Athlon MP Reviewed 257
RendEr writes "At The Tech Report, there's a review of AMD's latest multiprocessor chip, the Athlon MP 1900+. Watching this thing smoke through Linux kernel complies is a beautiful thing. Combined with AMD's new 760MPX chipset, these chips could help usher in a new era of cheap dual-processor desktop systems. "
Is it me? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is it me? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is it me? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is it me? (Score:2)
I must need more sugar and/or caffiene in my system. It took me a while to undo the big/little-endian translation before I got the joke.
Re:Is it me? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is also why IIRC AMD will not approve any bios that lists the true speed of an AMD XP chip.
Re:Is it me? (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, I'm not sure if it lists it on bootup. But it definitely lists it in the BIOS Setup screen.
Re:Is it me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it me? (Score:2)
Since as long as I can remember. I have friends who never played games who saved a bundle on Cyrix chips with weak FPUs... and others who had to avoid those like the plague.
Since right now, especially. It's always been the case that Intel chips could be outsped by random ultraexpensive workstation CPUs at half the clock rate, but now we've got 2Ghz machines being outbenchmarked by *completely compatible* CPUs at 3/4 of the clockrate.
I think AMD's marketing here is shamefully deceptive, but they really did need to do something, and Apple's "public education" attempts about the growing irrelevance of MHz didn't seem to work very well.
Re:Is it me? (Score:2)
They bought the chips separately? Then they're not Joe Publics. I'm referring to the vast majority of computer owners, who only think about clock speed when they're buying a new computer every four years.
I think AMD's marketing here is shamefully deceptive, but they really did need to do something, and Apple's "public education" attempts about the growing irrelevance of MHz didn't seem to work very well.
It didn't help matters that Apple computers aren't really that fast; don't get me wrong, I own a mac and I love it, but the PPC just doesn't outclass x86s like Apple claims, at least in real-world applications.
Re:Is it me? (Score:3, Funny)
True; the "400Mhz G4 beats 800Mhz Pentium" tests all depended on vectorized assembly stuff, but I don't think there's a benchmark at which a G4 wouldn't have blown away an Intel chip at the same clock speed. I suppose that's part of the problem: "Our computers are slower than theirs, but not nearly as much as you'd think!" isn't a great marketing gimmick.
Re:Is it me? (Score:1)
ISTR AMD and Microsoft had some co-operative marketing going on a while ago...
Re:Is it me? (Score:1)
Really Funny Joke! (Score:4, Funny)
ho ho ho
Re:Is it me? (Score:3, Redundant)
Wrong. Intel archetected their entire P4 line around having higher clock speeds in order to fool the public. This isn't a rumor, I worked there at the time.
They realized that when someone went to buy a computer, performance didn't matter as much as a big number. Consumers think a P3 running at 800mhz is much faster than a P3 running at 700mhz, and don't even consider stuff like video card, memory, and disk speed, much less differences in chip archetectures.
I mean, there's a reason why P4s performed so bad. Its not like they were all done making them and realized "Oh no! This thing isn't performing that well! Its barely better than a P3!" they knew it as they started to design it.
_AMD_ realized that they couldn't win the numbers battle, and renamed their chips to compensate. I hope it works better than when Cyrix did it.
Re:Is it me? (Score:3, Informative)
See http://www.apple.com/g4/myth/ [apple.com] for a simple explination that hertz is not everything...
Re:Is it me? (Score:1)
Ha!
You talk about debunking the great megahertz myth and give a link to the Apple marketing department for proof? That's rich. Too bad some of us do things other than run Photoshop.
Here [jc-news.com] is a good, though aging list of cross-platform benchmarks. The PPC runs about 50% faster than the PIII in normal cases, about 100% faster when Altivec enhanced. Fantastic numbers. I love the PPC. If I could get one without going through Apple, I would.
So why does Apple think they're Lincoln Steffens for giving us the same exagerations as Intel, except from a different angle? If the G5 debuted at 2.5 GHz, that "myth" angle would go away pretty quick.
