AMD K10 All Its Cracked Up To Be? Page: 1


Quick and Dirty AMD K10 Cinebench

Earlier we brought you a snippet of news regarding a comparison between Intel's Xeon and AMD's Barcelona Processors, in which the Xeon outperformed the Barcelona cored processor in Cinebench. Now whilst we're loath to suggest that Intel will outperform AMD yet again when the K10 architecture finally makes an official appearance later this year, another benchmark has been surfaced which adds some weight to the rumour.
Admittedly the benchmark was quick and dirty, but Intel's Xeon had the numbers on the board. Again, we recommend that you consider real-life performance benchmarks and a thorough review before making a purchasing decision; but it'll be interesting to see how close the race will be when the time comes.

We had the opportunity to benchmark the AMD Barcelona, native quad-core on an early stepping. We only had a few minutes to test the chip, but we were able to run a quick Cinebench before we were instructed to leave. The AMD benchmark ran on a single-socket, K10 CPU running at 1.6 GHz on NVIDIA's nForce Professional 3400 chipset. According to the system properties, the AMD system used 4GB of DDR2-667. The most similar Intel system we could muster up on such short notice was an Intel Xeon 3220. The Xeon X3220 is clocked at 2.4 GHz, and ran on Intel's Garlow workstation chipset (Intel X38). This system property profile stated the system utilized 4GB of DDR2-800. Cinebench completed the default benchmark in 27 seconds for the 1.6 GHz K10; 17 seconds for the Intel Xeon X3220. The Kentsfield Xeon was 58% faster with a 50% higher clock frequency for Cinebench. AMD partner engineers tell DailyTech the chip we tested was the latest revision silicon. The same engineers claim 2.0 GHz Barcelona chips are making the rounds, with 2.3 GHz already on the desktop and server roadmaps.

AMD are still hinting at a July release, but this will more than likely be a paper one given their past estimates (read: HD 2900XT). Insiders are suggesting that September will be the more realistic time-frame.

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