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AMD posts blatantly deceptive benchmarks on Barcelona

3458 Views 81 Replies 43 Participants Last post by  odie
Interesting read for sure. Hard to know who to believe anymore.

Link: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=567&tag=nl.e539

Quote:


It’s fictitious since AMD doesn’t have a 2.6 GHz Barcelona quad-core CPU and they won’t even have it in September which is already late by AMD’s original timeline. The fastest Barcelona processor coming out in September is 2.0 GHz. It isn’t really clear when AMD will be able to ramp up the clock speed an extra 30% to get to 2.6 GHz but it most likely won’t be any time soon because processors don’t just ramp 30% over night.
The numbers AMD posted for Intel’s XEON X5355 and X5160 have been outdated since April 2007 and you need a magnifying glass to see that disclaimer in the fine print on the bottom. The actual up-to-date SPEC.org certified scores for the two Intel products listed are significantly higher. It not like AMD can claim that they forgot to include the very latest scores which were just posted days ago, we’re talking months here so it’s a blatant omission.
Intel’s XEON X5365 3.0 GHz quad-core CPU which shipped back in April was deliberately omitted from these results even though AMD showed off numbers for a 2.6 GHz Barcelona chip which doesn’t even have a launch date yet. Putting in 2.0 GHz Barcelona scores would be shady enough since the part hasn’t officially launched yet but including 2.6 GHz Barcelona scores is just outrageous


Quote:


As you can see from above, AMD’s claim that they have a 20% clock-for-clock advantage with Barcelona is simply wrong. Based on the latest certified SPEC.org results, AMD has a little more than a 1% clock-for-clock performance advantage in a dual-socket 8-core Server configuration but they have 50% clock speed deficit when the Barcelona finally launches in September. That means Barcelona will not be the Intel quad-core killer that AMD has been promising for most of this year and it won’t even be close.
The deception doesn’t end with the quad-cores; AMD is also claiming to have an advantage on dual-core processors when in fact they have a major performance deficit. AMD claims to have a 2.5% advantage when Intel actually has a 14.7% advantage when you’re looking at the certified SPEC.org scores.

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Once again, anything is meaningless until it comes out. They could change something before then, and the test might've been done wrong. Too many things. Just wait until it comes out...speculation is useless... :/
I don't want to read about the chip. I'm sick of that.
Quote:


Originally Posted by Xerasyte
View Post

Once again, anything is meaningless until it comes out. They could change something before then, and the test might've been done wrong. Too many things. Just wait until it comes out...speculation is useless... :/

QFT!!!
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Quote:
It isn't really clear when AMD will be able to ramp up the clock speed an extra 30% to get to 2.6 GHz but it most likely won't be any time soon because processors don't just ramp 30% over night.
If I mess with the BIOS settings around midnight and come back in the morning, my CPU is "ramped" up, no?
Quote:

Originally Posted by Knitelife View Post
Hard to know who to believe anymore.
Thats for sure. Until the chips are released, I am going to try not to read anything about it. Sounds like nothing is true. I am sick of hearing about the failure/superiority of Barcelona. I am also sick of the iPhone....heh.
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Really though, this is a blog and should be taken less than the INQ.
So who doesn't pick and choose benchies that make their product look better? AMD isn't the first to do this and certainly will not be the last.
Quote:
AMD's claim that they have a 20% clock-for-clock advantage with Barcelona is simply wrong. Based on the latest certified SPEC.org results, AMD has a little more than a 1% clock-for-clock performance advantage in a dual-socket 8-core Server configuration but they have 50% clock speed deficit when the Barcelona finally launches in September. That means Barcelona will not be the Intel quad-core killer that AMD has been promising for most of this year and it won't even be close.
LMAO!

What a rough year for these guys! Betcha their AS5 is sore!
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Quote:
AMD has a little more than a 1% clock-for-clock performance advantage in a dual-socket 8-core Server configuration but they have 50% clock speed deficit when the Barcelona finally launches in September. That means Barcelona will not be the Intel quad-core killer that AMD has been promising for most of this year and it won’t even be close.
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2
Quote:

Originally Posted by Mootsfox View Post
If I mess with the BIOS settings around midnight and come back in the morning, my CPU is "ramped" up, no?
Exactally what i was thinking.... My Opty ramped up 88%

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mootsfox View Post
Really though, this is a blog and should be taken less than the INQ.
Any news should be taken with a grain of salt until we are able to see real people with real processors running on real machines making real overclocks.... (the "real" list could go for a while, but i'll stop here)
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8
Quote:

Originally Posted by coffeetime View Post
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=567

After AMD admitted the bad news last week that their Barcelona product would be late and underwhelming on clock speed, the AMD propaganda machine has gone in to hyper drive with the latest salvo of blatantly deceptive benchmarks. After claiming to have the high-road on ethics, AMD showed hypocrisy on three separate occasions (one, two, and three). But this latest round of deceptive benchmarks is so outrageous that it’s criminal.

