Dual AMD CPUs worthwhile?

[philip_sweeney]

I have read previous posts on hardware upgrade but since it is an ever

changing scene I like to ask for opinions on a specific comparison.

MAC is just too expensive. I have built PCs, so for the money that's

my direction.

 

On RAM I'll probably get 1G although I may get 1.5G (for that rare

multiple layers image.) I am comparing motherboard/CPU combos using

AMD XP 2400 CPU (2GHz) in the price range of $200 versus the multiple

processor route using say AMD palomino MP1200 (1.2GHz) in the $300

range (motherboard and 2 CPUs). Here is the question: for about $100

more can I expect the specified multiple CPUs will outperform the

single CPU? I have witnessed dual CPU G4s and that is why I keep

thinking about the dual CPUs! I don't really understand RAID so that's

not a question.

[genec]

If you really want a fast system consider a dual XP2600 with 1.5 gigs of ram - about 3-4 hundred more but it will really kick. Add onboard IDE RAID and you will be set for a while. Even so Photoshop manages to slow it down :).

 

Another alternative would be one of the new Pentium 4 multithreading chips. One chip does much the same as two though I have not heard anything definitive as to how it performs in PS.

[chip l.]

If one is to believe the testing by AMD the Pentium Multi-threading does not provide additional power. From my understanding OS-X is the only OS that TRULY takes advantage of dual-processors under most if not all circumstances (FWIW i am a PC user with not vested interest in Mac's).

[oskar_ojala]

I don't think it's worthwile to buy 1.2 GHz CPUs right now, there are faster AMDs that offer better value. Dual processors is obviously sweet, but there are many things that either can't be or aren't multithreaded very well.

 

You must note that Photoshop has a lot of optimizations for the G4. If you'd really like to see PS fly, then something like dual 3 GHz Pentium 4 (if that's available now, haven't checked Intel's multi-cpu offerings lately) with RAID and 1-1.5 GB of RAM is a good choice (obviously above your budget, but in theory this would be good for PS).

 

Pentium 4 hyperthreading is NOT a substitute for a second CPU, quite far from it.

 

To the point: how big are the images you usually run through PS and what operations do you use? An AMD 2GHz with 1 GB of RAM can do a lot, more than most people would want to, so you must really consider how much PS-power do you need. Personally I find that my 1.5 GHz Athlon is completely sufficient for 99% of what I do and I scan medium format all the time.

[majid]

Chip, unlike Windows 95/98, Windows NT (and 2000, and XP) has perfectly adequate

support for multithreading and multiple CPUs (SMP). Mac OS X is not superior in this

respect. The jury is out on Intel's Hyperthreading (virtual SMP). Some applications

benefit, for some it actually degrades performance.

 

A fast uniprocessor is almost better than a multiprocessor, due to queueing theory (a

single line is faster than two lines half as fast) and the overhead of synchronizing

caches and limiting bus contention. Multiprocessors' aggregate performance does not

increase linearly with the number of processors, usually 2 processors have about

170%-180% the performance of a single processor, and the linearity goes down after

that, a quad processor will only gain 50% additional performance from its last

processor.

 

In addition, applications that are not specifically optimized for multiprocessors will

not be able to take advantage of the second processor. Multiprocessors are used

mostly to increase throughput on applications that are intrinsically parallel like

serving web pages or database accesses, but individual response times do not gain as

much. If you put two pregnant women side by side, they will deliver two babies every

nine months, not one every 4.5 months. Photoshop is optimized, because image

processing is easily parallelized (one processor takes care of the top half of the

image, the second one of the lower half) but little else.

 

Finally, many third-party drivers are buggy and either crash on MP systems or have

internal throttles that limit performance. For more details, look at a specialized

website like Tom's Hardware or Anandtech.

 

In this case, it's a no-brainer - the 2x1.2GHz would fall far short of the 1x2GHz.

[jimvanson]

Philip...I think your asking this a few weeks too early.<p>AMD is about to introduce a completely new line of CPU's. That will do several things non-the-least being drive down existing Intel & AMD CPU's prices. How low? No ones sure yet. How good will these new processors be? Again, it's a wait and see game.<p>About existing dualie's. A dual MP 1200 (is such a processing beast still available?) is not a consideration. Maybe dual MP 2200's (or so) but not 1200's.<p>I run two machines. One is a Intel P4C 2.4 that has hyper-threading...when in Photoshop it kicks my other machine, an AMD 1900+�s butt. Hyperthreading recognizes PS7. I believe that PS7 benefits from the fact.<p>Even though I consider myself an AMD guy I must say that at this point I�d personally go with a fast C series Hyperthreading P4 processor. <p>Bottom line? Regardless if you decide dualie or not you really should wait to see what AMD releases and just how chip prices drop.