Re:Is it me? (Score:2, Insightful)
i agree with you regarding mhz is not everything. but what a coincidence. when AMD broke through the 1ghz barrier, they couldn't wait to brag about it. now that they're getting left behind mhz-wise by Intel and having trouble reaching 2ghz, suddenly, "clock speed is not an accurate indication of performance". if apple and amd had 3ghz chips, you can be sure they would be hyping that up like crazy.
p.s. it's nothing new. AMD and others used to do that eons ago with their old chips which led to tremendous confusion amongst users.
Re:Is it me? (Score:1)
Re:Is it me? (Score:3, Funny)
/Janne
Re:Is it me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Psychologically it's a good move for AMD. Even though I know that their 1600MHz chip is faster than Intel's 1900MHz chip (or equivalent) I would still feel a bit, disempowered ... groan. And for those who do not know they are surely going to be suckered into Intel's super MHz sales pitch.
Ya gotta roll with the punches ...
Sweet... (Score:4, Funny)
Athlon MP (Score:5, Informative)
This thing is incredible. With our RAID streaming 30-40meg/sec writes, and 100-130meg/sec reads, the Athlons barely break a sweat, sitting at 2X25% utilization, in the same situation where Dual 933 coppermine Intel chips maxed out at 2X100%.
The main reason we hadn't gone with AMD sooner in a server is because of the lack of a 64bit PCI board that didn't require special power connectors.
The Tyan Tiger was a godsend. In all, it, two 1600+s, 1gig DDR ram and a dual 160 SCSI card cost about 25% less than the Supermicro P3TDE6, 1GB RAM, and two 933 coppermine PIIIs (on board dual SCSI).
The Tyan board does have less 64 bit PCI slots, and also doesn't support 64bit 66Mhz PCI, but we didn't have any cards that supported that either. It does have four 64bit slots, and that was enough for us.
One thing I don't understand about the Tyan is why they didn't just make all the slots 64bit PCI. It is fully forward and backward compatible.
As a former die-hard Intel guy, I have to say AMD is finally a contender in the server market.
Apparenty room on the board (Score:2)
PCI-64 is not PCI-32 Compatible (Score:2, Informative)
MP 1900+ same as XP 1900+ (Score:4, Informative)
Re:MP 1900+ same as XP 1900+ (Score:2, Interesting)
760 MPX was released today, along with the 1900+ (Score:2)
See the AMD press release,
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/011212/110489_1.html
Asus, ABit, Gigabyte and MSI are all promising
760MPX boards.
Re:MP 1900+ same as XP 1900+ (Score:2, Informative)
There are some additional, albeit minor, differences between the MP and XP; IIRC, the MP's hardware data prefetch is optimised for SMP configurations. You can put any Athlon on a 760MP(x) board (even a Duron), but the MP will be a bit faster because of this. However, beyond this, yes, they're pretty much identical.
Re:MP 1900+ same as XP 1900+ (Score:5, Informative)
They have a few treaks for better memory performance in multi processor situations, have a look at the http://www.anandtech.com/ benchmarks. They do not seem to have benifit in single cpu systems.
Yes, unlike Intel, AMDs multi cpu version of their chip has real design differences, not pinout and cache changes.
Of course, all socket A chips are good for SMP use.
Re:MP 1900+ same as XP 1900+ (Score:2, Insightful)
Excuse me, you look like someone who might have a clue. :-)
Do you know if you can mix and match different types? Could I use
one of these new MP 1900+ with an "old" 1 GHz Thunderbird on the same
motherboard?
Re:MP 1900+ same as XP 1900+ (Score:2)
1.2Ghz MP vs regular 1.2Ghz Athlon (and many other AMD and Intel systems) single and dual, on a database benchmark, lower numbers are better.
2 MP 12.2
2 normal 16.0
1 MP 19.3
1 normal 19.8
Re:MP 1900+ same as XP 1900+ (Score:2)
: (
Re:MP 1900+ same as XP 1900+ (Score:2)
Yeah, and get the 1800+ rated chips instead of 1900+ and just overclock 'em.
Or, if overclocking makes you nervous (as it should), using XP chips instead of MP chips should make you nervous as well, for exactly the same reason.
I believe that very recent releases of the Linux kernel include a check to see if you're using Athlon XP chips for SMP. (Actually I don't know if the check made it in, but Dave Jones was at least playing with it.) This information is included in stack dumps, so you can cut and paste it into your bug report email and the kernel developers will know your machine is out of spec. Apparently there have been some odd bug reports in the past that might point to XP + SMP issues.
