The future is/seems APU

[Dirk Broer]

Apart from the so-called 'Gladiator', a FX variant that also doubles as room-heating due to its 220 Watt tdp there been frightfully little news from the AM3+ front.
The sole -AFAIK- PCIe 3.0 supporting AM3+ mobo, the ASUS 990FX/Gen3 R2.0 Sabertooth, has even been withdrawn from the market here as far as I can tell (http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/333350/asus-sabertooth-990fx-gen3-r20.html)!

So AMD seems to be laying all its eggs in the APU basket, at least where we crunchers are concerned. How's things there? Do we see improvement over the various iterations of the platform(s)?
Let's take a look at the top models of each of the manufacturers for the FM1, FM2 and FM2+ boards. For a quicky I stick now to the ATX and μATX boards, more (e.g. ECS) to come!

As there is a max of 15 pictures I might have to break up the article per manufacturer later when I add iTX boards, as I want clickable thumbnails of the various boards to go with the article. As it is all entries have a clickable link (apart from the FM2+ μATX MSI board as that page does not exists yet -but I have the future url)


http://www.asrock.com/images/logo.pnghttp://ic.tweakimg.net/ext/i/thumblarge/1382451017.jpeg (http://www.asrock.com/mb/photo/Box/FM2A88X%20Extreme6+(m).jpg)


Format
Model
Socket
Chipset
PCIe x16 Slots
Crossfire/SLI
Max RAM
VRM phases
Video out
Audio
WiFi
Bluetooth
eSATA
FireWire



ATX

A75 Extreme6 (http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/A75%20Extreme6/?cat=Specifications)

FM1

A75

16-0-4 or
8-8-4

up to quad CrossfireX,
no SLI

32GB,
up to 2400MHz

8+2

D-Sub, DVI-D
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

Yes

Yes



ATX

FM2A85X Extreme6 (http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/FM2A85X%20Extreme6/?cat=Specifications)

FM2

A85X

16-0-4 or
8-8-4

up to quad CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2600MHz

8+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
HDMI and DisplayPort

7.1
Realtek ALC898

No

No

Yes

No



ATX

FM2A88X Extreme6+ (http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/FM2A88X%20Extreme6+/?cat=Specifications)

FM2+

A88X

16-0-4 or
8-8-4

up to quad CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2600MHz

8+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
HDMI and DisplayPort

7.1
Realtek ALC1150

No

No

Yes

No



μATX

A75M (http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/A75M/?cat=Specifications)

FM1

A75

16

up to dual CrossfireX,
no SLI

16GB,
up to 2400MHz

n.a.

D-Sub and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

No

No



μATX

FM2A85X Extreme4-M (http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/FM2A85X%20Extreme4-M/?cat=Specifications)

FM2

A85X

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2600MHz

4+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

Yes

No



μATX

FM2A88M Extreme4+ (http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/FM2A88M%20Extreme4+/?cat=Specifications)

FM2+

A88X

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2600MHz

4+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

No

No




http://tablethype.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Asus-logo.pnghttp://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-132-056-TS?$S300W$ (http://www.asus.com/media/global/products/Y4c8h5gYt9uQazAG/sRi7AHhTX285lXfq_500.jpg)


Format
Model
Socket
Chipset
PCIe x16 Slots
Crossfire/SLI
Max RAM
VRM phases
Video out
Audio
WiFi
Bluetooth
eSATA
FireWire



ATX

F1A75-V EVO (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/F1A75V_EVO/#specifications)

FM1

A75

16-0-4 or
8-8-4

up to quad CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2250MHz

6+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
HDMI and DisplayPort

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

Yes

No



ATX

F2A85-V PRO (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/F2A85V_PRO/#specifications)

FM2

A85X

16-0-4 or
8-8-4

up to quad CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2400MHz

6+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
HDMI and DisplayPort

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

Yes

No



ATX

A88X-PRO (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/A88XPRO/#specifications)

FM2+

A88X

16-0-4 or
8-8-4

up to quad CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2400MHz

6+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
HDMI and DisplayPort

7.1
Realtek ALC1150

No

No

Yes, 2

No



μATX

F1A75-M PRO (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/F1A75M_PRO/#specifications)

FM1

A75

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2250MHz

4+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

No

No



μATX

F2A85-M PRO (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/F2A85M_PRO/#specifications)

FM2

A85X

16-0 or
8-8

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2400MHz

4+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
HDMI and DisplayPort

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

Yes

No



μATX

A88XM-PLUS (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/A88XMPLUS/#specifications)