[carl smith]

Jim I presume you're talking about the AMD Opteron and the Athlon 64 processors.

 

Both of these are 64bit, 32bit backwards compatible processors, but the Opteron is intended for server and workstation uses and can go up to 8 way I believe. Prelimiary tests of the Opterons seem quite good, Sun has been using them in their systems since May or so and otehr systems using Unix have them as options. Nobody can tell you how they'll do for Photoshop on a Windows system because the 64 bit windows is being released in late september (22nd I believe) alongside the new AMD processors.

 

I expect good performance, but cannot be too sure. If nothing else the release will drive down the cost of the currently available Athlon hardware.

[jimvanson]

Yes, the AMD 64's are what I was referring to. I don't think they will be a consideration initally because of cost but drive down existing processor prices they will.

[carl smith]

Aside from my spelling errors, I thought I'd comment that Adobe is expected at some point this fall to release photoshop 8, which might be the first major change in photoshop since version 5.5.

 

Why?

 

64 bit support.

 

And while they're at it they could maybe expand 16 bit image handling abilities just a wee bit.

[scott_eaton]

<I>From my understanding OS-X is the only OS that TRULY takes advantage of dual-processors under most if not all circumstances</i><P>Where did you hear that pile of rubbish? You mean IBM is going to make a processor that works better in SMP mode on a MAC G5 vs their own I-Series servers? I wonder if IBM shareholders have heard about that.<P>As for the rest, I'm slowly moving away from my default support of AMD for several reason and agreeing with Jim that a P 2.4C on a solid 865/875 MoBo is increasingly the best bang for the buck. Dual Athlon systems are nice, but they are fairly expensive since the MoBo's cost $200 along with more expensive Athlon MP processors. You can theoretically hack the L5 bridge on an XP processor and use them in a dual processor role, but you didn't hear it from me :-)<P>When you add up the price, the faster Pentium is going to smoke the dual Athlon in Photoshop performance. First, Athlons take a hefty penalty in Photoshop performance compared to the P4, and next, Photoshop only makes marginal use of multiple processors to begin with. Initial tests I'm seeing with the AMD 64 and Opteron do not place either chip as a really big threat to the Pentium throne in terms of desktop performance. Web/database servers and specialty 64-bit Linux systems is where the 64-bit AMD chips are going to shine. This mostly because Intel doesn't have a viable (and well liked) multiprocessor solution; the irony being that same dual Athlon solution we are talking about will spank a dual Xeon server. Otherwise, I still like a single Athlon XP 2000 or so with a good motherboard for simply the best budget solution. A 2.4C on an 875/865 based motherboard is slowly and steadily starting to push my favored AMD solution off the map.

[carl smith]

Sad but true Scott, but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for something interesting to happen on the AMD front come September 22nd. Hopefully faster Optys and the Athlon 64 will hopefully perform a lot better, but right now its still iffy.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Dual processors worked with Microsoft NT 3.51 and 4.0 too. The ancient IBM 365 PC could hold two 200 Mhz Pentium Pros. I have PS running on a NT4.0 box with two processors; and 1/2 Gig ram; with an old box. <br><Br>With a hardware upgrade; motherboard only; weigh the time to locate drivers for your devices; if you upgrade the OS too. The time to locate drivers; farting around factor; sometimes can be a massive time sinkhole. <br><Br>The box I got last May was a 2.5 Ghz P4; with XP pro; and 2 gigs of ram; with some heavy batch files; ie Photoshop actions; it well has saved me some grunt work. <br><BR>We added a dual processor to some old boxes; because I got the processors and VRM for next to nothing. For a new box; It would be better to get a fast single processor box; instead of a half speed dual settup.

[scott_eaton]

I hear you Carl.

 

One advantage that AMD has is the popular VIA chipset has a unified architecture - which means you can upgrade motherboards and move Windows 2000 and XP installs without trashing the machine. Can't do that with Intel chipsets

 

AMD has no idea how much revenue they lost by not pushing a dual, server level XP solution. Not sure if they can make up for it with the Opteron/64.

[carl smith]

I keep coming across tests like Cinebench while looking for Opty and G5 comparisons and reviews. I'm finding a lot of promising information on the Opteron but theres still no way to tell. I will just keep hoping, and even though it looks like they may not be great for imaging applications I get this weird feeling they'll be pretty damn good.

 

Incidentally the Cinebench tests, which weren't optimized for either system, showed the Optys pulling ahead of the G5 by quite a bit. Just an amusing tidbit of information.

