 SU.HARDW.PC.CPU (2:5020/299)  SU.HARDW.PC.CPU 
 From : Andrey Skobara                      2:5030/214.11   Mon 03 Mar 97 00:40 
 Subj : 㦥  MMX                                                            


H ᠩ www.sysdoc.pair.com   MMX.   p 㤨,  
 p   ⮢   pᨫ.    p p p䨪 
 ⥪⮢ , ⮬  ⮫쪮 ᪮pp html.

=== Cut ===
Does the   Pentium MMX   Live up to the Expectations?

     15  days  after  its  official  release I eventually received my very own
Pentium  MMX  200.  It  was actually a kind donation of Erik Wagner from Nutek
Systems  USA,  IL.  I  installed  it  on my system and it it ran straight away
without  any  problems  even  at 208/83, 225/75 and 250/83 MHz. I am currently
using it on my ABIT IT5V at 225/75 MHz with 64 MB SDRAM.
     Before  you  start  bombarding  me  with emails, asking why I used 205/68
instead  of  200/66,  or 166/66 instead of 171/86, I would like to explain the
reason  for it. I wanted to show most impressingly, that under some conditions
the  Pentium  MMX 166 is even faster than a slightly tuned Pentium Classic 200
at 205/68. Hence I used the slowest Pentium MMX to compete against the fastest
official Pentium Classic at turbo frequency.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(System: ABIT IT5V, 32 MB SDRAM, Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM w/2MB)
Benchmark          Pentium MMX        Pentium Classic    Pentium MMX
                   205/68             205/68             166/66
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Business Winstone  44.3               40.1               41.2
High-End Winstone  19.5               17.3               17.5
Business Graphics  55.1               45.1               49.8
High-End Graphics  28.6               24.2               25.3
---------------------------------------------------------------------
     The most impressive performance Advantage of the new Pentium MMX CPUs are
reached  when  running normal Windows applications. At the same CPU speed, the
Pentium  MMX  shows  a  performance advantage of 16% over the Pentium Classic.
This  is only achieved by the new cache size and design, the branch prediction
unit  ,  the enlarged pipeline and all the other enhancements besides MMX. The
performance  advantage could be much bigger with image processing applications
that are using the new MMX instructions.
     For  people  who  are  using  lots  of Windows business applications, the
Pentium MMX is certainly worth getting. Even the Pentium MMX 166 is already 5%
faster than a maxed out Pentium Classic 200 at 205/68 MHz.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark                      Pentium MMX  Pentium Classic  Pentium MMX
                                 205/68        205/68           166/66
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Direct3D Tunnel Benchmark
  RAMP (@640x480x256) [fps]       18.6          18.7             15.0
Direct3D Tunnel Benchmark
  RGB (@640x480x256)  [fps]        9.0           4.1              7.6
Direct3DTest RAMP
  Fill Rate          [mpps]       5.89          5.41             5.09
Direct3DTest RAMP
  Polygon Throughput [kpps]     150.29        142.00           133.25
Direct3DTest RAMP
  Intersection Throughput [kpps]  1.23          1.19             1.04
Direct3DTest RGB
  Fill Rate [mpps]                5.41          1.46             4.57
Direct3DTest RGB
  Polygon Throughput [kpps]     165.17        172.37           139.18
Direct3DTest RGB
  Intersection Throughput [kpps]  1.00          0.32             0.84
Direct3DFlipCube Benchmark
  RAMP (@640x480x256) [fps]         76            76               76
Direct3D FlipCube Benchmark
  RGB (@640x480x256)  [fps]         76            49               76
Direct3D Twist Benchmark
  RAM (@640x480x256)  [fps]       42.0          42.0             38.5
Direct3D Twist Benchmark
  RGB (@640x480x256)  [fps]       26.0          16.0             22.0
Winbench 97 DirectDraw/Animate
  Screen Size 1280x1024
             [pixels drawn]       42.4          35.6             38.3
Winbench 97 DirectDraw/Fill
  Color Depth 8 Bit Color
             [pixels drawn]        252           252              252
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     The  first  disappointment  about  the  new  Pentium  MMX is its DirectX,
especially  its  Direct3D  performance.  It  is  hardly  any  better  than the
performance  of  a  Pentium Classic. This wasn't expected by me, since MMX was
meant to enhance DirectX directly. The Benchmarks were all run with the latest