On AMD’s “Barcelona†performance page, AMD shows the following fictitious and outdated information. Apparently some of these misleading numbers are even showing up on Wall Street Journal advertisements.



* It’s fictitious since AMD doesn’t have a 2.6 GHz Barcelona quad-core CPU and they won’t even have it in September which is already late by AMD’s original timeline. The fastest Barcelona processor coming out in September is 2.0 GHz. It isn’t really clear when AMD will be able to ramp up the clock speed an extra 30% to get to 2.6 GHz but it most likely won’t be any time soon because processors don’t just ramp 30% over night.

* The numbers AMD posted for Intel’s XEON X5355 and X5160 have been outdated since April 2007 and you need a magnifying glass to see that disclaimer in the fine print on the bottom. The actual up-to-date SPEC.org certified scores for the two Intel products listed are significantly higher. It not like AMD can claim that they forgot to include the very latest scores which were just posted days ago, we’re talking months here so it’s a blatant omission.

* Intel’s XEON X5365 3.0 GHz quad-core CPU which shipped back in April was deliberately omitted from these results even though AMD showed off numbers for a 2.6 GHz Barcelona chip which doesn’t even have a launch date yet. Putting in 2.0 GHz Barcelona scores would be shady enough since the part hasn’t officially launched yet but including 2.6 GHz Barcelona scores is just outrageous.

Full picture on quad-core SPECint_rate2006 performance:


* Not real product. Fastest Barcelona being released in September is 2.0 GHz

As you can see from above, AMD’s claim that they have a 20% clock-for-clock advantage with Barcelona is simply wrong. Based on the latest certified SPEC.org results, AMD has a little more than a 1% clock-for-clock performance advantage in a dual-socket 8-core Server configuration but they have 50% clock speed deficit when the Barcelona finally launches in September. That means Barcelona will not be the Intel quad-core killer that AMD has been promising for most of this year and it won’t even be close.

Full picture on dual-core SPECint_rate2006 performance:**



The deception doesn’t end with the quad-cores; AMD is also claiming to have an advantage on dual-core processors when in fact they have a major performance deficit. AMD claims to have a 2.5% advantage when Intel actually has a 14.7% advantage when you’re looking at the certified SPEC.org scores.

** UPDATE 7/5/2007 - Hans de Vries pointed out in the talkback that the AMD 2222SE has newer scores. The newer results have been added to this chart.

I’ve seen benchmarks get cherry picked and twisted before but this is just outrageous. AMD is deliberately leaving out Intel’s best scores, leaving out Intel’s best products that shipped months ago, and putting in theoretical Barcelona scores for products that don’t even have a ship date. After Henri Richard (AMD executive) came in front of our ZDNet cameras to slam Intel for “un-ethical behavior†and promising not to do the same, we have caught them on four separate occasions behaving unethically. After this latest incident, it’s clear that AMD has no intention of behaving honestly or ethically.

=================================================

http://www.beyond3d.com/content/news/323

ZDNet Technical Director calls shens on latest Barcelona performance figures

ZDNet's Technical Director, George Ou, has called the latest round of pre-release Barcelona performance data by AMD, blatantly deceptive, cherry-picked and simply wrong.

After the most recent round of performance data found its way out onto the web, where AMD compare a simulated 2.6GHz Barcelona quad-core processor to parts from Intel's quad-core Xeon product line, George has taken serious exception to the data.

"I’ve seen benchmarks get cherry picked and twisted before but this is just outrageous. AMD is deliberately leaving out Intel’s best scores, leaving out Intel’s best products that shipped months ago, and putting in theoretical Barcelona scores for products that don’t even have a ship date. After Henri Richard (AMD executive) came in front of our ZDNet cameras to slam Intel for “un-ethical behavior†and promising not to do the same, we have caught them on four separate occasions behaving unethically. After this latest incident, it’s clear that AMD has no intention of behaving honestly or ethically."

Grabbing the latest figures from SPEC.org, something AMD didn't do, George shows that the theoretical performance figures offered by AMD don't look so great in that different context.

He also has issues with the fact that the 2.6GHz Barcelona Opteron is simulated and won't ship this year, whereas Intel have been shipping the comparison Xeon since April.

