X-bit labs

Thursday, February 17, 2005

AMD Opteron Gets SSE3, But Does it Gain Performance? AMD’s SSE3 Implementation Investigated

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday released its new breed of AMD Opteron processors produced using 90nm technology and featuring two major enhancements: 1.0GHz HyperTransport bus and SSE3 software instructions. Both can potentially bring some additional performance, but while the increased HT speed is likely to provide it in all the cases, SSE3 is expected to function only provided that the software can take advantage of it.

AnandTech web-site has attempted to test the advantage SSE3 gives AMD Opteron processors using DivX encoding as well as an array of synthetic benchmarks.

“As far as physics and graphics go, the added instructions show potential in our synthetic test. For DCC, CAD, scientific, and other workstation software, the [AMD Opteron] E4 stepping could offer a bit of a performance boost. In the consumer space, Athlon 64 may not see as much benefit from SSE3, especially since our encoding tests turned up so little performance impact. SSE3 can be used in games, but the impact of this will likely be minimal. As most games will likely remain graphics limited, improvements will have a hard time shining through. Of course, for those who like to use lower cost Athlon 64 processors in cheaper workstations, there could be some advantage,” AnandTech summarizes.

• AnandTech: AMD K8 E4 Stepping: SSE3 Performance.

Internet Explorer 7 to Come in Mid-2005. New Internet Explorer to Come Separately from Windows Longhorn

Microsoft Corp., who commands the largest market share in the Internet browsers market, is continuously denounced for vulnerabilities of the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser despite of nonstop release of various patches and updates for the program. However, sometimes the new revisions just cannot solve all the problems and the company has to leapfrog to another level. At the RSA Conference 2005 Microsoft announced a move that was rather unexpected: the company’s Internet Explorer 7.0 will be out before the company’s forthcoming operating system Longhorn ships.

A beta, or test, version of Internet Explorer 7 will debut this summer. Mike Nash, an executive in Microsoft’s security business and technology unit, said in an interview that Microsoft has not determined how or when the final version of Internet Explorer would ship, but that it is planned ahead of Longhorn, according to a report from CNET News.com.

“We’ll be updating Windows on a regular basis. How the browser gets packaged – whether it’s with a service pack – has not been nailed down. There is going to be a Service Pack 3 (of Windows XP). That’s not a surprise. How that relates to Internet Explorer 7’s release, we haven’t figured out yet,” said Mike Nash, an executive in Microsoft’s security business and technology unit.

“The move acknowledges that the browser has become the target of virus and spyware writers. As the security threats have increased, rival browser Firefox has gained fans,” CNET News.com believes.

• CNET News.com: Reversal: Next IE Update Divorced From Windows.