Uses (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Uses (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Uses (Score:1)
Never did see any reviews comparing real-world performance between these machines and an equivalently priced P3 machine though.
Re:Uses (Score:2)
Re:Uses (Score:1)
That said, some of the later Linux GUIs tend to use ridiculous amounts of processor power on that old machine. I know people say these MPs are for the server market, but I'd love to have one under my desk just to see the difference
Re:Uses (Score:2)
ATX-motherboard systems that use the Intel 440LX or newer chipsets immediately benefit by going to 256 MB of RAM and using the latest UDMA-100/133 hard drives. It's possible to get performance increases of 100% or more because 1) you dramatically reduce the need to use swap space on your hard drive, and 2) data is read and written to the hard drive much faster.
You can also increase performance with a newer graphics card, but that affects games for the most past.
Re:Uses (Score:1)
Re:Uses (Score:1, Informative)
Compilations will obviously benefit too since they can be nicely multi-threaded, any high and GFX/3d software will make use of it.
i personally have recently bought a dual MP 1.2ghz (the second CPU arrived yesterday, not installed it yet) with tyan tiger MP mobo, mainly for SMP research etc
and the mobo looks so cool with 2 CPU fans on it too
Slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or for running something that's being slashdotted
For instance I've webapps that do about 30 pages/sec on a single processor PIII-550 (db+app on same server
So if the load ever goes up, a Athlon MP 1800+ and 266MHz DDR RAM server would come in handy
Definitely be useful for servers. I'll need to be reassured about thermal safety because our airconditioning isn't comfortably reliable. That said, AMD seems to be moving in the right directions, and it shouldn't be a big worry.
DB servers with Gigs of DDR RAM will kick ass. When you can do full table scans at 266MHz, who cares about the huge second level caches Sun boasts about.
Cheerio,
Link.
Re:Uses (Score:1)
Many Uses, In Fact (Score:2)
There are quite a few uses beyond gaming, in fact. Here are just a couple that made me invest in a dual Athlon 1600+:
Uses you can sink your teeth into (Score:2)
Re:Uses (Score:2)
Reliability & Compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reliability & Compatibility (Score:3, Informative)
Given proper cooling - very reliable. The thermal diode in the MP/XP line improves this reliability even more. (Which brings up the question - do these boards fully support the diode?)
How well does it run with some random version of Linux or *BSD?
Perfectly.
The onboard stuff on the Tyan boards is quite standard: Adaptec AIC7xxx SCSI, 3com 3c59x Ehernet.
Ian
Re:Reliability & Compatibility (Score:2)
The finger test works for me. They get pretty warm, but with stock coolers and sufficient case air flow, they don't get too hot.
Re:Reliability & Compatibility (Score:2, Informative)
Text:
From: otheos (otheos.at@clara.net)
Subject: Re: TigerMP (2460) and lm_sensors, anybody care?
Newsgroups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan
View: Complete Thread (5 articles) | Original Format
Date: 2001-12-05 17:43:47 PST
Was not very simple but finally got it.
You need:
/sbin/modprobe i2c-dev
/sbin/modprobe i2c-amd756
/sbin/modprobe w83781d init=0
Make sure you use init=0 otherwise the system will freeze. Also getting the
new lm_sensors from the CVS and patching/recompiling the kernel works
better (didn't mention anything though).
Now when you run sensors you'll get 77C for the CPU's. but if you change
the sensor type at
chip "w83782d-*" "w83783s-*" "w83627hf-*"
#like this:
set sensor1 2
set sensor2 2
set sensor3 2
and then run sensors -s (to read the changes) and then sensors again,
you'll see all fans and CPU temps + the Northbridge readings. Voltages are
more complex (apart for CPUs) as the calculation method needs tuning.
Re:Reliability & Compatibility (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Reliability & Compatibility (Score:2, Insightful)
A new CPU fan later and his system is running nicely.
complies (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, but the systems are pretty had to find (Score:2, Insightful)
One online company that did have decent looking systems was Xi Computing, in case you're interested.
Better naming system (Score:2, Funny)
"AMD Athlon Faster than the last one we released"
Tech Report comment board: (Score:1)
Considering how well they run thier site and the relatively steady hits, the last
Well, TR dudes, BOHICA (bend over here it comes again...). {In a nice way, of course}
As always, good review... now if only I could get my account there fixed...tired of being an Anonymous Gerbil...sigh.