 

I have no idea why I'm looking for comparisons and reviews that I am 99% certain don't even exist yet.

[scott_eaton]

The G5 is going to require a lot of heavy application optimization (just like the previous Motorolla based platforms) to pull ahead in any benchmark, while the Opteron will do better in simple raw data pushing. This is not a bad thing in the least for either platform, but does heavily skew benchmark comparisons.

 

I've seen more than a few benchmarks showing dual Athlon MP's flat out destroying dual Xeons's with the Intel chips running at double the clock speed, so I'd expect the Opteron to have some momentum going into this. Still, I think AMD needs to hire Apple's marketing dept., and they should have come screaming out of the gates with 2.4ghz processors.

[carl smith]

I'm hoping they'll at least have the 2.4Ghz come september 22nd. They need to do that, but whether it will happen is an entirely differnet story.

 

I don't even want to imagine what many companies would be like if they had Apples marketing. Of course the other half of the equation is having the right group of followers to lead around by the balls.

[philip_sweeney]

OK that's alot of info! I probably should have listed existing hardware and also emphasized my goal. I believe if you buy appx 1 year old technology you can get a good bang for your buck. I was running 98 on a 733PIII and 1G of RAM. I wanted to run 1.5G of RAM so I upgraded to WIN XP pro. I have worked on files up to 300M and sometimes the wait was excruciating! After moving to XP I had nothing but problems with the machine, and some could be explained and some not. The 733 CPU seemed to be defective and I replaced it at no cost to a 533PIII. I confess to using cheap RAM and the system never liked over 1G (98 did not mind it). So my long term investment in computers is low and decided to upgrade (and never use cheap RAM again!). I'll conclude the best pick and ease of use (i.e., easy for me to build and startup) will be the single CPU, and new RAM. I think its safe to say the new hardware should show a significant increase in performance over the existing. I'll will probably wait a few more months!

[oskar_ojala]

Ok, in that case I suggest you concentrate at a minimum of 1 GB, preferably 1.5 GB of memory, quality

components and a uniprocessor setup. A RAID setup might help (depending on your typical usage) if you can

afford it. I've ran win XP for 1 year on my current setup and it has never crashed (explorer and IE have

many bugs, but the OS and PS have never crashed), so I'd say it's somewhat hardware dependant.

 

I don't think Athlon 64 or Opteron will bring any magically better bang for buck this year: they're optimized

for 64 bits and this requires an 64 bit OS and 64 bit apps to exploit to the full and it's not easy to achive

since x86-64 compilers are few and far between (unlike Intel, AMD doesn't have any significant software

development, something that might make the transition slower). For some time the best bang for the buck will be

in 32-bit systems.

 

Similarly, the PowerPC 970 (aka "G5") is interesting since it has a very powerful vector unit and FPU hardware.

The architecture is so new that it will take time to tune the compilers, but it has great promise for PS-like

apps, but the interesting stuff won't come until next year.

 

Philip, I'd say that with a few hundred US$ you can upgrade your system to a nice 2+ GHz AMD Athlon with 1+ GB

memory and quality mobo, which will greatly expand your possibilities.

[jimvanson]

philip...I've personally found ( meaning the hard way) you gotta remember two things in the upgrade equation. First off the chain is only as good as it's weakest link...for example; don't go out and get a good M/B, CPU & Ram and then plug it into a junkey power supply. And second (and I've screwed myself on this one a couple times now) Clean installs are a must! It doesn't matter if your installing a new motherboard or a new operating system you gotta do a clean install of the operating system. Don't hobble the system by trying to substitute a work around.

[jem]

Hi

 

Without reading all of the above in detail, here is what I did and the results I got...

 

I built a Photoshop Beastie that looks like this:

Gigabyte 81K1100 Motherboard

,2 Gig PC3200 DDR 400 RAM

,P4 2.8Ghz

,Two WD Raptors in RAID as the systems disk

,120 GB WD 7200 IDE drive as storage/backups/scratch disk

,Matrox P650

,...bits n bobs

 

This machine is seriously fast - I currently have open a file that is 155 Mb. (scan from a 6 by 12). If I rotate this file 90 degrees CW or whatever I can't even see it calculate, it just rotates and there it is. Gaussian blur across the entire file takes less than two seconds.

 

The whole machine boots in about 20 seconds and shuts down in about 4. On this file I can happily use 20 adjustment layers and still run a gaussian blur in < 6 seconds.

 

I can print this file to about 35 by 17 inches at 300 DPI.

 

Cost was about Aussie dollars $2700 - not that many of your greenbacks and I'm sure it is much cheaper over there.

 

Just some anecdotal evidence to give you an idea of where a basic set up can get you...