Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part II: A Deeper Look
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 6, 2005 12:23 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Multitasking Scenario 3: Web Browsing
For our final benchmark, we decided to switch things up a bit and keep Firefox as our foreground application while background tasks ran. To make things even more stressful, we had no less than 12 tabs open in Firefox, with our main tab being IGN's PSP website - which happens to be very Flash heavy.
The iTunes and Newsleecher tasks from the first test scenario were also present in this one, plus we did the following:
Open Outlook, immediately import 130MB PST file and immediately switch app focus to Firefox.
We then recorded the total time required to import the new PST while Firefox was our foreground application.
As we discovered in our first article, the AMD platform just can't make it under this test - the load (particularly the Flash load) makes the Athlon 64 import process take well over four times as long as the import process on either of the Intel systems.
In the Intel camp, obviously dual core wins out and by a very reasonable margin of victory. The Pentium D 2.8 takes around 19% less time to import the PST into Outlook than the higher clocked, larger cache Pentium 4 630.
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JoKeRr - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
the power consumption is a series mofo here.hm, with a P4 EE or PDEE, with 2 6800Ultra or GT, you're definitely expecting an oven case.
Wonder how those dualcores overclock-->that should help to make up the single thread performance. On the other hand, Clearly HyperThreading is GOOD, but AMD still says NO.
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Great article. Well done guys.The only thing I have to question is how a dual core Athlon-64 at encoding. On the last page you say, "For encoding performance, you still can’t beat the Pentium D. Even a dual core Athlon 64 isn’t going to help enough in that area."
What makes you think that when the 2.2 GHz Athlon-64 is RIGHT behind the 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 630?
Everything I've read so far has told me that the Athlon-64 should scale better than the Pentium 4 as far as dual cores are concerned... so... what exactly are you basing your opinion that even a dual core Athlon-64 won't help in encoding???
Lonyo - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Does http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?... page have an error?It lists the PD 3.2, P4 3.73 EE and the PD 3.2 EE, not the 3 CPU's montioned in the article. Wrong graph maybe.
Rys - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
H isn't even near P on the keyboard...michaelpatrick33 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Holy crispy power and cook my eggs in true multitasking while I surf the net Batmansmn198 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
I guess it makes sense that NCQ would help when multitasking. I assume that this would be the same on single cores as well? The new focus on responsiveness is a good move IMO. The time to switch between apps and redraw the screen and clicking on menus and buttons is what frustrates me when I am multitasking.