FX57 vs X2 4800

I was just curious, having just received my new Hypersonic Aviator FX7
(laptop) with the x2 4800+, so I'm comparing it against my Boxx with FX57.

vitals:

Hypersonic Aviator FX7(Clevo laptop chassis)
AMD 64 X2 4800+ (dual core)
via mobo / chipset
nVidia Quadro FXGo 1400 PCIe
95 Gb 7200 RPM USATA
2 Gb RAM

Boxx 3200
AMD 64 FX57 (single core)
nForce4 SLi chipset
nVidia Quadro FX 3450 PCIe, SLi capable
74 Gb 10000 RPM SATA
3 Gb RAM

The RAM difference shouldn't be a factor, since none of the models made
the computers page out. The hdd speeds shouldn't be a factor either
since I wasn't comparing open or save speeds, and there was no paging.

The shipinabottle time for the Boxx was 18.7, Hypersonic 27.7 Single
runs were Boxx .30 and Hypersonic .59.

I thought this might have been due to the difference in graphics cards,
so I enabled Software OGL and tried it again, this time Boxx = 19.375,
Hypersonic = 30.1. That settled that. It's mostly processor.

**advantage Boxx

So I opened a part with some swoops and ctrl Qed. 224 features, many
surface and fillet features. It was interesting to watch. The X2
processors sometimes pegged 100%, sometimes just 50%, and if you watched
the percentage indicator on the SW lower right status bar, the Boxx
seemed to be going faster, but the Hypersonic definitely finished first.

rebuild time: Hypersonic 670 seconds, Boxx 2171. Something strange up
with that. This was an old model, so updating was a factor, as well as a
couple of features erroring out. The big difference was a single surface
knit feature, which didn't error out.

**advantage Hypersonic

Rendering, basically the one on the front page of my website, rendered
to screen. The Hypersonic screen is 1900x1200, the Boxx is 1600x1200.
Hypersonic was done in 7 minutes, Boxx took 8.


**advantage Hypersonic

A part with several inserted parts, combines, delete faces, etc. 24
features. Hypersonic = 123 s, Boxx = 124 s. What is interesting is
that the feature order in the Feature Statistics was different. The
combine features took longer on the Boxx, and the Delete Face took
longer on the Hypersonic.

**tie

Another part with 312 features. Lots of draft and fillets. Hypersonic
= 165, Boxx = 164. Again, though, the Boxx takes longer on Combine
features (115s vs 125s), and made up for it on draft and fillet features.

**tie

Same part with verification turned on. Hypersonic = 453, Boxx = 424.
This time Hypersonic was much slower on combine (323s vs 274s). Hyper
sonic much faster on Move Face features, where I noticed it was pegging
both processors (66s vs 100s).

**advantage Boxx

I don't have any big assemblies to compare. My guess is the dual core
would smoke the single with opening and rebuilding assemblies.

Verdict? The first verdict is that the ship in a bottle benchmark is
not very representative for the kind of modeling I do. In real world
modeling, the two machines were about even. That one anomalous rebuild
time with the knit surface worries me, but it really happened, so I
don't know what to say about it. Other than in the shipinbottle, the
dual core never lagged behind. If you put too much stock in the
shipinabottle, you'd go around thinking one machine was twice as fast as
the other, but that obviously isn't true.

There was a substantial price difference between the machines, the
Hypersonic laptop was ~$3300 and the Boxx tower was ~$4000. The FX57
was certainly a premium price item. I should also mention that there
was about an 8 month interval between the two purchases, which affects
the price on fairly recent cpus.

The FX57 is the fastest single core processor available. It doesn't
really compare with the FX60 which is dual core and clocked somewhat
slower. The FX60 seemed to be about 10% faster than the 4800+ on Toms
Hardware cpu benchmarks, but it was probably twice the price.

For the price and the performance, I would recommend the X2 4800.

Other nice things about this is that now you can get real workstation
processors in a portable format. Remember that this is a comparison
between a nicely equipped (not to say "top of the line") tower, and a
nicely equipped "laptop".

We should get our "Radeons and 15" monitors for CAD" buddy back here to
pass his judgement on all of this.

I at one point used an Intel version of the Clevo chassis built by Boxx,
looks from the outside exactly the same as my Hypersonic. It blew very
hot air on your left hand, and the fans ran constantly and were quite
loud. The difference with the more power efficient AMD chips is like
night and day. Very noticeable. This is the difference between a
laptop you can use and a laptop you can use to fry eggs, but can't sit near.

Anyway, lots of typing. Hope this sheds light for anyone looking at new
hardware.

Matt

 

Well that's quite interesting matt.
I have been thinking it is time to upgrade my hardware but holding off
looking at 64 bit and following the shipinbottle figures that pop up here
from time to time as an indicator of relative performance - which show about
2.5x faster than mine....hmmm...
Seems like there are a few bits of SW quietly worked in there capable of
utilising dual core aside from rendering -speed ups in knits and moves etc
would be handy for me.
If not 2.5x I wonder what the real world comparison is? 1.5x maybe....
We really should try to establish some meaningful simple std tests for users
focussed on feature use that reflect typical work they might do.

 

xp pro sp2. what choice do we have, really?

 

OS?

 

I am still on Win 2000, and investigating XP 64-bits against "plain" XP for
our new machines.

 

2000 isn't going to be supported for the next version of SW, and it's
going to be a while until 64 bit is ready for real use. I'd rather not
push it on either end.

 

On the models you CTRL-Qed did you try using TSToolbox to time them?

I could probably throw in some assembly info as we have both dual core
and single core.