FM2+

A88X

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2400MHz

4+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC887

No

No

No

No




http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/images/img_logo.pnghttp://www.biostar.com.tw/upload/Motherboard/s20130911_13.jpg (http://www.biostar.com.tw/upload/Motherboard/b20130911_13.jpg)


Format
Model
Socket
Chipset
PCIe x16 Slots
Crossfire/SLI
Max RAM
VRM phases
Video out
Audio
WiFi
Bluetooth
eSATA
FireWire



ATX

TA75A+ (http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=552#spec)

FM1

A75

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

32GB,
up to 2000MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

No

No



ATX

Hi-Fi A85X (http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=616#spec)

FM2

A85X

16-8-4

up to quad CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2400MHz

8+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC898

No

No

No

No



ATX

Hi-Fi A88W 3D (http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=670#spec)

FM2+

A88X

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2600MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

No

No



μATX

TA75M+ (http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=551#spec)

FM1

A75

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

32GB,
up to 2000MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

No

No



μATX

Hi-Fi A85S (http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=641#spec)

FM2

A85X

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

32GB,
up to 2400MHz

4+1

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

No

No



μATX

Hi-Fi A88S3+ (http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=641#spec)

FM2+

A88X

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

32GB,
up to 2600MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

No

No




http://www.gigabyte.eu/images/GIGABYTE_Logo.pnghttp://www.gigabyte.eu/fileupload/product/2/4709/8736_s.jpg (http://www.gigabyte.eu/fileupload/product/2/4709/8736.jpg)


Format
Model
Socket
Chipset
PCIe x16 Slots
Crossfire/SLI
Max RAM
VRM phases
Video out
Audio
WiFi
Bluetooth
eSATA
FireWire



ATX

GA-A75-UD4H (http://www.gigabyte.eu/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3927#sp)

FM1

A75

16-8

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2400MHz

8+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
HDMI and DisplayPort

7.1
Realtek ALC889

No

No

Yes

Yes



ATX

GA-F2A85X-UP4 (http://www.gigabyte.eu/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4343#sp)

FM2

A85X

16-0-4 or
8-8-4

up to quad CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2400MHz

6+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
HDMI and DisplayPort

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

Yes

Yes



ATX

GA-F2A88X-UP4 (http://www.gigabyte.eu/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4709#sp)

FM2+

A88X

16-0-4 or
8-8-4

up to quad CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2400MHz

6+2

D-Sub, DVI-D,
HDMI and DisplayPort

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

Yes

No



μATX

GA-A75M-UD2H (http://www.gigabyte.eu/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3928#sp)

FM1

A75

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2400MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
HDMI and DisplayPort

7.1
Realtek ALC889

No

No

Yes

Internal



μATX

GA-F2A85XM-D3H (http://www.gigabyte.eu/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4651#sp)

FM2

A85X

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2400MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC887

No

No

No

No



μATX

GA-F2A88XM-D3H (http://www.gigabyte.eu/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4716#sp)

FM2+

A88X

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2400MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC887

No

No

No

No




http://us.msi.com/images/front/logo.pnghttps://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTOMtemdwIiMhS3XiJYtw4puskL5PuyT NzaMT4VtnwJefhn4QdA (http://www.msi.com/pic/product/five_pictures4_2957_20130912145444.jpg)


Format
Model
Socket
Chipset
PCIe x16 Slots
Crossfire/SLI
Max RAM
VRM phases
Video out
Audio
WiFi
Bluetooth
eSATA
FireWire



ATX

A75A-G55 (http://us.msi.com/product/mb/A75A-G55.html#/?div=Detail)

FM1

A75

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

32GB,
up to 1866MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

No

No



ATX

FM2-A85XA-G65 (http://us.msi.com/product/mb/FM2-A85XA-G65.html#/?div=Detail)

FM2

A85X

16-0 or
8-8

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

32GB,
up to 2133MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
HDMI and DisplayPort

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

No

No



ATX

A88X-G43 (http://www.gigabyte.eu/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4709#sp)

FM2+

A88X

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

64GB,
up to 2133MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC892

No

No

No

No



μATX

A75MA-G55 (http://us.msi.com/product/mb/A75MA-G55.html#/?div=Detail)

FM1

A75

16-4

up to triple CrossfireX,
no SLI

32GB,
up to 1866MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC887

No

No

No

No



μATX

FM2-A85XMA-E35 (http://us.msi.com/product/mb/FM2-A85XMA-E35.html#/?div=Detail)

FM2

A85X

16

up to dual CrossfireX,
no SLI

16GB,
up to 2133MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

7.1
Realtek ALC887

No

No

No

No



μATX

A88XM-E45 (http://us.msi.com/product/mb/A88XM-E45.html#/?div=Detail)

FM2+

A88X

n.a.

up to at least dual CrossfireX,
no SLI

n.a.
up to 2133MHz

n.a.

