Intel Xeon 7460: Six Cores to Bulldoze Opteron
by Johan De Gelas on September 23, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
24 Cores in Action
So how do you test 24 cores? This is not at all a trivial question! Many applications are not capable of using more than eight threads, and quite a few are limited to 16 cores. Just look at what happens if you try to render with Cinema4D on this 24-headed monster: (Click on the image for a clearer view.)
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Cinebench fails to use all 24 cores
Yes, only 2/3 of the available processing power is effectively used. If you look closely, you'll see that only 16 cores are working at 100%.
Cinebench is more than happy with the 3MB L2 cache, so adding a 16MB L3 has no effect whatsoever. The result is that only the improved Penryn core can improve the performance of the X7460. The sixteen 45nm Penryn cores at 2.66GHz are able to keep up with the sixteen 65nm Merom cores at 2.93GHz, but of course that is not good enough to warrant an upgrade. 3ds Max 2008 was no different, and in fact it was even worse:
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3dsMax 2008 seems to be limited to 16 cores too
As we had done a lot of benchmarking with 3ds Max 2008, we wanted to see the new Xeon 7460 could do. The scanline renderer is the fastest for our ray-traced images, but it was not able to fully use 16 cores. Like Cinebench, it completely "forgot" to use the eight extra cores that our Xeon 7460 server offers. The results are very low, around 62 frames per hour, while a quad Xeon X7350 can do 88. As we have no explanation for this weird behavior, we didn't graph the results. We will have to take some time to investigate this further.
Even if we could get the rendering engines to work on 24 cores or more, it is clear that there are better ways to get good rendering performance. In most cases, it is much more efficient to simply buy less expensive servers and use Backburner to render several different images on separate servers simultaneously.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
I'm sure Johan will rerun tests when Shanghai actually launches. He's been working on creating the virtualization testing scenarios for a while, and with something finally in place testing of future products will not be a problem. The launch of Dunnington just happened to coincide with the time for doing this virtualization article.helldrell666 - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
It seems that inquirer's Charlie demirjian was right after all,Anandtch is a pro INTEL anti AMD sight.It's obvious that their reviews are biased and unfair against AMD.Anandtech exists to troll for INTEL...That's it.
Loknar - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Years ago the Inquirer accused Anandtech of being pro-AMD. Check out the old Athlon XP articles. I won't let you accuse Anandtech of being biased! This is one of the only smart website in the world, please look in your own backyard before accusing the only ones doing true reporting.Anyway.. what is this about AMD vs Intel? We are enthusiastically watching the competitors fighting each other in the most healthy way. Did you buy AMD stocks or - why do you seem to have personal interest in this matter?
Chill out and enjoy the nice products this competition brings is what I'm saying.
whatthehey - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Anyone who ever - EVER - refers to someone form the Inquirer as being "right" is so obviously stupid that you don't even deserve to read articles like this. All you'll do is hurt your tiny little brain trying to fit truth into your world-view where AMD rules, Intel sucks, and Charlie isn't an idiot.FWIW, I read this article and didn't feel it was at all Intel biased. We all know that AMD can't compete worth a damn on the desktop, and AnandTech has been one of the few sites that has provided any serious server articles where they have frequently pointed out performance advantages AMD still maintains. Even this article is quite positive for AMD, showing that many IT admins with Opteron servers should be fine for a while yet. If you're buying a new server, Dunnington appears to (finally) take the performance crown for 4S/8S and virtualization servers. I also understand how complex coming up with anything resembling a repeatable virtualization benchmark, so it's nice to see some independent testing that doesn't end up praising blade farms. Not that there's anything wrong with blades... other than the proprietary nature and extremely high costs.
socrilles07 - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
I don't get it - instead of using the already released high end AMD processor they used the much lower price point processor for a quite unfair comparison. In the end they make assumptions about what the performance to watt will be in the higher end processor. I thought anandtech was suppose to be THE review site, can you not afford the faster processor? or has AMD stopped providing you samples because of you bias? Lets do Apples to Apples comparisonsJohanAnandtech - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
Add 8% to our 8356 benchmarks and you'll know where the AMD Opteron 8360SE ends up in the best case. It is not that hard.From price/performance/Watt point of view, the 8356 is the best offer AMD has right now, and I am sure AMD would sent us another CPU if they felt otherwise.
We can not buy CPUs at $2000 a piece for each review that we write. If you work with virtualization and other server software, you have an idea how many manhours go in this kind of article. Add $8000 of AMD CPUs, $8000 of Intel CPUs... I hope you understand I don't feel like spending the rest of my time on ebay desperately trying to recoup some of my massive losses of buying server CPUs.
socrilles07 - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
you can't buy processors that cost $2000 a piece but some how you manage to get samples of processors costing twice that before they are released......so obviously you are no longer getting samples from AMD for some reason if not you could've done a comparison with at least the high end processor if not the next gen AMD processor which wouldve been more like the anandtech of the past.JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - link
"so obviously you are no longer getting samples from AMD for some reason"We'll see. :-)
helldrell666 - Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - link
What a good INTEL supporting article.But, It is expected from anandetch.Their ATOM review that made ATOM look like the best offering in it's category and their phenom reviews that made the phenom look like a two dual cores on a chip with one disabled.....These days one must take every little thing with a lot of salt.Bulldoze.....!!!!
Anantech reviews of AMD's products are stuffed with false and biased perspectives and numbers.
npp - Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - link
Look, we're trying to get some discussion here. If you don't like anandtech and you're convinced that it is biased towards Intel, why do you keep reading it? And if you've expected that a six-core Intel CPU would be slower than an AMD quad-core, you were obvoiusly mistaken, so take a note and give some constructive criticism, if you can.