Quads compared for BOINC performance

[Dirk Broer]

The AMD A8-3870K and the Intel i3-2100 have some things in common. Being chips of the same generation, they're both rated at roughly the same frequency, can run 4 threads at a time, have integrated graphics and were priced roughly $130 upon introduction. There are some differences as well: BOINC can use the integrated graphics of the A8-3870K and its price has dropped considerably since the introduction. These things do not apply to the i3-2100. Owning both I consider them to be of roughly the same performance level, something that got me into some dispute once on Tom's Hardware, where an Intel fan-boy pointed at the higher games benchmarks for the i3-2100 and to which I replied that the games were most probably Intel-opimized and that real-world performance was quite another matter. But am I right, crunching wise?

So let's compare these two CPUs, and throw in some other quads/dual cores with hyperthreading at roughly 3.1 Ghz for a nice comparison as well. To prevent one big, too long table I grouped it in project categories.
The figures given are the highest scores per OS per core/thread per day (in case of one application. When there were more -Einstein- I've taken an average). I would have loved to include the Athlon-II X4 651K and the i3-2105 everywhere, but for most projects there are just not enough -read: mostly none- users also doing WuProp for them. The 651K is essentially a 3870K without graphics and the i3-2105 is essentially a i3-2100 with Intel HD3000 graphics instead of HD2000, so it's no great loss.


1: Astrophysical projects

Project Name	Athlon II X4 645	Phenom II X4 945	Phenom II X4 960T	AMD A8-3780K	Core 2 Quad Q9650	Core i3-540	Core i3-2100	Core i5-2400
Asteroids	na	1,056	na	1,058	na	656	1,023	1,569
Constellation	590	na	628	529	na	521	636	875
Cosmology	na	1,167	621	na	na	1,021	729	1,423
Einstein (SSE/SSE2)	na	718	na	1,024	na	924	953	1,488
Seti	590	na	1,311	830	1,616	1,032	921	1,012

na= Not Available

to come soon: Biology projects (when WuProp has their credits figures)

And as to how the CPUs compare to each other technically:

Feature	Athlon II X4 645	Phenom II X4 945	Phenom II X4 960T	AMD A8-3780K	Core 2 Quad Q9650	Intel i3-540	Intel i3-2100	Intel i5-2400
Frequency	3100 Mhz	3000 Mhz	3000 Mhz (3400 Turbo)	3000 Mhz	3000 Mhz	3067 Mhz	3100 Mhz	3100 Mhz (3400 Turbo)
HT Bus Speed	2000 Mhz	2000 Mhz	2000 Mhz	5000 Mhz	1333 Mhz	2500 Mhz	5000 Mhz	5000 Mhz
Max.Sup. Memory Speed (DDR3)	1333 Mhz	1333 Mhz	1333 Mhz	1866 Mhz	1333 Mhz	1333 Mhz	1333 Mhz	1333 Mhz
Introduction date	Sep 21, 2010	Apr 23, 2009	3rd Q, 2010	Dec 20, 2011	Aug 10, 2008	Jan 7, 2010	Feb 20, 2011	Jan 9, 2011
Manufacturing process	45nm	45nm	45nm	32nm	45nm	32nm	32nm	32nm
Cores	4	4	4	4	4	2	2	4
Threads	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4
L1 Cache	4x64k instruction, 4x64K data	4x64k instruction, 4x64K data	4x64k instruction, 4x64K data	4x64k instruction, 4x64K data	4x32k instruction, 4x32K data	2x32k instruction, 2x32K data	2x32k instruction, 2x32K data	4x32k instruction, 4x32K data
L2 Cache	4x 512k	4x 512k	4x 512k	4x 1 Mb	2x 6 Mb	2x 256k	2x 256k	4x 256k
L3 Cache	none	6 Mb	6 Mb	none	none	4 Mb	3 Mb	6 Mb
MMX	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
3DNow!	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
SSE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SSE2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SSE3	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SSSE3	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SSE4.1	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
SSE4.2	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
SSE4a	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
AMD64/EM64T	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
AMD-V/Intel VT-x	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
AVX	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
AES	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
VT-d	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
TDP	95 Watt	125 Watt	95 Watt	100 Watt	95 Watt	73 Watt	65 Watt	95 Watt

[vaughan]

Query: Where are the I7s and Ivy Bridge CPUs?

I suspect that they eat the AMD CPUs for breakfast.

Time for AMD to pull their collective digital fingers out and make fast CPUs.

[Dirk Broer]

I can make a high-end comparison as well, just wait and see!