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Intel's Alder Lake big.LITTLE CPU design, tested: It's a barn burner:
After spending several days with Intel's newest consumer CPU designs, we have some surprising news: they're faster than AMD's latest Ryzens on both single-threaded and most multithreaded benchmarks.
We suspect this will be especially surprising to some, since Intel's newest desktop CPUs feature a hybrid "big.little[sic]" design similar to those found in ARM CPUs. AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 5950x is a traditional 16 core, 32 thread design, with all cores being "big" high-performance types with symmetric multithreading (SMT, also known as "hyperthreading"). By contrast, the i9-12900K offers 16 cores and only 24 threads—with eight "performance" cores featuring SMT and eight lower-performance "efficiency" cores with no SMT.
As pointed out in the Ars Technica comments, the Cinebench multi-threaded benchmark saw Intel's best CPU with a less than 2.5% lead, but the caption reads "Intel trounces AMD". While the Passmark multi-threaded benchmark saw AMD's best CPU with a more than 18% lead, but the caption reads "outperform i9-12900k-but even here, by a much, much, lower margin than we're accustomed to seeing".
Also at Phoronix, AnandTech, and Tom's Hardware.
See also: More Linux Performance Benchmark Data For Alder Lake, Comparison Data Points
Intel UHD Graphics 770 / Alder Lake GT1 Linux Graphics Performance
Previously: Intel Alder Lake CPUs Launch November 4th, with Up to 8 Big and 8 Small Cores
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 04 2021, @11:29PM (6 children)
PassMark:
Intel Core i9-9900K [cpubenchmark.net] = 2970 single, 18822 multi
AMD Opteron 6272 [cpubenchmark.net] = 753 single, 5240 multi
There could be a conspiracy. Or it could be that Bulldozer is hot and old garbage. Plus the 16-"core" Opterons run at substantially lower clock speeds than the 8-"core" desktop Bulldozer CPUs were pushed to. To be fair, I picked the slowest 16-"core" Opteron of that generation [wikipedia.org].
AMD FX-8150 Eight-"Core" [cpubenchmark.net] = 1401 single, 5077 multi
Those two were both released in 2011.
Another big point: no AVX2 on Opteron 6200-series. And that's how 32 modules get smacked around by 8 cores.
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 05 2021, @12:30AM (5 children)
This Opteron - https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Opteron+6380&id=2498 [cpubenchmark.net] you linked to an FX. There is some difference, but not an awful lot. And I have 4 CPUs, with a total of 64 cores.
Also, my mobile i9 coincidentally runs at the same clock speed as my server Opterons - 2.4 ghz.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 05 2021, @01:12AM (4 children)
What's the specific mobile i9 chip? Just kidding, it's the i9-9980HK [cpubenchmark.net]. Turbos up to 5 GHz on 1 core [wikipedia.org], wow. Still gets 74-89% of the scores of the 9900K.
I think you can at least see the plausibility of an 8-core 9th Gen Intel chip outperforming multiple 8-module (16-thread) Opterons. Perhaps even four of them.
https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldozer/AMD-Opteron%206380%20-%20OS6380WKTGGHK.html [cpu-world.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Opteron_microprocessors#Opteron_6300-series_%22Abu_Dhabi%22_(32_nm) [wikipedia.org]
Also no AVX2 on the Opteron 6380. From my 2 minutes of research, it looks like Folding@home has finally updated to take advantage of AVX2 instructions with the GROMACS A8 core during 2020:
https://greenfoldingathome.com/2021/02/22/amd-ryzen-9-3950x-part-4-full-throttle-folding-with-turbo-core-and-smt/ [greenfoldingathome.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Folding@home_cores [wikipedia.org]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22574191 [ycombinator.com]
You should probably start calculating whether running those Opterons 24/7 is worth the electricity cost, vs. the cost of buying newer hardware that outperforms all of them and running that 24/7. Also, GPUs may get a lot more performance/$ for Folding@home, but you would need to confirm that and it's still the worst time to buy a new GPU ever.
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 05 2021, @03:45AM (3 children)
Most definitely GPUs outperform any CPU you would care to name. My GTX 1650 does more work than all the CPUs in the house, combined. And, the 2070 does more than both 1650s plus all the CPUs in the house combined. Of my ~2,000,000 points per day, the 2070 produces ~1.4 to ~1.6 million. It varies, of course, from day to day, from work unit to work unit.
However, you still haven't countered my original claim that intel compilers optimize for intel chips, and do nothing to enhance AMD performance.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 05 2021, @03:54AM (2 children)
I'm not sure why that would be a surprise, if it is true. What compiler does Folding@home use?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 05 2021, @04:55AM (1 child)
Folding@Home is commercial software. They probably disable signatures and strip everything not absolutely necessary out of the binary. Or maybe not because they don't really care what they are paid to put on your machine. If they didn't and you really cared, might be able to FLIRT the executable or disassemble it and figure it out yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 05 2021, @07:21AM
Oops. That last sentence should start with "If they did and..." because FLIRT or disassembly is only really necessary if the executable doesn't identify its compiler.