I posted an explaination here of all these benchmarking discrepancies:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=69975&cid=6373223
Furthermore, to address this specific instance, one should note that these overclockers never did any benchmarking themselves, they merely copy and pasted official scores as given from the manufacturers. The only thing he said that remotely gives credence to the comparisons are that the amount of RAM used was the same ( 2GB ). We don't know which types of hard-drives are used, what OSes and versions were used, etc. So, right off, those numbers are irrelevant.
Secondly, this whole issue of using the ICC compiler for the P4s. What Intel has done, is spent a lot of time creating a compiler that is very good at compiling simple programs, like benchmarks. At my work we use Visual C++ 6 on WinNT, Solaris CC on Solaris, and whatever True64 on Alpha uses for a compiler. Each one of these has defficiencies, forcing us to use a common subset of functionality. We do not even consider using ICC since it could never handle the C/C++ language features that we use. Thus ICC is a nice toy that is very good at pumping out benchmarks, but is almost never used in large scale software projects, and thus cannot compare to GCC, which is used by many large software projects. That is why it was valid for Apple to use GCC for the P4. But to be more legitimate, they should have instead used the newest MS VC++ compiler, as that is the #1 compiler for x86, which would have forced them to do this on MS Windows, not RedHat. Or they could have done both.
None-the-less, the question of speed, when both chips are now in the same class, is merely a masterbatorial affair that only affects 2% of the market. Expect PC users to cling to their speed crown, as that is the only thing they can cling to, against the ever growing superiority of the computing experience on the Mac.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=69975&cid=6373223
Furthermore, to address this specific instance, one should note that these overclockers never did any benchmarking themselves, they merely copy and pasted official scores as given from the manufacturers. The only thing he said that remotely gives credence to the comparisons are that the amount of RAM used was the same ( 2GB ). We don't know which types of hard-drives are used, what OSes and versions were used, etc. So, right off, those numbers are irrelevant.
Secondly, this whole issue of using the ICC compiler for the P4s. What Intel has done, is spent a lot of time creating a compiler that is very good at compiling simple programs, like benchmarks. At my work we use Visual C++ 6 on WinNT, Solaris CC on Solaris, and whatever True64 on Alpha uses for a compiler. Each one of these has defficiencies, forcing us to use a common subset of functionality. We do not even consider using ICC since it could never handle the C/C++ language features that we use. Thus ICC is a nice toy that is very good at pumping out benchmarks, but is almost never used in large scale software projects, and thus cannot compare to GCC, which is used by many large software projects. That is why it was valid for Apple to use GCC for the P4. But to be more legitimate, they should have instead used the newest MS VC++ compiler, as that is the #1 compiler for x86, which would have forced them to do this on MS Windows, not RedHat. Or they could have done both.
None-the-less, the question of speed, when both chips are now in the same class, is merely a masterbatorial affair that only affects 2% of the market. Expect PC users to cling to their speed crown, as that is the only thing they can cling to, against the ever growing superiority of the computing experience on the Mac.
