Hardware The Problem with Real World Benchmarking

It's used as a negative attribute in German but it doesn't have any meaning other than "negative attribute".....

The again, the german word for gay is also used as a "negative attribute" AND for describing people who are...you know...gay.

Nevermind

 

I have a limited budget for P.C. at work : they must be able to access internet, run MS Office, decent security/protection and pretty much nothing else... and we use four or five excel sheets with 1.5Mcells (running the VBA update on one of them takes 20mins!). This is pretty much all a SBE/Government system ever needs - and thats where the manufacturers bread and butter is..

 

If a benchmark consisted of my own real world usage it would consist of the following tests:

1: Boot time into windows with at least 40 programs in startup.
2: Game performance with 109 background processes resident from various apps.
3: 1080HD Porn.
4: 1080HD Video editing.
5: Multitasking performance testing Firefox with 10 tabbed pages open, STEAM and MSN and of course Utorrent.

 

AMD never championed SYSMARK. Anyone can join BAPCo. You just need to stump up the cash and you get a vote. AMD joined because at the time it was a well known Intel front organisation and they thought that by being a voting member they could influence development of a more representative benchmark.

Stupid AMD! Should have known that the reigning champion in influence peddling and its coterie of self-interested tools couldn't be swayed in making a fairer benchmark that would show the real value of 80% of their products.

The problem with SYSMARK is that it isn't being used to benchmark systems for office (or government) use, it is being used as a benchmark for marketing to average users, of which the "real world tasks" aren't as representative.

The issue is also not because the AMD CPUs are slower, and that the GPU isn't tested is only one of the problems. Another is the hidden weighting SYSMARK uses. The scores of some benchmarks are weighted higher than others.
For example, for each equally utilised (by the mythical "average" user) task:
* Neutral BM returns the score: Intel 2000fps and 5 weighting points with AMD 1800fps and 4.5 weighting points (or 0.5 points per 200fps),
* Intel-favoured BM returns the score: Intel 150sec and 10 weighting points with AMD 170sec and 6 weighting points (or 200 points - x seconds /5),
* GPU-favoured BM returns the score: Intel 150 units and 1 weighting point with AMD 300 units and 2 weighting points (or 0.1 points * x units/15),
Final score: (x weighting points * 10.5) Intel with 168 SYSMARKs and AMD with 131.25 SYSMARKs.

Does the AMD final score accurately represent the actual results of the benchmarks? In the neutral BM the performances are quite close. In the Intel-favoured BM, the results are close as well (20sec isn't much), but knowing Intel CPUs do well in this BM the weighting is inflated. In the GPU-favoured BM the AMD completed twice as many units, meaning twice the "performance", but the BM is weighted far lower. Remember that there is the assumption that these are three tasks of equal utility to the "average user". SYSMARK assigns greater importance to BMs that suit Intel features and diminishes AMD's. It is all in how the calculations are done.

We learnt about SYSMARK's weighting biases because the scores for each task used to be written to a file so a final score could be totalled. Someone found out that the file could be opened in Notepad and the weighting given to each task was there for all to see. BMs that favoured Intel CPUs were given higher importance in the final score, meaning that the SYSMARK score of a P4 was much closer to that of a A64 than the individual BM scores would indicate.

Once this dirty little BAPCo secret came out, the next version of SYSMARK released had started encrypting the storage file so the assigned weighting could no longer be scrutinised.

If this was just AMD I might agree with the suspicions about AMD's motives, but Nvidia and Via have left for similar reasons, and with the amount of GPGPU processing increasing this is going make this hardware capability more important. This now leaves Intel and Seagate as the ONLY hardware manufacturers left, all the others being system builders who have a vested interest in keeping the status quo.

Quite frankly SYSMARK is a bit pointless now, seeing as the system builders now have the choice of Intel Processor A or Intel Processor B to go with Intel Basic Chipset A (or Intel Mainstream Chipset B if they want to add $200 to system retail price) and Intel Wireless Controller C and Intel Peripheral Controller L. An Intel "Hardware Deccelerator" X that can do Flash and 1080p now comes for free, so bonus!

 

Thanks for that info. Interesting.

 

I've found the answer, it was right in front of us all the time.

If you use SYSMARK and you're an AMD fanboi, just wear tinfoil on your head. (Don't tell anyone but it gives AMD better scores!)

 

So... everybody is blablabla about a benchmark that:

1 - Launched in 2011;
2 - Has a name version of 2012;
3 - Can´t evaluate for real a component from 2010;
4 - And thinks that benchmarking a browser from 2008 and a cpu from 2006 is great?
5 - Jezzzzz... I miss the 90's...

Syswhat?

 

I think several other people have touched upon it already but it really does strike me as the key overalll point here; if you're doing such basic workloads, you don't need the latest greatest kit! Any modern AMD APU or Intel nehelam chip will more than suffice. If you want gaming, well then the whole argument goes out the window as you'll need to invet in a separate gfx card anyway, no matter what AMD tries to convince us.

 

It's not a UFO you twerp, if it's hovering over the front lawn of the White House and the driver is shaking hands with the President. If you still choose to think that it is just your own intestinal gas, then it reflects more about you than others.
You must be in a terrible amount of internal conflict. Your Intel-based "fanboi-ism" means you must rubbish everything AMD and defend SYSMARK as relevant, but your Nvidia-based "fanboi-ism" means that you must rubbish everything AMD and condemn SYSMARK as unrepresentative. I feel sympathy for your personal quandary.

Other benchmarks show that Intel CPUs are faster than AMD ones at the moment, but no one is claiming systemic bias and collusion about those.

Once again you accuse me of being an AMD "fanboi", and again I have to remind you that I am typing this on a C2D-based system. If I defend AMD it is because I defend a more reasonable and logical discourse that is all too lacking when discussing the attributes of computer components.
A few years ago AMD was on top and Intel could do nothing good, when the reality was that Intel was only slightly behind and most people wouldn't have known the difference when using the system. Today Intel is on top, and of course AMD can do nothing good. And people still wouldn't know the difference.

If I was building a basic PC for office or my parents, I would choose a lower end Llano-based dual core, an A4-3400 or so.
If I was building a HTPC, I would choose a mid-end Llano-based quad core, such as an A6-3800.
If I was building a gaming PC, I would use a SB-based Core i7, such as a 2600K.
This may change in six months. If you are building a system, choose what suits your needs, not what you're emotionally attached to.

@Meanmotion and @Ipatinga

Personally, SYSMARK is irrelevant to my decision making, as it can't be trusted. The individual scores for the applications used can be used as a guide, but it would be better to benchmark those applications without the dubious assistance of SYSMARK.

Your comments made me think about my own computer use, and in the last 18 months I haven't thought "I wish this went faster". All computer games have run at max settings at 1920x1200, and all programmes have run/encoded/compiled/compressed/ripped in a manner acceptable to someone as impatient as myself. Even encoding tens of GB of video files was painless because I set it going and came back 24hrs later to store the results.

 

Heyyyyy now. Go easy.

http://www.lolcats.com/view/113/

LOL

See!....still funny

 

Congradulation, you're the 4,877,921,204th Internet Troll to search out for someone to yap at like a rabit dog (poodle) talking nothing about the issue.

You could've easily found someone saying something you could relate to but I am sure that's no fun to you. You're so off subject. So, What do you think about the 2012 benchmarking?