Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part I: First Encounter
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 4, 2005 2:44 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
semi-Final Words
The verdict on dual core is far from in, but what we've presented here is a start. We have more coverage coming, including power consumption, overclocking potential and a look at the more economical dual core price points from Intel. We're also hard at work on creating new multitasking benchmarks with the hopes of eventually reaching the holy grail of being able to measure and quantify system response time accurately. To that effect, if you all have any suggestions for usage models that you'd like to see tested or any benchmarking suggestions in general, please let us know.
We're far from being able to make any conclusions about dual core or Intel's Pentium D/Extreme Edition, but there are some things that we can say at this point:
- In general use of the system, the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 felt just as fast as the 3.73GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. In multitasking, there was no substitute for the dual core Pentium Extreme Edition.
- Hyper Threading made a decent impact on our usage, even on the dual core platform. However, the benchmarks show that Hyper Threading on dual core doesn't always result in a performance boost. That being said, we'd still opt for Hyper Threading as it just seems to make things smoother than without on the dual core chip. Although Intel has a desire to separate their Extreme Edition and Pentium D lines, we think that Hyper Threading is the wrong feature to use as a differentiator - all users could benefit from its presence on their dual core platforms.
- Intel's pricing strategy for dual core makes a lot of sense to force market adoption. In the near future, we will be looking at Intel's cheapest dual core offering to see how well it stacks up to AMD's similarly priced single core chips. The only way to make sure that developers crank out multithreaded desktop software is to ensure a large installed user base, and Intel appears to be committed to doing that.
- AMD should get an even larger boost from the move to dual core than Intel has, simply because AMD doesn't presently have the ability to execute more than one thread at a time. Intel's Hyper Threading on their single core chips does improve response time greatly as well as improves multitasking performance. For AMD, the move to dual core will give their users the benefits in response time that their Intel counterparts have enjoyed with Hyper Threading as well as the extra advantage offered by having two identical cores on a chip.
- When it comes to dual core vs. single core with Hyper Threading, there's a huge difference. While both improve system response time, dual core improves it more while also guaranteeing better overall system performance. Hyper Threading lets you multitask, dual core lets you actually get work done while multitasking.
That's all for now - we'll have much more dual core coverage later on this week and the next.
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michaelpatrick33 - Monday, April 4, 2005 - link
AMD's dualcore will use less power and produce less heat apparently and last I checked an FX-51 (2200) out performs the Intel 3200 in a single core configuration so it will be interesting what a dualcore AMD at 2200 or 2400 will do compared to the Pentium 4 3200 dualcore. AMD is going after the busines market where the money and the desire for dual core will be greatest. Why isn't Intel going for that market? Interesting question.CrazyCurl - Monday, April 4, 2005 - link
good review! cant wait to see more info. I am particularly interested in heat dissapation as well and would be nice to see the new unreal engine that supports multithreading benchmarks but that would be be a ways off id assume.Is the 955X gonna support pressler? is that why it has 1066 fsb and ddr-667?
dragonflycms - Monday, April 4, 2005 - link
How about a web developer test I constantly run these programsDragonflycms 9.1.2
Apache 1.3.9
MySql 4.1
PHP 4.0
Photoshop 7.0
Flash MX 2004
Fireworks MX 2004
Dreamweaver MX 2004
Firefox
Hydra IRC
Messenger
Yahoo Messenger
The web server and mysql drastically effect the runing of the multimedia applications. This would be a great multitask test.
cHodAXUK - Monday, April 4, 2005 - link
#34 You are absolutly right there Anand, to this day I have still not had a single CPU system as responsive as my old dual O/C Celeron 550 machine. I ran it along side a P3/800 for a long time and always much prefered the Celeron box for general day to day tasks, hell my AMD 3500 feels damn fast most of the time but when I try multitask a bit too much it just takes forever to even get menus to pop down. Dual core is definately the way to go for the future, when the apps/games start to catch up with the technology everyone will wonder how they ever did without a multi core/cpu system.stephenbrooks - Monday, April 4, 2005 - link
If it's any help to y'all asking about thermals, [H]ard|OCP says:"Our Intel 840 will have an operating voltage between 1.2V and 1.4V and have a Thermal Power Design of 130W"
knitecrow - Monday, April 4, 2005 - link
thanks Anand... it is the power consumption and power dissipation profiles that I really want to see.Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, April 4, 2005 - link
oh and power consumption is coming... :)Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, April 4, 2005 - link
Hans MaulwurfThese usage scenarios were described by AnandTech readers in my recent request for benchmarks, they weren't anything prescribed by any hardware manufacturers.
Ask anyone who has used a dual processor system, things are just smoother. The reason we've never recommended dual processors systems in the past is mostly because of price. In less than 3 months you should be able to, in theory, purchase a dual core processor for as little as $240. Not since the days of the dual Celeron 300A systems has dual processing been that affordable.
Take care,
Anand
Slaimus - Monday, April 4, 2005 - link
The best thing about dual core is that you do not need HT aware OS's anymore. It sucks when you want to run Win2000 with HT and getting slower speeds.Shlong - Monday, April 4, 2005 - link
Instead of trying to take screenshots, maybe you could've used one of those desktop video capture programs to try to get a better visual representation of what you were trying to explain.