Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 955: 65nm, 4 threads and 376M transistors

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• Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link

  I had some serious power/overclocking issues with the pre-production board Intel sent for this review. I could overclock the chip and the frequency would go up, but the performance would go down significantly - and the chip wasn't throttling. Intel has a new board on the way to me now, and I'm hoping to be able to do a quick overclocking and power consumption piece before I leave for CES next week.
  
  Take care,
  Anand

• Betwon - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link

  quote:
  

  ---

  
  We tested four different scenarios:
  
  1. A virus scan + MP3 encode
  2. The first scenario + a Windows Media encode
  3. The second scenario + unzipping files, and
  4. The third scenario + our Splinter Cell: CT benchmark.
  
  The graph below compares the total time in seconds for all of the timed tasks (everything but Splinter Cell) to complete during the tests:
  
  AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ AVG LAME WME ZIP Total
  AVG + LAME 22.9s 13.8s 36.7s
  AVG + LAME + WME 35.5s 24.9s 29.5s 90.0s
  AVG + LAME + WME + ZIP 41.6s 38.2s 40.9s 56.6s 177.3s
  AVG + LAME + WME + ZIP + SCCT 42.8s 42.2s 46.6s 65.9s 197.5s
  
  Intel Pentium EE 955 (no HT) AVG LAME WME ZIP Total
  AVG + LAME 24.8s 13.7s 38.5s
  AVG + LAME + WME 39.2s 22.5s 32.0s 93.7s
  AVG + LAME + WME + ZIP 47.1s 37.3s 45.0s 62.0s 191.4s
  AVG + LAME + WME + ZIP + SCCT 40.3s 47.7s 58.6s 83.3s 229.9s

  ---

  
  
  We find that it isn't scientific. Anandtech is wrong.
  You should give the end time of the last completed task, but not the sum of each task's time.
  
  For expamle: task1 and task2 work at the same time
  
  System A only spend 51s to complete the task1 and task2.
  task1 -- 50s
  task2 -- 51s
  
  System B spend 61s to complete the task1 and task2.
  task1 -- 20s
  task2 -- 61s
  
  It is correct: System A(51s) is faster than System B(61s)
  It is wrong: System A(51s+50s=101s) is slower than System B(20s+61s=81s)

• tygrus - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

  The problem is they don't all finish at the same time and the ambiguous work of a FPS task running.
  
  You could start them all and measure the time taken for all tasks to finish. That's a workload but it can be susceptible to the slowest task being limited by its single thread performance (once all other tasks are finished, SMP underutilised).
  
  Another way is for tasks that take longer and run at a measurable and consistent speed.
  Is it possible to:
  * loop the tests with a big enough working set (that insures repeatable runs);
  * Determine average speed of each sub-test (or runs per hour) while other tasks are running and being monitored;
  * Specify a workload based on how many runs, MB, Frames etc. processed by each;
  * Calculate the equivalent time to do a theoretical workload (be careful of the method).
  
  Sub-tasks time/speed can be compared to when they were run by themselves (single thread, single active task). This is complicated by HyperThreading and also multi-threaded apps under test. You can work out the efficiency/scaling of running multiple tasks versus one task at a time.
  
  You could probably rejig the process priorities to get better 'Splinter Cell' performance.
  

• Viditor - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link

  Scoring needs to be done on a focused window...
  By doing multiple runs with all of the programs running simultaneously, it's possible to extract a speed value for each of the programs in turn, under those conditions. The cumulative number isn't representative of how long it actually took, but it's more of a "score" on the performance under a given set of conditions.

• Betwon - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link

  NO! It is the time(spend time) ,not the speed value.
  You see:
  24.8s + 13.7s = 38.5s
  42.8s + 42.2s + 46.6s + 65.9s = 197.5s
  
  Anandtech's way is wrong.

• Viditor - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link

  quote:
  

  ---

  It is the time(spend time), not the speed value

  ---

  
  It's a score value...whether it's stated in time or even an arbitrary number scale matters very little. The values are still justified...

• Betwon - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link

  You don't know how to test.
  But you still say it correct.
  
  We all need the explains from anandtech.

• Viditor - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link

  quote:
  

  ---

  You don't know how to test

  ---

  
  
  Then I better get rid of these pesky Diplomas, eh?
  I'll go tear them up right now...:)

• Betwon - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link

  I mean: You don't know how the anandtech go on the tests.
  The way of test.
  What is the data.
  
  We only need the explain from anandtech, but not from your guess.
  
  Because you do not know it!
  you are not anandtech!

• Viditor - Saturday, December 31, 2005 - link

  Thank you for the clarification (does anyone have any sticky tape I could borrow? :)
  What we do know is:
  1. All of the tests were started simultaneously..."To find out, we put together a couple of multitasking scenarios aided by a tool that Intel provided us to help all of the applications start at the exact same time"
  2. The 2 ways to measure are: finding out individual times in a multitasking environment (what I think they have done), or producing a batch job (which is what I think you're asking for) and getting a completion time.
  
  Personally, I think that the former gives us far more usefull information...
  However, neither scenario is more scientifically correct than the other.