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LOSTCIRCUITS	SHORTCUTS: Dual Core vs HyperThreading Tech Specs Test Setup Memory Performance WorldBench5 3dsmax CineBench 2003 3D Gaming Power/Temperature Coefficient Power Hogs 3D Rendering Power DOOM3 3DMark2001SE 3DMark'05 Final Thoughts Give Us Some Feedback on this Review
AMD Athlon64 X2 "Toledo" Dual Core on Single Die
(Review by MS May 9, 2005)

Cinebench 2003

There is something that is hard to understand about Cinebench 2003 and their ray tracing benchmark. Most benchmarks that we have looked at in the past, regardless of whether it was 3dsmax or Caligari TS did not really care about HyperThreading. That is, in TS, it is clearly visible that the task is split over the two locical cores, however, each of those cores is rendering at 1/2 speed of a non-HT core and, thus, the total runtime is identical. Cinebench, on the other hand does take advantage of multiple threads even with Hyperthreading and sees a substantial acceleration which has catapulted the P4 family to front row seats over the past 2 years. As a reference, we show the older A64 3400+ and 3200+ (light green) Socket 754 processors with the single channel memory controller. Those two CPUs will become relevant for the OpenGL comparison on the next page.

Ray Tracing (single thread)

Ray Tracing (multithreaded)

The two graphs show the results for either single threaded (top) or no holds barred, meaning the fastest the system could render the scene, irrespective of whether it is single - or multithreaded. It is very obvious how much leverage HT gives the P4 in this particular environment, but it is also apparent how much better dual cores scale than hyperthreading. Once again, we have some reservations about the validity of the ray tracing results for general ray tracing or 3D rendering but results are results.

next page: => Cinebench 2003: Realtime rendering =>