K8 vs Core 2 Performance/efficency Analysis

[Cookie Monster]

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This article has provided an initial look into the nature of performance in two relatively modern CPUs, a 2.93GHz 65nm Core 2 Duo, and a 2.8GHz 90nm K8. Some of the more salient results from the last several pages are summarized below:

* The Core 2's IPC is about 5-10% higher than the K8 for our set of games.
* The K8 has 20% fewer uops per instruction than the Core 2 for our set of games.
* The Core 2's branch predictors are vastly more accurate, with about 50% fewer mispredicted branches per instruction retired for our set of games.
* The Core 2's instruction cache is slightly more effective, with ~20% fewer misses per instruction retired for our set of games.
* Misaligned instructions are very infrequent for both CPUs - approximately one out of every thousand retired instructions is a misaligned memory access for our set of games.
* 60% of x86 instructions access memory for our set of games.
* The K8's L1D cache is more effective, with about 20% fewer misses per instruction retired for our set of games.
* The Core 2 Duo's L2 cache is much more effective, with about 50% fewer misses per instruction retired for our set of games.

I came across this and wanted to share.

 

[Idontcare]

Interesting.

Kinda curious why Intel doesn't manage to trounce the K8 in every category given the ridiculous difference in resources.

Also a 90nm K8 vs. a 65nm C2D...K8 was getting long in the tooth before C2D came along let alone nowadays.

That the K8 bests the C2D in even a single category has got to make you tip your hat to the design team for having built such a processor some 4+ yrs ago (design likely started 8+ yrs ago) on 1/4 or less resources as their competition.

Now I'd like to see a Nano thrown in their alongside an Atom...

 

[badnewcastle]

Thanks for the cliffs... I really didn't want to read it all.:thumbsup:

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
Interesting.

Kinda curious why Intel doesn't manage to trounce the K8 in every category given the ridiculous difference in resources.

Also a 90nm K8 vs. a 65nm C2D...K8 was getting long in the tooth before C2D came along let alone nowadays.

That the K8 bests the C2D in even a single category has got to make you tip your hat to the design team for having built such a processor some 4+ yrs ago (design likely started 8+ yrs ago) on 1/4 or less resources as their competition.

Now I'd like to see a Nano thrown in their alongside an Atom...

Its quite an impressive engineering feat, just like the R300 by ATi.

Id like to see the phenom vs athlon also. Before we knew agena was a dud, it was perfectly normal to believe that next gen AMD processor would succeed K8s legacy by dominating the competition. Just by looking at the numbers, it would be weird not to expect such a product.