Linked by Amjith Ramanujam on Thu 31st Jul 2008 20:51 UTC, submitted by snydeq
While using an AMD Barcelona server to create a portable benchmarking kit, InfoWorld's Tom Yager discovered something unexpected: "I could incur variances in some benchmark tests ranging from 10 to 60 percent through combined manipulation of the server's BIOS settings, BIOS version, compiler flags, and OS release." Yager put this matter to AMD's performance engineers and was told he was seeing an effect widely known among CPU engineers, but seldom communicated to IT - that the performance envelope of a CPU is cast in silicon, but is sculpted in software. "Long before you lay hands on a server," Yager writes, "BIOS and OS engineers have reshaped its finely tuned logic in code, sometimes with the real intent of making it faster [...] sometimes to homogenize the server to flatten its performance relative to Intel's."
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Member since:2005-07-06
well on a server one should rarely run more then the required minimum. so optimizing and shaking out bugs should be easier.
whats worrisome is that the bios can have such an effect on things. makes one wonder if some motherboard bios can result in a under-performing pc...
hmm, flash bios, get a more responsive vista?
Member since:2005-07-20
Member since:2005-07-06
well on a server one should rarely run more then the required minimum. so optimizing and shaking out bugs should be easier.
whats worrisome is that the bios can have such an effect on things. makes one wonder if some motherboard bios can result in a under-performing pc...
hmm, flash bios, get a more responsive vista?
whats worrisome is that the bios can have such an effect on things. makes one wonder if some motherboard bios can result in a under-performing pc...
hmm, flash bios, get a more responsive vista?
Why is this a surprise? this has been known for years; crappy bios with a crappy ACPI implementation which results in a crappy operating system experience. If there are issues with resource allocation at the lowest level, things are not going to be pretty when it comes to running an operating system.
This is why you see weird compatibility issues in the PC world; you'll see motherboards requiring 'routine' BIOS upgrades because of an incompatibility with a video card or sound card. Hence the reason I've said it many times when people crap on about Apple - they don't know what the heck they're talking about.
Build you're own PC and it is Russian roulette whether or not you stumble over bugs in the firmware - get a computer off the likes of Dell or HP and find that the bare minimum testing has been done for all possible scenarios. These are things which people on here, who appoint themselves as 'all knowing guru's' when it comes to computers ignore.
Yes, I have actually seen peoples computers perform better after a firmware upgrade; I remember having an old HP; upgraded the firmware and the performance and battery life was better - same said for my old Lenovo laptop too. It does happen, its unfortunate that people don't check their computer manufacturers website for BIOS updates instead of spitting and cursing at Microsoft for things outside their control.
Member since:
2006-04-18
That's pretty much the idea behind Gentoo (and others), isn't it? You compile the entire OS using flags that make the most of your processor.
The problem in the IT world is that you generally want stable and consistent. Performance is nice, but you don't want to have to track down bugs the depend on the underlying hardware and optimizations. You want plug and play hardware pieces.
Edited 2008-07-31 22:03 UTC