.
Dual Processing... (Score:4, Flamebait)
Now, don't get me wrong, I'd *love* to be able to use numerous copies of photoshop (if I had windows and if the version of windows I had been using even used both chips... afaik win 98 would get real cranky about 2 processing chips and just use the one), but I've never had the oppurtunity to put that to the test because I've never been able to afford a dual chipset. (so if you know how windows does with dual processors, I'd be delighted to find out.)
One thing I am wondering though, is during the test, they used the Duron chips verses the athlons... its downright obvious which chipsets going to win... If i am not mistaken, the Duron was AMD's reply to the Celeron... a "cheap" chip that lacks as much sheer power as the Athlons. (And if I'm not mistaken, the Duron gives the Celeron a good run for its money).
Now if I had the spare... howver much money it would cost for the chips and board (and some newram to go with it) I would probably buy it in a heartbeat, though I don't know what good it would *really* do a computer user like me... the most cpu intensive program I use is the gimp. (One thing I miss about windows is ps6.0...*sigh*)
What I would like to see is tests of the athlon verses intels latest prize... that would be a competition worth snickering at. I'd like to see intel get blown out of the water.
Re:Dual Processing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure I can't see the point if we are talking about having a DP machine at home for your personal use, but in industry time = money. The amount of time our artists spend waiting for photoshop to filter an image or our programmers have to sit and wait for a compile to run IS an issue for us. That and maybe, if they have to wait a while we'd like them to be able to get on with something else in the mean time.
I'm a programmer, I quit frequently have 2 or 3 compiles running at the same time, as I'm hooked up to test hardware downloading a buld and testing/debugging it.
Re:Dual Processing... (Score:1)
Hehe.
Re:Dual Processing... (Score:1)
I used to want the latest few Mhz like the next person but in the last year or so I haven't seen the point.
Of course I will upgrade eventually, but probably not for another year. My rate of upgrading has decreased significantly from the early days of the P90. Yet technology has been improving at an increasing rate. It seems like hardware has overtaken software and provided I steer clear of bloatware *cough*xp*cough*, I'll enjoy a fast system for a while longer.
I still like to spend money on my computer, but this year I've been buying better peripherals, like monitor, keyboard, mouse, HDD etc..
I guess this demotes me from "Performance Nut" to "Average Joe", but so be it. I've used faster systems than mine and although I can see a difference, it's nowhere near significant enough to warrant my spending money, like it was in the days of the 266s and 500s.
I don't think I'm the only one too.
Re:Dual Processing... (Score:2)
Now, I probably won't do anything until the CPU speeds reach 4Ghz and when I do that it will be dual processor.
I guess what I would really like to see if a PDA that could double as a workstation via docking station
Re:Dual Processing... (Score:1)
Re:Dual Processing... (Score:2)
Re:Dual Processing... (Score:2)
Austin Wintower433E (back when Austin was American made, not IPC). Tower was built like a tank. 32MB RAM, Adaptec 1742 EISA SCSI Controller. SCO ODT 2.0. Started with 1GB Fujitsu disk, added a 4GB Micropolis later.
Re:Dual Processing... (Score:1)
The gains aren't really in flat out processing speed but rather responsiveness. If you have something running that's hogging one processor, the other one can be used to respond to the user's actions.
Re:Dual Processing... (Score:2)
If you were running something like BeOS, you would not need to ask this question.
large models (Score:2)
hawk, power junkie
Re:Dual Processing... (Score:2)
in short, MP is really nice if you're a multi-tasking user that runs lots of intensive processing.
Re:Dual Processing... (Score:2)
If you're developing multi-threaded code (and yes, I know the debate [softpanorama.org], but for some tasks it is an easier way to make a single-cpu app more responsive) then you haven't really tested for deadlocks and synch problems until you've run it on a multi-cpu machine. Thats my excuse to the wife for buying a dual Athlon machine anyway...
T
Memory (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Memory (Score:1)
Re:Memory (Score:2)
MP / XP (Score:3, Informative)
Then I see in the Bapco Sysmark test that the dual Duron setup hung in the same place each time - this is the first real evidence I've seen that running non-MP CPUs might be a bad idea... good to know.
