better. That's it.

What you just said about multi-taskin is utterly BS! My old K6 desktop system was good enough to encode media, download, and play games or other tasks. etc at the same time.

Uhh... maybe he is just trolling anyway. Or I need beer

Kind of - HyperThreading increases performance by keeping the pipeline full which is effective especially if you app is multi-threaded and not contending on the same resources. Turning this on or even having two physical processors will never scale linearly.

Think about it this way. If a carpenter can build a house in 120 days, does you can put 120 caprenters to finish the same house in 1 day? Probably not - the overhead of coordinating that work costs extra. That's why people have different workers working on different areas to finish the project more quickly.

You over simplfy the complexity of really taking advantage of the capabilities of a 64 bit system. While most 32 bit code can be recompiled by a 64 bit processor and be able to run just fine, it doesn't gain the advantage of being written to be 64 bit. For the most part the 32 bit code will have been written to deal with large chunks of data in chunks of 32 bits. That won't usually change just because you have recompiled it with a 64 bit compiler. Though, the better the code is written, the easier will be to port. But thats pretty much true with any sort of coding change.

Its important to note that some applications are likely to see significant gains from 64 bit code (i.e. video encoding), while others will see little if none (i.e. word processing). This is probably why you see today a 64 bit version of DIVX in development, but I haven't heard word one about Office 64 bit.

HyperThreading is kinda a cool trick, but its not real dual processor computing. It can allow the system to operate a bit more smothly, and that is a nice feature. Its also a great way to get the consumer software industry to start moving in the direction of multithreaded programming, BEFORE you push multi-core processors into the consumer market. Its really a quite brilliant move by intel to create a demand for multi-core proscessors. Which of course both AMD and Intel are planning in the not overly distant future (next year I believe).

DanW

Heinrich pretty much sums up my point of view here:
When Intel starts making better and more innovative products at fair prices I might buy from them again, but untill then I'll rather shop elsewhere in the name of COMPETITION

AMD started using model numbers long before Intel did, just look at Opteron & Athlon 64-FX model numbers.

Don't get me wrong on this, I have nothing against AMD, they make good products for their line of business.

But nobody is copying anything !! Intel isn't copying AMD's 64bit code, they simply use through an agreement with AMD just like AMD was using the X86 code through an agreement with Intel.

You all might have noticed how good AMD is evolving in it's segment (Desktop Computing) but how it's having a hard time getting through in the Server and high-end workstation segment where Intel keeps the lead.

This is all done through agreements by both companies, and that way they are able to keep newcomers away, look at those C1 and C3 (Samuel) chips, they don't make it in any segment.

It's good to see some competition by AMD and Intel but it's all planned ahead by both companies and they use gamers and people like us to wake up the flame and do their advertisement.

Just don't be fooled, there is no underdog to support here, or maybe Cirix, AMD and Intel make good products both and they both dominate the market just like ATI and Nvidia or doing it.

For me Intel as much an underdog and AMD is.

Just my 2c.

Actually it will, since recompiling the 32-bit code with a 64-bit compiler will enable the use of the 8 extra registers available in the AMD64 architecture and this alone gives a nice performance increase. To make proper use of 64-bit adressing you ofcourse need to modify the code slightly, but even that is no major operation as far as I know.

For more information go to this awesome resource:
http://www.devx.com/amd/Door/16009

Yes, that's the whole point with the AMD64 architecture - easy transition to 64-bit. You only need to port those apps that benefit from higher performance to 64-bit, and those that dosen't need it (e.g. Office) remains at 32-bit. This is much better way to do it compared to Itanium systems where all applications needs to be ported to 64-bit or else you will get very poor performance, since all AMD64 processors running a 64-bit OS can run both 64-bit, 64/32-bit mixed & 32-bit code simultaneously at full speed without any performance degradation.

Until you have done it, don't go telling me how hard it is. I'm a software engineer. You are under estimating how much work is involved. Why do you think its taking so long to get out a 64 bit version of windows?

Snore, you are a zealot. You don't seem to really even understand the basics of what is involved here, yet you have made up your mind. I won't bother spending any more of my time discussing this with you, since you clearly don't want to face the truth.

DanW

I'm neither a he, nor was I trolling. Thanks for your somewhat biased response anyway

Not sure if I should respond seriously or not, but here goes anyway.

I'm glad your old system performed fine for you. But that's not reason enough to attack _my_ experience, which has been in favor of the P4. Yes, any system can multitask nowadays. But I'm a demanding user when it comes to having many programs open at the same time, and the P4 system is simply more trustworthy.

I really couldn't care less when it comes to brand vs brand wars. I really, really don't care. I am free to form my opinions based on my own experience, though.

It seems that HT is the only thing you Intel people are arguing for. HT is WAY overrated; honestly do you see any significant performance gains while multitasking compared to an athlon? I'm talking about current procs, not 1Ghz crap from 4 years ago, let's talk about the current 3.4Ghz P4 ($422 from newegg) and the athlon 3400+ ($289 from newegg). Is HT worth $133? The answer is no. End of debate lol

64 bit processing has a future, however ht is a dead end technology.

exactly.