AMD Opteron Gets SSE3, But Does it Gain Performance?

AMD’s SSE3 Implementation Investigated

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 02/17/2005 | 11:54 PM ]

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.

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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.