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Another Look At Intel's Lynnfield Linux Performance

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  • #31
    Originally posted by Apopas View Post
    But AMD's design was the big leap, because it extended x86 processors to gain 64 bit capability rather than design a new stricly 64 bit processor, just like dozens of others had made in the past.
    It's an odd world when adding a bodge on the side of an existing design is considered a 'bigger leap' than building a new CPU from scratch; by that argument MMX was a bigger leap than Cray's vector processing CPUs .

    Incidentally, Intel claimed that the i860 was a 64-bit CPU in the 90s, but I think that only applied to certain components while most remained 32-bit... and it really sucked as a desktop Unix CPU.

    I also suspect that the push to make Itanium 'the next big thing' was what made Intel try to avoid going to 64-bit on x86 until AMD left them with no choice; a 64-bit P4 would probably have beaten Itanium just as AMD's 64-bit CPUs often did... if not on raw performance, then at least on price/performance.

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    • #32
      Originally posted by movieman View Post
      It's an odd world when adding a bodge on the side of an existing design is considered a 'bigger leap' than building a new CPU from scratch; by that argument MMX was a bigger leap than Cray's vector processing CPUs .
      Since 64 bit processors was a reality for the last 20+ years, it wouldn't be something different to make just a new one

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      • #33
        Originally posted by nanonyme View Post
        From what I've read about it sounded like yet another technologically superior design that got hit hard by practicalities. (who the heck wants backwards-compatiblity anyway )
        If what people want was really superior technology we all would be using PPC64 Cells on our PCs right now, I think (And Apple would never have moved away from it).
        (I'm planning on trying to build something like that with some PS3 spare parts some day xD)

        But really, after a decade of development and billions of dollars in investments from HP, Intel and their partners, Intel totally failed with Itanium. It doesn't offer any real improvements over what is AMD64.
        Last edited by jntesteves; 25 September 2009, 03:59 PM.

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        • #34
          Does anyone own this i5 lynnfield? Is it safe buy for linux?

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          • #35
            Interesting but not complete, besides it is early for these processors.

            Originally posted by phoronix View Post
            Phoronix: Another Look At Intel's Lynnfield Linux Performance

            Earlier this month we provided a launch-day preview of the P55 Chipset on Linux along with benchmarks from the Core i5 750 and Core i7 870, which are the new quad-core Lynnfield processors. We noticed some odd performance issues under Linux when testing out these new processors, but Intel has since chimed in and we are in the process of running an updated set of tests.

            http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=14203
            This is all well and good but I'd really like to see how the improved BIOS impacts the i7 processors. Also how the kernel and the Linux distro impacts the results across all processors. Of course that means rerunning the tests again and to be perfectly honest I'd rather see more testing on Apples new OS., Snow Leopard.

            In fact now that you have a Lynnfield based board how about exercising your computer skills and mocking up a Hackentosh. The only reason I want to see such a platform is to study the performance of Apples new kernel and Grand Central Dispatch feature. I'm very curious about this advance and it would be interesting to see performance figures vs lets say a two core platform. Right at the moment it is my position that the Mac community is underplaying the importance of lots of hardware threads and evidence supporting the value of the new multi core architectures is in order.

            Of course even Apple is playing catch up here with software releases that truly leverage GCD but it is an interesting tech that needs the focus of the user community. Especially now that Apple has released the source to libdispatch. If the tech is as good as we hope I wouldn't be surprised to see the Linux community adopt GCD wholesale.


            Dave

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            • #36
              A very valid concern if you ask me.

              Originally posted by lem79 View Post
              justapost, what sort of cooling are you using? Curious about this turbo thing with the stock cooler in a closed case. Intel sending out monster coolers in the review kits is kind of questionable too, says to me "hey our stock cooling is crap, you'll have to buy something better if you want results like you see here".
              It is always useful to see what a chip can do running flat out with the best heat-sinking that can be had. But optimal conditions are hardly ever seen in real life, even the hobbiest in his cellar lab can seldom reach optimal conditions.

              So while this reporting, from Phoronix, is very interesting it doesn't mean a lot if it doesn't reflect what will happen under average or reasonable conditions. Especially when it comes to multithreading and Turbo Boosted numbers. What we need here is a little honesty, like what happens to each platform in a 80 deg room with a stock cooler on the CPU. It is something the community needs to be aware of because if you only benefit from Turbo Boost or multithreading part of the time then you might as well run an AMD chip. Actually I have to think that Turbo Boost was a sneaky way for Intel to deliver good benchmarks on margianl processors.

