pentium otimizations

[benthepenguin]

I'v heard few rumours about p4 optimizations on benchmarking software? are they just rumours?

 

[byosys]

I'm assuming you mean P4 optimizations. Yes, there are certain P4 optimizations out there. SSE, SSE2, SSE3, and HT support all favor the P4 over any AMD chip. The reason why SSE and SSE 2 help the P4 more than an Athlon is because the P4 runs at a higher clock speed and does more SSE/SSE2 instructions per second. SSE and HT helps the P4 because no Athlon has them (yet). Along with this, certain types of tasks favor the P4 because of it's design. The classic example is content creation. The P4 design favors a constant stream of data (more so than AMD's chips), and content creation provides this. The reason for this is that ever time the has to guess about the next instruction, the P4 has a much more dramitic hit on performance than AMD's chips. In addition, content creation apps often make good use of SSE/SSE2 instructions, helping the P4 even more.

To understand more about how certain optimizatoins favor different processors, you need to have a good understand how each processor differs from the others.

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

Remember the SSE and SSE2 is on the AMD 64's. SSE2 is faster on the Intel if it is a vector(?) SSE2 optimization (I can't remember but I have seen SSE2 comparisons and the AMD 64 is equal in three diferent types while Intel is way faster in one and slower in the other two). Once again the encoding and content creation myth. It all depends on what programs you run. Some are going to be Optimized for the Pentium 4 platform and will run faster while others will run faster on the AMD. Benchmarking sites tend to use the same encoding programs over and over that are optimized for Intel while leaving other encoders that are faser on AMD out. Divx is faster on Intel. Xvid (I just woke up so excuse my memory) is faster on AMD. Remember, a beta encoder tester who was running a 64bit version stated that the AMD just killed the Intel with 64bit. Intel has hyperthreading which is great if you are doing a lot of mult-tasking or you are doing encoding/content creation programs that are able to utilize it. Hyperthreading ranges from great speed ups to slowing down the system but I think it is really the P4's greatest weapon against the AMD 64's. Ironically, it was created because of all the wasted cycles of the uber long pipeline design of the P4 to optimize performance. Now that Intel has killed Tejas and are going to dual core Prescott's (the flamethrower gets hotter) I don't know what their next cpu design will have. It should be fun!