X2's a Joke?

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poison123

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 9, 2004
Messages
393
Anyone else kinda feeling underwhelmed with the performance coming off the X2's? I've got a 4200+ and I honestly feel it doesn't nearly as well as my old winchester 3500+. For instance I've got them overclocked by 20mhz on the fsb(i.e. a fsb of 220) same board, and the same ram. And they both run with 11x multis.....so the X2 is always behind the 3500+ on tests like super_pi and such.

So anyone feel the same way or have ideas why this is seems to be sucking?

P.S. I'm running a A8V Deluxe with Dual Corsair CMX512-3200C2
 
board probably just needs some bios kinks worked out to get the chip up and running as it should. at the same clock speed, superpi should be exactly the same between the chips, its a single core application.
 
There is something wrong with your system if you feel that the X2 4200+ is performing worse then your 3500+ did.
 
perhaps the timings are a little different.

Really though, the X2 shouldn't be any faster in superpi than a single core chip of the same clock.

I'm sure if you did some multithreading, you'd tell a difference, though by the sound of it, you might not do much, and thus, bought a SMP system and are running the same single threaded apps that you could have run with a single core and recieved identical performance.
 
poison123 said:
Does anyone know what the actual cores on the 4200+ are based off?
Click to expand...

They're two Venice 2.2GHz cores with 512KB of cache. They should be identical in performance to a 3500+.
 
lithium726 said:
its two venice 3500+ chips with a crossbar.
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no, it isn't. It is a rev. e chip, but the architecture is far from just 2 standard venice cores. The heat output of 2 venice cores would be much higher than the current heat output of the X2. The X2 has been designed around SMP, your description is closer to the Intel DC.
 
mikelz85 said:
no, it isn't. It is a rev. e chip, but the architecture is far from just 2 standard venice cores. The heat output of 2 venice cores would be much higher than the current heat output of the X2. The X2 has been designed around SMP, your description is closer to the Intel DC.
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no, its not. the intel DC uses its FSB technology and is horribly bandwidth choked. the X2 has a crossbar between the two cores and share a hypertransport link to the system (they also share a memory controller, but these two technologies were designed for this and therefore there is no performance hit, like there is on intel's quad pumped FSB tech), the cores have extremly low latency between them because they do not have to go through the chipset to communicate. the reason the heat dissapation is lower than two individual venice cores is becuase its on one huge peice of silicon that draws the same voltage as a regular 90nm AMD part. surface area is greater, and so is dissipation, which results in around the same temps.

the X2 is two venice or san diego cores connected with a direct crossbar that shares a HT link with the system. if you have anything to prove otherwise, please post it.
 
The more I rsearch....the more I come to believe I think they fubar'd the latest series of Bios for my board....like now I can't even lower the 11x multi. So I guess its board shopping now....any ideas on a decent agp board?
 
If you are talking about scores and scores alone, X2 should be scoring a little bit higher than your old 3500+, I'm not sure why it's not.
 
when you stated two venice chips with a crossbar, I didn't exactly think of "two venice core in one CPU die". I kind of thought of two dies, or chips, with a bar connecting them to talk, which is more like the intel setup. The X2 isn't just 2 venice dies stacked into one package, it has 2 "similar" cores, but if you were to compare 1 X2 core to 1 venice core, you might find some differences. :rolleyes:

Though, we may be saying the same thing in different ways. ;)
 
are you sure asus has officially implemented dual core on that board? you might just have to give them a little while

i know that MSI just released the 1.9bios for the K8N neo2 taht supports dual core, and i just installed it. although i have the system stable (at last) i dunno if i would recomend it. there arent a whole lot of choices though...
 
mikelz85 said:
when you stated two venice chips with a crossbar, I didn't exactly think of "two venice core in one CPU die". I kind of thought of two dies, or chips, with a bar connecting them to talk, which is more like the intel setup. The X2 isn't just 2 venice dies stacked into one package, it has 2 "similar" cores, but if you were to compare 1 X2 core to 1 venice core, you might find some differences. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
nah, sorry, thats not what i meant at all - i meant that its essetially (ie, it acts like) two venice processors on one PGA package, which is what he was asking.

Does anyone know what the actual cores on the 4200+ are based off?
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its based off venice. its two venice cores on teh same peice of silicon with a low latency crossbar for communication and a shared memory controller and HT link.

Sorry if i was unclear, i tend to think a lot faster than i write and my writings get jumbled.
 