For the ZDNet Technical Director to use such strong language and go after AMD like that is quite something, just as it is for AMD to publish a set of figures like they did in the first place.

=================================================

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/07...e_looks_good/1

Early Barcelona performance looks good


AMD's Barcelona processor reportedly outperforms Intel's current processors by significant margins in synthetic benchmarks.

Update 15:10 04/07/07:
Having gathered more information, it turns out that the Barcelona benchmarks are performance estimations for Barcelona at 2.6GHz, not 2.3GHz as originally reported. The results are also based on "internal AMD simulations", so the validity of the results is somewhat questionable.

I've left the original story in place below, and there's also a picture of the slide at the bottom too.

---

Amid speculation of even further delays to AMD's next-generation quad-core processors, the company has been talking about Barcelona's performance with its partners.

The Inquirer has managed to get hold of some of these figures, and although they're synthetic and won't give a true indication of application performance, they might give us an idea of what ballpark AMD is expecting to hit.

Despite the comparison being between competing server parts in the $800 USD price bracket, we think it's potentially very relevant because both the Opteron and Xeon processors are based on practically identical architectures to their desktop siblings.

According to the figures, AMD's quad-core Opteron, which is clocked at 2.3GHz, manages to outperform Intel's similarly priced 2.66GHz Xeon 5355 processor by a significant margin.

In SPECint_rate2006, a measure of integer performance, the unreleased Opteron is 21 percent faster than the Xeon. If that wasn't a big enough margin, the Xeon reportedly slips behind the Opteron by 50 percent in SPECfp_rate2006, a floating point benchmark. The latter is certainly an impressive margin and one that Intel will not be able to make up without a significant clock speed boost when it releases its 45nm Penryn processors.

Of course, we're going to remain sceptical until we've seen how well AMD's next-generation processors perform in real applications, but this does whet our appetite a bit while we're waiting for the launch in the fourth quarter of this year. Will you be waiting for some solid performance numbers before you make the plunge?



http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=150396
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yeah yeah, it's like Santa saying that his elves are twenty percent more productive. I still need proof that the elves exist. =P
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LOL love the "picture" of the synthetic barcelona...

struggling...
"The fastest Barcelona processor coming out in September is 2.0 GHz. It isn’t really clear when AMD will be able to ramp up the clock speed an extra 30% to get to 2.6 GHz but it most likely won’t be any time soon because processors don’t just ramp 30% over night."

Cough, Cough. Seems to happen here overnight
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I don't understand how they THINK they can get away with stuff like this. I mean come one, anything ADM puts out will be scrutinized. Even Intl if they come out with garbage will be called out on.

Maerica these days...
This artical is saying that a 30% jump in clock speed doesnt happen overnight,but IMO i think that it could,not over night but in the next few months i mean in computer if one thing just one thing is off or unstable it can crash the hole thing finding the problem is what is hard.
Quote:

Originally Posted by jonny1989 View Post
This artical is saying that a 30% jump in clock speed doesnt happen overnight,but IMO i think that it could,not over night but in the next few months i mean in computer if one thing just one thing is off or unstable it can crash the hole thing finding the problem is what is hard.
first of all, if the architecture cannot support a certain speed, it just can't....and,

that doesn't change the fact that the figures and graphs are blatantly deceptive; and borderline illegal to post as facts...

I mean they dont include a Intel CPU thats already out, and they include a 2.6GHz that wont even exist within this year! with no launch date or plans.

people, just like i have been telling you all this time, amd is no hero....they are just as 'bad' as Intel. All businesses are.
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Quote:

Originally Posted by ae804 View Post
Exactally what i was thinking.... My Opty ramped up 88%
Umm actually there is a big difference between getting one CPU in an enthusiast motherboard to 88% overclock, and getting thousands of chips to work on enterprise boards.

http://www.overclockers.com/tips01175/

to lazy to copy the whole thing. Towards the end it talks about AMD having troubles with Phenom which is exactly what is happening with Barcelona, speed and yield. You don't just make wafers with X6800's or FX-60's, you make one that is a Conroe core, or in this case barcelona. Some of the ships will naturally slower, these will become the 2.4 ghz E6600, the good ones (usually in the center I believe) become the core 2 extremes.

http://www.overclockers.com/tips01174/

more on AMD's problems, and you can see how much they are having ramping things up. Neither article is quite on Barcelona, but Phenom and Barcelona's problems are most likely quite similar.
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I guess it is going to be real sad when the chip comes out and the performance is lackluster for those people who are screaming "Wait for the launch!" "Wait for the launch!"
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