How come 1.73GHZ T2250 533fsb cpu crunch faster than 3ghz P4 HT 800fsb cpu? both used only one core (for HT it is one thread).

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Please explain how you determined one is faster then the other. Are you looking at time to complete a WU? Or RAC? Or BOINC benchmark ratings? Other?

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

the good way to do this, is compare benchmark (drystone/whetstone)

I observed these cpu's for Rosetta and Seti and seemingly T2250 is mostly same and some time faster than P4 3ghz. I mean in crunching speed.

In each WU report you can see the cpu time from there I saw this difference.

If I consider ghz and fsb the result supposed to be opposite but in reality the T2250 is beating.

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How come 1.73GHZ T2250 533fsb cpu crunch faster than 3ghz P4 HT 800fsb cpu? both used only one core (for HT it is one thread).

The T2250 uses the new "Core" technology and the P4's use the old "Netburst" technology. The newer processors with "Core" technology can do more work per clock cycle than the old P4's with "Netburst". It's like comparing apples to oranges.

drystone/whetstone don't test cache or memory throughput - very basic benchmarks and so aren't much use for determining a processor's crunching ability. As jegs posted, the core-based processors (and their predecessors such as the pentium-m dothans) are much more efficient than the P4 netburst architecture. They also have larger caches which helps.

Core's succeessor (core2) is quite a bit more efficient again - my core2 based E6420 (3.2GHz) is here: https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/show_host_detail.php?hostid=481396
to compare the results.

FSB has little impact on Rosetta on the core/core2 platforms AFAIK. I don't think memory throughput is a limiting factor much of the time. That might be different on other architectures though, especially if the CPU has a smaller cache.

HTH
Danny

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When comparing CPU's between two different architectures, making a speed comparison based only on clock speeds is no longer valid. Different CPU architectures can have different instructions per clock (IPC) among other factors that make that architecture fast or slow irrespective of the clock.

For example, the Pentium M/Yonah architecture has a short, efficient instruction pipeline whereas NetBurst's is quite long, resulting in slow throughput clock-for-clock. NetBurst was originally designed to overcome this problem by clocking to extremely high frequencies (5 GHz+). Unfortunately NetBurst hits a thermal and power "wall" long before that happens.

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Thanks for the great descriptions, it is too pity that Intel did not release fair descriptions of their products and mislead its non IT professed customers.

Before this architecture talk I was considering ghz and fsb are the main stuffs to measure a cpu power.

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Thanks for the great descriptions, it is too pity that Intel did not release fair descriptions of their products and mislead its non IT professed customers.

Before this architecture talk I was considering ghz and fsb are the main stuffs to measure a cpu power.

For the rest of us who are not IT buffs, when does the fast FSB kick in for crunching speeds? When I upgraded my boxes recently, I chose the faster clock speeds when possible, and wondered about FSB speed for crunching (didn't have any faster options here though).

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(Click for detailed stats)

Before this architecture talk I was considering ghz and fsb are the main stuffs to measure a cpu power.

This was not true for a very long time already. For instance, a 1GHz P4 (OK, maybe not exactly this frequency, but take it as approx. example) was slower than 733 MHz P3.

Peter