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[Piru]

Lower bar means better result:


sources:

AmigaONE X1000 1.8GHz: http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/...order=0#664189

PowerMac G5 MP 2.3GHz: http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/...order=0#664202

PowerBook G4 1.67GHz: my own test run

[Iggy]

Very cool Piru!
You gave them what they asked for.

Its noteworthy that the X1000 beats a single thread G5.

I still would have liked a dual G4 in that mix.

[klx300r]

it should be noted that Blender on the X1000 is running with software rendering as full hardware acceleration is currently not available under Debian PPC so the numbers in the graphs will only get better :-)

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by Iggy

Its noteworthy that the X1000 beats a single thread G5.

Unless I'm misreading the chart, the X1000 dual-threaded beats a single-threaded G5; that big-ass bar on the left is for the single-threaded X1000.

[Piru]

Originally Posted by klx300r

it should be noted that Blender on the X1000 is running with software rendering as full hardware acceleration is currently not available under Debian PPC so the numbers in the graphs will only get better :-)

It should be noted that Blender does not use graphics hardware for any kind of rendering in this test, except to blit the updated graphics to the screen while the rendering progresses.

Blender does have support for OpenCL GPU rendering though, and such results should indeed be significantly better. It wouldn't really help in comparing the CPUs however.

[Iggy]

O...K.. Well...
I guess the X1000 doesn't compare well using Blender.

I'd still like to see the same test performed on a dual G4.
Something tells me that the G5 would not perform significantly better.

I guess I'll stay with my current machine (and OS).

[KimmoK]

No big surprice on tests so far.
PA6T performs as expected (notebook caliber chip).

So far it seems that FPU/SIMD performance is not as good as PASemi estimated. IIRC, according to PASemi PA6T should perform like G5 at the same clock rate.

PA6T was technically the best available option for custom high end PPC board, it just is too expensive and the insanely complex motherboard design makes the price even worse when compared to non AOS4 HW.
Definitely the best available option as the SMP development platform for AOS4.

Other than that, summing best parts...
Very good results in:
- fileoperations (2x speed even with old drivers vs others)
- mpeg decoding (20% faster than G4)
- RAM speed (10x speed when compared to G4s)
- slightly faster L2 than on any other

So far we have not seen tests where fast RAM access is truly put in use (lack of such SW?).

I expect to see "better than ever before" results from cards on PCIe, once drivers get beyond handling x1 speed.

update/
Blender might require some rework, as also the 2.3Ghz G5 seems pathetic against the G4... and PA6T almost as it would not be using Altivec. Was the same blender binary in use in all cases?
/update

@Iggy
"You gave them what they asked for."
Hmm???

[Trev]

What's surprising to me is the superlinear performance increase with two threads. How were the tests set up and measured? Is the difference significant or within the margin of error?

[WolfToTheMoon]

very poor results, indeed. unless there is a software glitch in there somewhere, I'd say it becomes increasingly clear why Apple moved on to x86. It seems PA Semi's party piece was power savings, but they forgot sbout the power

[KimmoK]

Originally Posted by WolfToTheMoon

very poor results, indeed. unless there is a software glitch in there somewhere, I'd say it becomes increasingly clear why Apple moved on to x86. It seems PA Semi's party piece was power savings, but they forgot sbout the power

They were initially doing "G5 laptop" chip. But they had roadmap to have up to 16 cores, IIRC.

@Trev

Dualcore 970 gives 1.85x the performance of single core.
PA6T gives 2.0x the performance of single core.

Might show that PA6T has a more modern MP aware design. There starts to be some use for the high bandwidth and large cache when there are more cores to use them.

Some older tests: http://www.barefeats.com/g5sum.html
http://www.barefeats.com/g5.html
That would hint that G5 should perform better than how it did in blender tests (vs G4).
(it should be up to almost 2x better in rendering??)

[zylesea]

Originally Posted by KimmoK

PA6T was technically the best available option for custom high end PPC board, it just is too expensive and the insanely complex motherboard design makes the price even worse when compared to non AOS4 HW.

No, it wasn't. It's performing poor. Most tests indicate that the e600 core is pretty superior (it's really telling that even a single threaded 744x at lower clock beats a dual threaded higher clocked PA6T).
If A-Eon would have used an e600 based processor (86xx - I dont want to say "I told you so", but well...) they would have a cheaper and more powerful board with a processor that still is supported. Well, now Freescale encourages not to use 86xx for new designs any more, but that line of processors is still active and supported for a while.
I never understood the decision for the PA6T. It's an überexpensive, poor performing EOL chip. A shame so much money was wasted - what else could have been achieved with these $$$?

[takemehomegrandma]

Originally Posted by KimmoK

They were initially doing "G5 laptop" chip. But they had roadmap to have up to 16 cores, IIRC.

What's with your fetish for extreme amounts of cores in *desktop systems*?

[KimmoK]

@takemehome...
No fetish.
Just that there is no way forward without going multicore. World knows it, every Amiga flavor OS team knows it.

For most desktop needs 2Ghz single core seems enough, while there are a lot of productivity SW that benefit from more cores as well as other advancements.

btw. PA6T was planned to have 8 cores, not 16 as I said before.

@zylesea
"No, it wasn't. It's performing poor. ..."
MPC8641D system would have been cheaper, yes.
But slower (it's slower than those powerBook G4's) in almost every aspect and with less modern technology for developers to tinker with.

IIRC, for G5 macs they managed to get up to 2x speeds in rendering with single 1.6Ghz G5 when compared to 2xG4 systems (Bryce test), so there must be some optimizations ahead before we have seen the maximum out from PA6T.

[ppcamiga1]

Originally Posted by Piru

Blender does have support for OpenCL GPU rendering though, and such results should indeed be significantly better. It

Results with OpenCL are significantly better.

My 4 year old graphics card renders twelve times faster than the four cores in my pc.

That makes this whole benchmark stupid and pathetic trolling.

In the real world, no one will use 3D software that runs only on the CPU, and wait, when the GPU is able to render the scene almost immediately.

[Linde]

Originally Posted by ppcamiga1

Results with OpenCL are significantly better.

My 4 year old graphics card renders twelve times faster than the four cores in my pc.

That makes this whole benchmark stupid and pathetic trolling.

In the real world, no one will use 3D software that runs only on the CPU, and wait, when the GPU is able to render the scene almost immediately.

You are missing the point, so don't be a dick about it. The benchmark makes a perfetly valid comparison of the different architectures. The fact that you can do it faster on a graphics card is completely irrelevant when stacking these numbers up against eachother.

If we are going to approach this from a "real world" angle, you might as well just download a pre-rendered picture of the test scene in question, since that will probably be more effective than most other solutions.