DirectX  3  drivers  installed.  Obviously the best improvement is seen in RGB
mode. RAMP mode hardly shows any difference.
     My  Monster  Truck  Madness  Benchmark  didn't  show any improve over the
Pentium  Classic  at all. This is to be considered as fairly sad, because lots
of  gamers  were hoping to save the purchase of a 3D enhanced Video Card, like
e.g. the Diamond Monster3D, due to the MMX enhancements of the P55C. Obviously
so  far  we  can  forget  about  this.  Either  Microsoft has to improve their
DirectX,   especially   Direct3D  drivers,  or  the  games  have  to  use  MMX
instructions directly.
     Currently  Windows 95 gamers certainly hardly benefit from MMX at all and
they  can stick to the cheaper Pentium Classic for now. I found an explanation
for  this  problem, which doesn't make MMX look too good for 3D freaks at all.
It's the missing 32bit SIMD multiply option of MMX. Please read this excellent
article!!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark                          Pentium MMX  Pentium Classic  Pentium MMX
                                      205/68       205/68         166/66
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quake 1.06 Timedemo2 (@640x480) [fps]   16.8        16.1          15.4
Chris Dial's 3D Bench (SVGA)    [fps]   38.2        38            37.3
PCPlayer DOS Game Benchmark     [fps]   25.1        24.1          22.3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     The  new  Pentium  MMX  hardly  shows  any improvement for DOS Gamers. An
increase  of  2.5% is hardly worth mentioning. Even the other new architecture
improvements  of the Pentium MMX besides the MMX extension don't bring us much
of  a  difference in games like Quake or DukeNukem. Hence DOS gamers will have
to  hope  for games to soon use the MMX instructions or they happily can stick
to their good old Pentium Classics.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark                          Pentium MMX  Pentium Classic  Pentium MMX
                                      205/68       205/68         166/66
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Intel Media Benchmark - Overall          262.20    160.12         220.01
Intel Media Benchmark - Video            276.2     154.15         230.95
Intel Media Benchmark - Image Processing 760.48    162.94         652.01
Intel Media Benchmark - 3D Graphics      169.24    163.14         141.05
Intel Media Benchmark - Audio            332.11    165.82         279.30
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Intel's  new  Media  Benchmark  was  obviously written to demonstrate the
superior  MMX  architecture.  An  improvement  of almost 470% over the Pentium
Classic  at  the  same  speed  looks  really impressive. Overall the benchmark
promises a performance advantage of 63% over the Pentium Classic.
     However, we obviously have to be careful with these results. This program
comes  from  Intel and this means it's running under ideal conditions. As long
as  an  image  processing program doesn't use the MMX instructions, you hardly
will  see  any  improvement  in  these dimensions at all. c't Magazine however
showed,  that  with the latest Adobe Photoshop you can reach an improvement of
up to 270% over the Pentium Classic.
     The  most  embarrassing  result  for  Intel  in  this benchmark is the 3D
Graphics  result.  Although  Intel  certainly  does  everything  to  make  the
Pentium  MMX  look  good,  there's  only  an  improvement  of puny 3.7 % in 3D
Graphics.  I  would  really like to know what that means. Can't we even expect
any  3D  Graphics  improvement  for  the future, when 3D programs are actually
using MMX?
     Guess Intel has to answer some serious questions here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark                          Pentium MMX  Pentium Classic  Pentium MMX
                                      205/68       205/68         166/66
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ctcm - L1 Cache Speed [MB/s]          838.3        855.1           678.8
ctcm - L2 Cache Speed [MB/s]           75.7         68.8            73.8
                                                         (different bus speed)
Winbench 97 - CPUMark16                 425          385             379
Winbench 97 - CPUMark32                 422          392             374
Winbench 97 Video/Action Indeo
  (@640x480 30 fps 900 kB/s)
  [frames dropped] (less is better)      48           63              85
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion

     The  new Pentium MMX certainly yields at least some increased performance
out  of  your system. In current Windows business applications it already runs
about 16% faster than the Pentium Classic. As soon as MMX instructions will be
used  in  all  applications  ,  the  improvement  may  be considerably higher,
particularly in image processing applications.
For the majority of the Windows business application users the Pentium
     MMX  is  certainly to be recommended. Don't forget that a Pentium MMX 166
is  already  faster  than  a Pentium Classic 200 under these circumstances and
hence  the  Pentium Classic 200 should only be purchased if it is cheaper than
the Pentium MMX 166.
     However, for people who are using their computer mainly for gaming, which
seems  to be an increasing number, the Pentium MMX so far doesn't show much of
an  improvement.  If  you are belonging to this group, you can either stick to
your  old  system,  or  you  could get a MMX approved motherboard now and wait
until  the  Pentium  MMX  gets cheaper. The prices of the Pentium Classic will
drop  soon, so if you want to get a CPU for gaming now, you might as well take
advantage  of  the cheaper Pentium Classic. After all this CPU still is a good
performer, which kept us happy until Jan 8, 1997.
     To  Microsoft  I  would  like to address the message, that they should do
something about their DirectX MMX support soon. Intel won't be too happy about
the  sad  performance improvement under DirectX, but it would not be the first
time,  that  Intel  gets  crossed  by  Microsoft. We only have to remember the
problems  a  PPro  has  with  the  so called 32 bit OS Windows95. This was the
reason for the tiny success of the Pentium Pro so far.
     The  3D  enhancement  problem of the MMX instruction set seems to be more
serious  than  expected.  Here is an excerpt of an article from Microprocessor
report, that is already 10 months old:

---  One  drawback to MMX is the lack of a multiply or multiply-add for 32-bit
operands.  A  fast  32-bit multiplier consumes four times more die area than a
16-bit  multiplier,  and Intel felt this feature was not worth the extra area.
Besides,  multiplication  of  32-bit  data can be performed using the standard
integer multiply instruction. Although this instruction takes 10 cycles in the
Pentium  core  and  is not pipelined, it requires 4 cycles on Pentium Pro (and
presumably Klamath) and, more important, is fully pipelined.
---  The  integer  multiplier, however, operates on the integer registers, not
the  MMX  registers,  and it cannot perform parallel calculations like the MMX
units.  Furthermore,  there  is  no  integer  multiply-add instruction in x86.
Because  16-bit precision is inadequate for advanced audio algorithms, such as
wavetable  sound,  and for most 3D geometry calculations, the lack of a 32-bit
multiply-add prevents these types of routines from taking advantage of MMX.

     Cyrix  and  AMD will like the fact that so far only very few applications
are  taking  advantage  of MMX. The Pentium MMX release will push the software
developers  to  create  new  MMX  based applications, which probably will just
begin  to  hit  the  market when their MMX CPUs M2 and K6 are coming out. That
could  be  the perfect timing for them. Although Intel will soon release their
new  Klamath CPU, the competition for Intel will get harder. The M2 as well as
the  K6 are sounding pretty good so far. However, we will have to see if these
CPUs will be able to live up to Cyrix's and AMD's promises. The past has shown
that  the  great  features  of  the  Cyrix  6x86 couldn't really hide the huge
problems  with this CPU. The 6x86 is only now starting to become mature, but a
P200+ is now considerably slower than a Pentium MMX 200. Let's hope that Cyrix
and  AMD  have  learned  their  'Pentium Lessons' and that we will soon have a
worthy  competitor  to the Pentium MMX and the Klamath. One last thing I would
really like to stress for the last time, so please read it carefully!!!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------

=== Cut ===

P.S.    ⮣ ⥪ p⥫쭮 MMX   ᮢ᪨ p
 p誠  pp  2.5%, 祬  筮 .

P.P.S.  ᮡ p (祣 筮)  ,  fps  QUAKE
p   "timedemo demo2",   "timerefresh"


Yours faithfully,
Andrey.

--- GoldED/2 2.50+
 * Origin: Make way for the maniac (FidoNet 2:5030/214.11)