Ya they've done it...their actually up to 2 bios on it now...1013 and 1014....and both of those lost a few overclockering options from what I can see.
 
poison123 said:
Ya they've done it...their actually up to 2 bios on it now...1013 and 1014....and both of those lost a few overclockering options from what I can see.
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ah. in that case, look for an NF3 board... MSI, DFI, and Epox are the only ones with decent NF3U boards afaik, but there might be another

i love asus, but i hate VIA. im willing to bet thats where hte problems are coming from, as the NF3/NF4 boards are having no problems with X2's
 
I'd go with the DFI, maybe the Epox if it's significantly cheaper. Lotsa people like MSI but I'm not fond of them for various reasons, many relating to them as a company rather than to the performance of their products.
 
mike0219116 said:
My 4600+ 2X makes my system run smooth liek buttah! :cool:
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Ive also heard people saying how their 2.2Ghz celeron D system runs just as good as their P4 3.6Ghz. It just depents on what they are doing.
 
If you do Graphics work, or video editing (like me) dual core/CPU will greatly (pretty much double) your performance.

For games and basic things, there no point
 
Well, they said UT2007 will play faster in a dual core.
But, I'll have to wait to see what I'll decide to do when I see benchmarks.
It would be strange to see for example a fast single core going performing better than a X2 3800+.
I did read an article that said software developers don't even have the tools required to maximize their software for multi cores. So, it might take two or three years before we see most software made for multi cores.
Whatever. It all seems too strange to me. Now I have to figure out a way around the Windows update thingy before I can think about replacing my motherboard. Unless I want to shell out extra $$ for M$. Yuck.
 
lithium726 said:
the X2 is two venice or san diego cores connected with a direct crossbar that shares a HT link with the system. if you have anything to prove otherwise, please post it.
Click to expand...


The X2 is basically two Lancasters that are able to talk to eachother over the crossbar. The A64 has always had the crossbar. It's what connects the SRI and memory controller.

To call them two Venice's/San Diego's isn't the most accurate way to describe them. They are definately of a different breed, i.e. the Turion variety.

That said, you won't see a gigantic difference going from single to dual. However, going back to single core... yeah, you'll see the difference then. And it will be painful.
 
the big difference between amd's current dual cores and intels current dual cores is that the intel version is 2 seperate cpu's on 1 package , amd's is 2 cores attatched to one memory controller in one die , in one package. Its far superior becuase the cpu's can communicate directly to eachother and they don't have to choke the FSB.
 
7718 said:
the big difference between amd's current dual cores and intels current dual cores is that the intel version is 2 seperate cpu's on 1 package , amd's is 2 cores attatched to one memory controller in one die , in one package. Its far superior becuase the cpu's can communicate directly to eachother and they don't have to choke the FSB.
Click to expand...

Correct.

Yet some people say the AMD one is too expensive. Gosh, paying for quality and performance, who the hell does that these days?
 
Hate_Bot said:
If you do Graphics work, or video editing (like me) dual core/CPU will greatly (pretty much double) your performance.

For games and basic things, there no point
Click to expand...

Depends on the game. Some CPU intenseive games, for example, Flight Simulator 2004, will run better on it.

Even if a game can't take advantage of SMP, you can always ask windows to use on core and have your game use the second core all on it's own. :)

Also, SMP means faster Folding. ;) That's part of why I'm getting an X2 and a dualcore Opteron (with a second Dualcore Opteron in the future). Instead of having a pair of Socket A computers, a Socket 370, and a dual Slot1, I can just use an X2 and OpteronX2 for way faster Folding performance. :p
 
Actually I finally managed to get some decent overclocks out of the it.....sadly one of the cores crashs at 240fsb while the other keeps going like the good little soldier it is.
 
Hate_Bot said:
If you do Graphics work, or video editing (like me) dual core/CPU will greatly (pretty much double) your performance.

For games and basic things, there no point
Click to expand...

There is no point in going dual core for just gaming right now but that doesn't mean performance wont be good on an X2 over a single core A64. The X2's are usually faster then single core A64's that are clocked 200Mhz faster in most every game. With an X2 you dont have background apps and windows services chewing up CPU cycles and taking that away from your gaming performance and in the real world we dont all shut down everything in the background when were playing a game or at least i dont. Future games will be optimized for dual core, nVidia is planning to release dual core optimized graphics drivers, and there are still a few older games that benefit from dual core. I play primarily Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and certain parts of it are multithreaded because one of the systems it was built on was a dual PIII rig. Exterior cells are loaded into multiple threads.
 
I couldn't be happier with the performance of my x2 @ 2.6ghz.
:eek:

You sound like the type of person that would buy a corvette then pull two spark plug wires because it was too fast. :D

poison123 said:
Anyone else kinda feeling underwhelmed with the performance coming off the X2's? I've got a 4200+ and I honestly feel it doesn't nearly as well as my old winchester 3500+. For instance I've got them overclocked by 20mhz on the fsb(i.e. a fsb of 220) same board, and the same ram. And they both run with 11x multis.....so the X2 is always behind the 3500+ on tests like super_pi and such.

