Single Thread Performance

[termi21]

I have read in older threads that single thread performance scores are comparable with multi thread scores.

My questions is, how come in old CPUs (usually single core), the single core score is higher than the multi one?

For example:

Intel Pentium 4 3.80GHz
Single -> 821
Multi -> 488

What does that mean? Do they get slower when having to work with more than 1 parallel threads?
How does this work?

If so, does increasing the workload threads, makes them even slower?

Thank you

[David (PassMark)]

We don't have a benchmark called "Multi". I assume you are taking about the CPUMark.

You can't directly compare the overall CPU mark to the single thread score the scale is not the same. In fact the single thread score is one of the components of the overall CPUMark.

[termi21]

We don't have a benchmark called "Multi". I assume you are taking about the CPUMark.

You can't directly compare the overall CPU mark to the single thread score the scale is not the same. In fact the single thread score is one of the components of the overall CPUMark.

Yes correct. I meant the CPUMark, as of "multi"-threaded vs the single thread test.

I was confused from this forum thread -> http://www.passmark.com/forum/pc-har...ame-cpu-scores
where you say the scores of single and dual cpus are comparable, and thought the same applied between the single thread test and the cpumark.

The reason i thought of that, is because it seems that on dual cores the CPUMark is usually almost double the single-thread score, some more if HT exists.
And on quad-cores the CPUMark is around 4 times the single-thread scores, again more if HT exists.

So i kinda thought, that on single-core CPUs the single-core score and the CPUMark would be the same.

So basically there's no connection at all between the scores.

Basically, i thought you were forcing the exact same "multi-threaded" math problem to be calculated through a single core only, instead of all the cores.
(wouldn't such a test make sense?)

But it seems that the tests are completely different (and the one is just a part of the other as you said)

So many years i had that wrong... Oh well...

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions David.