From: "Chris Reeves" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: The Hardware List <[email protected]>
To: "'The Hardware List'" <[email protected]>
Subject: [H] Were Intel's benchmarks (slightly) rigged?
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 15:19:13 -0600
Not denouncing their benchmarks entirely - I believe Intel's benchmarks of
their own chip are valid, and I think they have a winner on their hands.
But someone evaluating them raises some real questions about the
comparison:
http://voodoopc.blogspot.com/2006/03/if-only-they-had-time-machine.html
You'll notice that the image I am referring to on Anandtech's website (the
bios image) states that the AMD processor is "unknown" which makes me
believe that the bios they are running is outdated. So, I did a bit of
digging and low and behold, the DFI bios version "D49C-32" they are running
is from 10/11/05. There has been 1 major revision with major fixes that
include:
Set Cool 'n' Quiet Default to Disabled
- With Cool & Quiet enabled, AMD processors will throttle in order to save
power and bring their thermal load down. This means the processor could be
running as low as 800MHz in certain programs - no matter what the program
is. In theory Cool & Quiet is supposed to throttle up to maximum in games
but this is not always the case. No enthusiast PC goes out with Cool &
Quiet
enabled unless it's a fanless machine or media center.
It should be enabled as that is what most PC's will use. It's a great
feature. We're talking decimal point performance differences with it on. And
how do you disabled Intel's throttling?
Note that a single core Athlon 64 4000 achieved a better score in
the benchmark run by Tom (160.5fps) than the one provided by Intel (160.4)
at IDF.
Scores that close I consider identical.
The real drama in this ongoing AMD vs Intel saga should be over the AM2 mess
- it is not going well and either the DDR2 performance stinks or the memory
controller is buggy and reverts to a speed slower than DDR2-667.