So anyone feel the same way or have ideas why this is seems to be sucking?

P.S. I'm running a A8V Deluxe with Dual Corsair CMX512-3200C2
Click to expand...
 
BigDaddy85 said:
X2 doesn't mean performance, .....................................
Click to expand...

heh, at $500+ a pop, them freakin' X2s better be performance and some.....

I'm sorry people but spending freakin' $500+ on ANY processor is just plain outright nuts. I dont give a rat's a** if they do score 200 or 300 points higher in synthetic benchmarking tests. chances are, you arent going to notice a bit of difference in real-world testing with that $500+ processor.

but hey, if you have $$$ to burn and if you insist on having the largest e-penis, then I say go for it. spend the $500+ and be happy.
 
poison123 said:
Anyone else kinda feeling underwhelmed with the performance coming off the X2's?
Click to expand...

No, not really. I mean, I don't have an X2, I have two Opteron 265's, but they are about the same. Think of my 265s at stock 1.8GHz as a couple of 3800 X2s or so. I LOVE this box. I write biology simulations for a living, and this thing is the perfect workstation. Some of my simulations are multi-threaded, and the cores work great for that. Even when my simulations are not multi-threaded, I can run 3 of them at once, at 99.9% of full speed, and still have a core left over to play mp3/ogg files, write code, and research on the web. While a real X2 wouldn't be quite as nice as my Opteron setup, it would certainly be better than an FX57 even. I'm all about the dual/quad+ core hype. I love it.

P.S.
On a side note, I think this is a little odd. Let me first say, I know the K8 is better at branch heavy code than the P4, but still. I have a single-threded 64-bit bio simulation that takes 25 seconds to finish on a 3.8GHz EE P4, and the same simulation, doing the exact same computation takes 24 seconds on my 1.8GHz Opteron box at home. Same OS (Gentoo Linux), the same math.. I was really impressed. Now, this simulation is very branch heavy, and thus, not really what P4's with their long pipelines are good at, but I was still impressed. I guess what they say is true: "Buy a CPU that suits your particular needs."
 
poison123 said:
Anyone else kinda feeling underwhelmed with the performance coming off the X2's? I've got a 4200+ and I honestly feel it doesn't nearly as well as my old winchester 3500+. For instance I've got them overclocked by 20mhz on the fsb(i.e. a fsb of 220) same board, and the same ram. And they both run with 11x multis.....so the X2 is always behind the 3500+ on tests like super_pi and such.

So anyone feel the same way or have ideas why this is seems to be sucking?

P.S. I'm running a A8V Deluxe with Dual Corsair CMX512-3200C2
Click to expand...
Have you tried reinstalling Windows XP after switching to the X2's? Sometimes that helps... :)
 
My X2 4800+ kicks the rear of almost all the other processors out there! I absolutely love it!
 
ashmedai said:
One SMP rig folds faster than two independant systems?
Click to expand...

One SMP rig will fold faster than a 1 ghz Pentium III. :p Then again, I think a single X2 would fold faster than my two Bartons...
 
lithium726 said:
its two venice 3500+ chips with a crossbar.
Click to expand...

Is crossbar the technical term AMD is using? if so w00t!
(hockey refrence)

edit:
I'm only interested in using my AMD chip for gaming... so maybe I shouldn't spend the $$ on an X2, buut instead look for an FX chip. eh'?
 
poison123 said:
so the X2 is always behind the 3500+ on tests like super_pi and such.
Click to expand...

Isn't Super-Pi doing its computation only on one thread?
 
ozziegn said:
heh, at $500+ a pop, them freakin' X2s better be performance and some.....

I'm sorry people but spending freakin' $500+ on ANY processor is just plain outright nuts. I dont give a rat's a** if they do score 200 or 300 points higher in synthetic benchmarking tests. chances are, you arent going to notice a bit of difference in real-world testing with that $500+ processor.

but hey, if you have $$$ to burn and if you insist on having the largest e-penis, then I say go for it. spend the $500+ and be happy.
Click to expand...

Haha... oh how WRONG you are! The difference between single and dual core processors is huge if you do alot of multitasking... even just running windows in general seems smoother... I can't believe how you could even make a statement like this?! If you EVER used the X2, you would see how smooth it runs... this thing never chokes. It is the best component that I have ever had in a computer, and I am sure there are alot who would agree. Money well spent.

It sounds like you can't afford one to me... could always go for a Pentium D... lol
 
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