Re:MP / XP (Score:1)
2 procs, 0 brains (Score:1)
Marko No. 5
Ehh... (Score:2)
And the link you posted doesnt even have any MP benchmarks...
audio/video (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of posts have been asking what the point of MP boards are. I can tell you that MP boards run a/v editing programs a hell of a lot faster than single boards.
This ties in to my desire to get rid of my stupid windows box forever. Has anyone out there tried setting one of these up to do audio or video in linux? If so, I'd love to hear about it, becuase this seems to me to be the last frontier as far as home user linux apps.
What about motherboards? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not that I can afford one before christmas anyway, but I'll be standing in line outside the shop immediately after newyears, and they'd better be stocked then! Orls! Heh...
Re:What about motherboards? (Score:2, Informative)
There are plenty of places that have listed these - TomsHardware, XBitLabs, AMDZone, HardOCP, etc etc.
Re:What about motherboards? (Score:2)
Today, actually. Be looking for it on Tom's Hardware, AnandTech, etc.
Games on a server-type system (Score:2, Interesting)
The reason why I'm asking is because I've heard that there are issues with games like Black & White not working correctly unless you "force" B&W to run only one processor (B&W may not be thread-safe could be a possible reason) I know other games like Quake 2 & Quake 3 Arena actually work quite well with the second processor, but doesn't "scale" to any processors than that...
Not too long ago, I seriously considered getting an SMP system like this... and decided that games probably wouldn't be too compatible with them.
Re:Games on a server-type system (Score:2)
Micon's 8MB cache SMP AMD chipset? (Score:2)
Summary (Score:2)
So, although I'm a great fan of AMD's price performance ratio for the Athlon, I get from the review that there is precious little perceptible difference in performance for the three highest speed grades of Athlon.
And that memory starvation is occuring.
While RAMBUS has galled everyone by their legal tactics, I think there is a fundamental need for more memory BW for the higher clocked Athlons.
The P4, while over-hyped in the consumer marketplace for MHz, does show that memory speed helps for some apps once the memory transfer gets established.
The Athlon's great integer performance and the apparent lower latency of DDR are nice, but they don't seem to be enough at these speeds.
Love mine (Score:2)
Going from a dual to a single cpu. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thou on the bright side, with a gf3 ti500, im getting 100fps in tribes2 at 1024x768 with all display options set to max. 3DMark2001 actually runs in the 30+ fps in the highres demos. I dont do CAD or Modeling but so far, The cpu+gfx card
combo just tribes2 playable, its been collecting dust for a few months now.
Re:Going from a dual to a single cpu. (Score:2)
blaming the hardware for what is a M$ limitation?
Re:smokin! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:smokin! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:smokin! (Score:1)
Now they can start advertising the duel boards as space heaters as well.
Re:smokin! (Score:1)
Does it ever just fall off by itself? ( No ;o))
Pib.
Re:smokin! (Score:1)
if the the mounting mechanism for those devices is not very sturdy, the heavy heat sink can still fall off because the mounting mechanism breaks off.
Re:smokin! (Score:1)
In which case the motherboard broke and the CPU burning up is only a part of your problems. To be sarcastic: Do you expect your video card to have "falling heatsink protective shields" to keep that 1lb heatsink from busting it in half in that situation?
Re:smokin! (Score:2)
Advantage - the thing is much more secure, and screwing the heatsink on and off can be a damn site easier than wrestling with those stupid clips. Disadvantage: not all mobos have holes drilled in the appropriate places, and taking a power tool to a motherboard right next to the CPU is not my idea of a relaxing pasttime.
Re:smokin! (Score:1)
Therefore, even in the unlikely even of total loss of heatsink, I still come out ahead.
Re:smokin! (Score:1)
Re:"AMD's Latest Multiprocessor chip?" (Score:2)
Re:Athlon vs. Alpha (Score:2)
The funny part is that AMD licenced the bus from Compaq/DEC and now Intel owns it.
Re:Athlon vs. Alpha (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:SMP Forever (Score:2)
Speed versus Torque. Like comparing a hot motorcycle to an 18-wheeler. We see the same thing on our Silicon Graphics Octane workstations at work -- some have faster CPUs, some have dual CPUs.