[Wien] Benchmark on opteron - test on a fully loaded computer

[Peter Blaha]

> - bi-opteron 2214 (dualcore à 2.2Ghz, 64 bits, 2*1Mo de cache)
> - 4 Go de mémoire DDR2 ECC Reg PC5300 667 Mhz
> I got for the official benchmark a CPU time of 215s (OMP_NUM_THREADS=1) that
> seems to me in agreement with what is publish for
> It is clear the pentium processor have the best performance for single CPU
> test but I think one should care about the behavior on a fully loaded
> computer.
> In order to test the saturation of the memory band width on the node (that
> could be the great difference between AMD and Pentium architecture), I just

This WAS a difference with old Intel Xeon processors (a year ago or so), 
although even when using 2 wien jobs on dual node Xeons they are still 
faster than AMDs (but the difference is reduced).
Anyway, the new Intel "Conroe" architecture (Core 2 duo) seems to be a 
real improvement 
in a) floating point performance at low clock rate
   b) memory bandwidth (better than AMDs)
   c) power consumption (heating): very low

I guess we do not have benchmarks for Intels "server"-processors (Xeons), 
but at least they have now also low power consumption and fast FSB. They 
also run at eg. 2.66 GHz, so I expect them to be very similar to the 
"desktop" processors.

I'm very happy that AMD is on the market, because it forces Intel to 
improve. 

However, at the moment Intel is CLEARLY ahead (which could change in 
future ...).  

                                      P.Blaha
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Peter BLAHA, Inst.f. Materials Chemistry, TU Vienna, A-1060 Vienna
Phone: +43-1-58801-15671             FAX: +43-1-58801-15698
Email: blaha at theochem.tuwien.ac.at    WWW: http://info.tuwien.ac.at/theochem/
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