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SmokinJoe-Salem
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Athlon II X4 620

Sun Sep 20, 2009 1:30 pm

Deal of the week! What is the latest thinking on this processor in a Linux Box for folding. Is the limited L2 cache and no L3 cache an issue? Any issue with memory type or speed (DDR2 or DDR3, 667, 800, 1060)?
The older I get, the faster I was.
 
flip-mode
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Re: Athlon II X4 620

Sun Sep 20, 2009 1:43 pm

If you are big into folding then I think it is better to use the GPU client and an Nvidia card, like a 9800 GTX or something.
 
SmokinJoe-Salem
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Re: Athlon II X4 620

Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:05 am

An answer to my own question.
This is a fairly direct comparison between two processors.
Intel-Q6600 2.4 GHz, 4GB DDR2-PC6400-800MHz and
AMD-X4-620 2.6 GHZ, 2GB DDR2-PC8500-1066MHz
Both booted to 64 bit-Umbuntu 9.04. Both folding 1920 point A2 (2.10) core units
4 units on the intel averaged 6.462 min/frame
5 units on the AMD averaged 6.218 min/frame
One would expect the AMD would fold faster because of its higher clock speed, it does
However the AMDs clock speed is 8.3% faster than the Intels but it folds at only 3.7% faster.
This discrepancy is explained by the AMD smaller L2 cache and no L3 cache,... I think.
My disappointment is attenuated by the AMDs price tag...$99
The older I get, the faster I was.
 
Flying Fox
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Re: Athlon II X4 620

Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:34 am

SmokinJoe-Salem wrote:
This discrepancy is explained by the AMD smaller L2 cache and no L3 cache,... I think.

The answer may not be so simple I think. The C2Q has well-known performance of SSE instructions, which the SMP Gromacs love. Back then the Core 2 architecture owned the K8's in that department and the Phenom/Athlon II is now catching up (do them beat the older Core 2's? Not sure based on the results).

Edit: spelling
Last edited by Flying Fox on Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Airmantharp
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Re: Athlon II X4 620

Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:41 am

Flying Fox wrote:
SmokinJoe-Salem wrote:
This discrepancy is explained by the AMD smaller L2 cache and no L3 cache,... I think.

The answer may not be so simple I think. The C2Q has well-known performance of SSE instructions, which the SMP Gromacs love. Back then the Core 2 architecture owned the K8's in that depart and the Phenom/Athlon II is now catching up (do them beat the older Core 2's? Not sure based on the results).


This is what I was thinking too; C2's biggest strength was that it combined the advances in CPU design gleaned from attempting to make Netburst a marketable product with a supercharged SSE2 unit, which made a huge difference with applications needing to be SSE2 optimized in order to simply function on Netburst. /History

We'd have to assume that it's a combination of the two. I'm also willing to bet that if you explored overclocking, you'd get the clock on that Athlon II quite a bit higher than the Q's when overclocked, more than making up for the Q's relatively higher IPC advantage.

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