D-Sub, DVI-D,
and HDMI

n.a.

No

No

No

No

[Nflight]

Thanks for the post Dirk

[drezha]

Having got an APU system the other day, it seems to work fine for what I need it to.

Actually, wonder if it'll play some of my older Steam games (though that might be asking to much).

[Dirk Broer]

The combination A-10 APU/HD 6670 (or two or even three HD 6670s) should be able to play any older steam, that shouldn't be too much to ask.

[Nflight]

Having got an APU system the other day, it seems to work fine for what I need it to.

Actually, wonder if it'll play some of my older Steam games (though that might be asking to much). Look who dropped in after a long over due walk away from DCing. How you doing there old friend! Whats new?

[drezha]

Look who dropped in after a long over due walk away from DCing. How you doing there old friend! Whats new?

I'm good thanks - I guess the biggest news since I've been gone is that I'm now officially a doctor! Earned my PhD this year and passed my viva in May. I thought finishing the thesis would give me some time to get back into computers and DC but not much luck so far!

What've I missed here in the mean time?

[Nflight]

Congratulations are due; What academia studies have your pursued in your life's dream? I am surely hoping its in the realm of science?

The forum is pretty quite lately but there are some very active talkers who post with regularity, where we used to have several different conversations going at the same time. We seem to maintain a solid plus on knowing when material will be released and challenges on how the material will adapt to our already over worked apparatus. Heat Transfer Technology is the root cause of discussion most of the time; From fans to liquid cooling efforts, to cased boxen to open operations. Then the snag of Forum interuptus where by trouble makers take down our illustrious forum for an hour or two. Our Team effort continues in many Boinc and Non-Boinc Projects. We are never first everywhere but the rest of the world knows we still have a few serious contenders.

I look forward to learning about your Educational achievement; I am excited for you in achieving such a high mark regarded as the pinnacle of excellence. There isn't a day goes by in the past 4 years that I have not read some part of a thesis in my field of expertise (Molecular Biology). I am looking for some details I can't find anywhere, I shower praise in hopes of gaining access to personally and not-published yet criteria. It is a mind bending situation when you stand on a pinnacle of knowledge and you can never tell anyone the level of which you have achieve something till your document is published. I recently found some contributing data and an author willing to applaud my concepts. I look forward to learning your specialty with earnest. :blob3:

[Dirk Broer]

Earned my PhD this year and passed my viva in May.

Found your Viva!
http://www.handh.co.uk/assets/Vehicles/47893.jpg
Back in the days when you could really see what was behind you in the mirrors left and right of the hood.

[AMDave]

"Is there a Doctor in the house?" ... ahhhm ... actually, YES!
Major Congrats! Very well done, sir.

[drezha]

Thanks all.

Not science, but engineering - I hope that qualifies as a realm of "science"! I'd argue so as it's a STEM subject ;) Thesis was on fire engineering - making sure buildings are fire safe from a design point of view. You know you've made it as an academic/student when you have a journal article published (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0379711213001616). Now a lot of my work seems to be computer modelling related (modelling smoke and fire spread within buildings to make sure people don't die) - this has had the side effect of making me look once again at distributed computing and computing (I'm more of a Mac fan now though... I got fed up of upgrading and I found I like OSX as a cross between Windows and Linux).

Back crunching on a small OVH dedicated Atom server at the minute - it's £3 a month for it and it's handy to have should I want a Linux box for whatever reason. I should probably look into using it as an offsite backup at some point but I'm using Spideroak (free) for that and Crashplan (free trial at the minute but looking to backup all my media) so feel covered. Do have an AMD machine at home now (my home server) but not sure I want to crunch on it (it's also my media centre and is sat in the front room next to the TV so I'm concerned it'll be to noisy).

I'm sure I can post some graduation photos next month when I finally graduate! (passed in May but was to late for the July ceremony).

[Nflight]

Dr Drezha; Along with your thoughts of using Distributed Computing I too have been eying the bug as well. While it is more non-combustible gas observance as I talk about CO2 monitoring. I feel a modeling equation of fire science derivatives is also possible. I too have a back ground in Fire Sciences among my many diverse aptitudes I follow in Science. Yes Engineering is my families trait I decided to avoid, Father is a mechanical eng, my brother has his MS in EE, and my sister followed with IE studies before she switched to Business. My Niece is in her freshman year for IE at the University of Minnesota, she is not happy with her Calculus courses though.