              Extend these thoughts a bit to the newly introduced Clarksfield processors. A laptop is an even more restricted thermal environment. Are we going to see benchmarks where Clarksfield gets outstanding numbers on things like video encoding of short clips and then have these numbers fall apart when somebody tries to encode a real movie? That is what happens to Clarksfield when put in a position where it has to perform for more than a few minutes at a time. Like it or not we need to see things in a different light and it becomes important that we factor in other elements into the benchmark numbers like video clip lengths. That is video benchmarks should show times to encode clips of lengths like 10, 30 60 minutes. This to give us an idea of what any possible thermal throttling looks like, which would seem to be highly likely in a notebook.

              That is video encoding but this needs to be extended to any sorts of operations that a normal user may expect to take a lot of CPU time and thus heat up the processor possibly triggering throttling. This means three D renderings, and many of the other tests in the bench mark suite. The only point here is to discover just how sensitive the processors are to throttling based on stock and tricked out configurations.

              Dave

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              • #37
                Well, one of the first Anandtech Core i7 articles tested a Core i7 with stock HSF with a Radeon HD 4870 in a closed case. Turbo never engaged.

                Intel has made honest benchmarking that much more complicated now. Because we all know that we run our processors with premium air cooling on an open test bench in an air conditioned room. :P

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                • #38
                  Originally posted by lem79 View Post
                  Well, one of the first Anandtech Core i7 articles tested a Core i7 with stock HSF with a Radeon HD 4870 in a closed case. Turbo never engaged.

                  Intel has made honest benchmarking that much more complicated now. Because we all know that we run our processors with premium air cooling on an open test bench in an air conditioned room. :P
                  Yeah I know! I just want some hard evidence that this is a lot of BS on Intels part. It is not like I'm going to buy a desktop with Lynnfiled right away, I'm actually more interested in the results one will get from the Clarksfield in the coming "laptops". If it is truly difficult to realize a Turbo Boost advantage in a laptop I think many people will be very disappointed as these processors don't look all that good without that feature kicking in.

                  One of the big promises of this generation of processor was or is, that it can run older single threaded code really well and at the same time offer up impressive results for the more heavily threaded code of the future. It is beginning to look like this is not the case for the stock processor on an average PC board and heat sink combo.

                  I'm just hoping the benchmarking community clears this up. It certainly looks like skipping this series of i7 & i5 processors might be a good idea. Or at the very least pay real close attention to how a manufacture cools that processor. In a notebook I'm really wondering if the processor would ever break out of the base speed configuration, or even possibly throttle back from there.

                  Frankly it is a good thing the economy is so bad, it just means I won't rush out and buy something that is half assed.


                  Dave

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                  • #39
                    Originally posted by lem79 View Post
                    Well, one of the first Anandtech Core i7 articles tested a Core i7 with stock HSF with a Radeon HD 4870 in a closed case. Turbo never engaged.
                    Interesting, however powerconsuumption is alot better with p55 and i5 so things might have changed.
                    Originally posted by lem79 View Post
                    Intel has made honest benchmarking that much more complicated now. Because we all know that we run our processors with premium air cooling on an open test bench in an air conditioned room. :P
                    One thing makes honest benching really difficult, that is neighter /proc/cpuinfo nor cpufreq-info show multis above 21x even if benchmark results clearly indicate that the cpu ran at 3-3.2GHz. Here I can disable temperature based downclocking in the bios but the tdp limit is fixed, so temps will still be a limit in not so suitable environments. It would be nice to monitor the cpu's current power consumption via lm_sensors and to get the right multis displayed in /proc/cpuinfo.

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                    • #40
                      Originally posted by justapost View Post
                      Interesting, however powerconsuumption is alot better with p55 and i5 so things might have changed.
                      I was thinking that.

                      One thing makes honest benching really difficult, that is neighter /proc/cpuinfo nor cpufreq-info show multis above 21x even if benchmark results clearly indicate that the cpu ran at 3-3.2GHz. Here I can disable temperature based downclocking in the bios but the tdp limit is fixed, so temps will still be a limit in not so suitable environments. It would be nice to monitor the cpu's current power consumption via lm_sensors and to get the right multis displayed in /proc/cpuinfo.
                      It isn't clear what a "not so suitable environment" actually is. I'm guessing Summer time will see a lot less (if any) Turbo action in a lot of places.

                      I do like the idea of Turbo, it makes logical sense. Though Intel's current implementation and software support for it still seems to be a bit immature (like you said incomplete monitoring support). Supposedly AMD's next arch will have something akin to Turbo, hopefully by then both companies' implementations will support complete monitoring .. then we could see Phoronix Test Suite monitor and provide results which take turbo modes into account, relative to temperatures etc.

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