I had 25 years as a volunteer fire fighter before age and brain cells converted me to write grants for all those F.O.O.L. brethren looking to up their game with better equipment. I had the most unique an desired education experiences learning about Forensic study material. To watch and observe the fire act in slow motion is very fascinating to me.

With Today's society and the progressive emission explosion of CO2 from Power Plants we should also incorporate a convolution of our two sciences where by we evaluate the existing gases in our atmosphere. Depending on the proximity to emitters compared to the green pastures should show greater Oxygen opportunity. More O2 equals more fire hazard, more CO2 would diminish the fire danger would it not? Something to think about!!!

Now back to the original Title of this Forum post - Shall we incorporate APU's and CPU's or just one of these ?

Again Congratulations Drezha :blob3:

[Dirk Broer]

Did you fire fighter guys already know that AMD has new 45 Watt tdp APUs?
You can use passive cooling for them, or use a <20 dB cooler so you almost can't hear it.
Less heat, less CO₂ too, don't you two have to agree?

[Nflight]

Dirk you know how to razz people just the right amount. I agree that lower tdp wattage is better then over powering and heating up the atmosphere sort of gibberish. Thanks for making me laugh! :blob3:

[NeoGen]

I was shocked the other day when I saw that on AMD's AMA with Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ama-toms-hardware,3672-3.html) the guy said that the optimal temperature for the Radeon R9's is 95 Celsius, and that all their boards are prepared to work at that temperature for the lifetime of the product.

Now I'm no fire engineer but would consider that a fire hazard! :icon_lol: I can almost imagine the occasional loose Sata cable inside a case with one of those GPUs for some reason touching it and the plastic starting to melt and/or catching fire inside the case.

P.S. - Congratulations Dr. Drezha! :icon_thumright: That is one fine achievement, and you know you've reached the <0.01% of all the people in the WORLD that can reach that high. The sky is the limit! :)

[drezha]

Dirk - It's a major shame that the software isn't able to benefit from GPU calculations. I think there was a group in Germany looking at it.
Also, whilst the AMD chips are pretty good at TDP, they are unfortunately, significantly slower (I believe they're compiled with Intel compiler which could explain things - I've seen stories around the web that the Intel compilers cripple speeds on non Intel chips).

Some of the fire safety systems for data centres are pretty cool - Maybe crunchers should begin to consider how to protect all the crunchers they may have? ;)

[Dirk Broer]

I was shocked the other day when I saw that on AMD's AMA with Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ama-toms-hardware,3672-3.html) the guy said that the optimal temperature for the Radeon R9's is 95 Celsius, and that all their boards are prepared to work at that temperature for the lifetime of the product.

It's perhaps for temperatures like these that if ever there was an advert for water-cooling your graphics card, these tempatures are it. Take this article (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cooling/2013/04/10/best-way-to-cool-your-graphics-card/3) about water cooling a nVidia GTX 690, using a EK-FC690 GTX
waterblock.

"After 30 minutes under full load for each setup, we recorded the peak temperatures, the results of which were pretty surprising. The reference cooler of the GeForce GTX 690 4GB has always struck us as appearing to be more than up to the job, however with a delta T of 63°C it was a huge amount warmer than our other setups.

For an air cooler, the Accelero Twin Turbo 690 put in a pretty impressive showing, managing to keep the GPU below a delta T of 35°C, that's 28°C cooler than the reference cooler - a fantastic result. What's more it remained incredibly quiet, even under load.

However, if ever there was an advert for water-cooling your graphics card, the EK-FC690 GTX waterblock is it. The delta T it recorded was nothing short of astonishing - just 15°C, with the temperature not rising more than 10°C from idle to load. This is a massive 48°C lower than the reference cooler, and again it's a fair bit quieter too. In contrast, the reference cooler span up to quite a din during testing"

For the R9 water cooling seems to be the way to go too.

[Dirk Broer]

Also, whilst the AMD chips are pretty good at TDP, they are unfortunately, significantly slower (I believe they're compiled with Intel compiler which could explain things - I've seen stories around the web that the Intel compilers cripple speeds on non Intel chips).

Actually the software people are using is mostly compiled using Intel compilers -whether games, bench marks or scientific applications- while it is a proven fact that the Intel compilers cripple non-Intel CPUs by excluding them from the more sophisticated instructions and forcing them to take the long road while computing, e.g. allowing no more recent innovations than SSE2. It was a big scam when Bulldozer CPUs did not seem able to perform AVX instructions, while technically they should be able to perform them. It was then that investigators into that matter found out that the Intel compiler used only would allow AVX instructions on Intel CPUs....

"The Intel compiler and several different Intel function libraries have suboptimal performance on AMD and VIA processors. The reason is that the compiler or library can make multiple versions of a piece of code, each optimized for a certain processor and instruction set, for example SSE2, SSE3, etc. The system includes a function that detects which type of CPU it is running on and chooses the optimal code path for that CPU. This is called a CPU dispatcher. However, the Intel CPU dispatcher does not only check which instruction set is supported by the CPU, it also checks the vendor ID string. If the vendor string is "GenuineIntel" then it uses the optimal code path. If the CPU is not from Intel then, in most cases, it will run the slowest possible version of the code, even if the CPU is fully compatible with a better version."
More.... (http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=49)

So if you feel cheated by AMD for your poorly running FX CPU, you might actually be cheated by the very code you're running...

[drezha]

Yeah - this is partly why I'm pushing the company to invest in a Linux machine - I've seen speed ups of 30% just by using Linux and then I can also compile it myself without the Intel compiler for potential increases in speed.

[Dirk Broer]

I've seen speed ups of 30% just by using Linux

A quick question: What kind of CPUs saw the greatest speed increase using Linux as compared to the same CPUs performance under Windows?

[Jason1478963]

I would say the 30 percent is about what i'm seeing with the 8350 crunching on WCG using linux vs windows.

[Dirk Broer]

That could very well be explained by the Linux code being re-compiled for Linux on the GNU C compiler, which -though less sophisticated- does not cripple non-Intel CPUs.
It might not have to mean that it's a virtue of Linux itself.

[Nflight]

How many of these brainiac souls out there doing the testing actually understand that using Intel based testing tools is demoralizing the efforts of AMD projects. Just how many? :icon_mad:

[Dirk Broer]

A lesson to be learned could be to use only non-Intel compilers when compiling for non-Intel CPUs and to use non-Intel libraries (e.g. Yeppp! (http://www.yeppp.info/)) while compiling for those CPUs.

Anyone willing to re-compile a BOINC application -and perhaps even the very BOINC client- for his/her AMD CPU, using a non-Intel compiler and those Yeppp! libraries to test this?

I do predict big gains to be made for FX-8350 CPUs running Windows....

[drezha]

A quick question: What kind of CPUs saw the greatest speed increase using Linux as compared to the same CPUs performance under Windows?

Intel i3. Currently, it's the only model I've been able to try. Might play with some Amazon cloud servers to try it a bit more.


That could very well be explained by the Linux code being re-compiled for Linux on the GNU C compiler, which -though less sophisticated- does not cripple non-Intel CPUs.
It might not have to mean that it's a virtue of Linux itself.

The linux distributable is downloaded already compiled, probably with Intel Compilers from what I gather. I've only once compiled it myself and that was on a Raspberry Pi.

[Dirk Broer]

Can the CPU benchmarks of Pyrosim be helpful to provide aditional comparisons?

From what I gather, the Linux distributable was compiled using GCC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/SoftwarePrereqsUnix) -which might explain the difference in performance between Windows and Linux.
But then a rather poor C compiler (MicroSoft's?) must have been used for the Windows version that even Intel suffers...

[drezha]

Those are the benchmarks I'm using - the Pyrosim ones.

Pyrosim is a java based front end for Fire Dynamics Simulator. Which is a FORTRAN based program, compiled using, AFAIK, the Intel Fortran compiler.

[Dirk Broer]

Have more people collected data on Pyrosim like you did, per CPU/OS? Would they be willing to share those with you?

[drezha]

Not sure - I think I'm the only one I know of.

If others have done it, they might have done it as part of their companies and kept it within that. I know one of our competitors has their own cluster for processing models. Most people that run the software don't really care about the nitty gritty - even researchers will tend to just run the models and suck it up on how long it takes. However, in industry, time is money as it were and we try to optimise the time it takes, whilst retaining accuracy.

[NeoGen]

Drezha, didn't we run a benchmark simulator a while ago with you? It may not have been Pyrosim, but I remember sending a few results from my machines here. Was it a different application?

[drezha]

No that was the same (the results of which can be viewed here (https://github.com/drezha/FDS_Resources/tree/master/FDS%20Benchmarking%20Files).)

Pyrosim is just a graphical front end for FDS - FDS was what we ran and what is affected by the compiler. As you can see from the results, I only have one machine that I've managed to run Linux and Windows Benchmarks on. I can't even be sure that the Windows one wasn't affected by Windows aggressive power saving features stopping the machine hitting the max CPU speed.