The Best Server CPUs Compared, Part 1
by Johan De Gelas on December 22, 2008 10:00 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
The Opteron Killer?
Will the Xeon 5570 -- a Nehalem based Xeon at 2.93GHz -- completely change the market? Since it is still about three months away, we decided to perform our server tests on the Nehalem test kit. This gives Intel a small advantage as it can use DDR3-1066 unbuffered RAM, while the Xeons will use buffered DDR3 (note: no FB-DIMMs!). However, it is quite possible the Xeon X5550 (2.66GHz) and Xeon X5570 (2.94GHz) will get 1333MHz buffered DDR3, which means that the numbers below will be very close to the truth.
As you can see, the boost from Hyper-Threading ranges from nothing to about 12%. It looks like the newest Xeon will be about 36% faster in MySQL, 26% on our MCS website, and 22% faster on Oracle. That is quite impressive, but this is only a preview and we are only showing you single processor results. Take them with a grain of salt, but it looks like the newest Xeon will smash things up.
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Bruce Herndon - Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - link
I'm surprised by your comments. You claim that VMmark is a CPU/memory-centric benchmark. If I look at the raw data in the VMmark disclosure for Dell's R905 score of 20.35 @ 14 tiles, I see that the benchmark is driving 250-300 MB/s of disk IO across several HBAs and storage LUNs. This characteristic scales with the various systems mentioned in the article.As a designer of VMmark, I happen to know that both storage bandwidth (for the fileserver) and latency (for mail and database)are critical to acheiving good VMmark scores. Furthermore, the webserver drives substantial network IO. The only purely CPU-centric component to VMmark is the javaserver. Overall, the benchmark does exercise the entire virtualization solution - hypervisor, CPU, memory, disk, and network.
cdillon - Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - link
While SAS and Infiniband share some connectors and obtain similar data rates, they are incompatible technologies with two different purposes. Infiniband can be used for disk shelf connections, but it is less common and definitely not the case here. You should not call the connection between the Adaptec 5805 controller and the disk shelf an "Infiniband connection", even if it is using Infiniband connectors and cables, it is simply an SAS connection.JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - link
Well, the physical layer is Infiniband, the used protocol is SCSI. I can understand calling it an "infiniband connection" maybe confusing, but the cable is an infiniband cable.shank15217 - Friday, December 26, 2008 - link
Anand, I think the above poster is right. The Adaptec RAID 5805 uses SFF-8087 connectors but the protocol is SSP (Serial SCSI Protocol). Infiniband is a physical layer protocol that shares the same connector as SAS but they are not the same. Nothing in the Adaptec RAID 5805 spec mentions Infiniband as a supported protocol.http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/Controllers/...">http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/C...ers/Hard...
niva - Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - link
I'm not sure you can run your same ol benchmark for rendering, and I'd really like more insight into what you guys are rendering and if it's indeed using all 16/24(six core 4 point system)/32(hyperthreading) cores on the system.What renderer, what scene, details details...
These chips get gobbled up by render farms and this is indeed where they can really flex their muscles to the fullest.
JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - link
Just click on the link under "we have performed so many times before" :-)akinneyww - Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - link
I read DailyTech and anandtech.com to keep up with the latest in IT. I appreciate the thought that has gone into putting together this article. I would like to see more articles like this one.Jammrock - Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - link
The VMware results shocked me the most. I know AMD has been working hard on the virtualization sector and it looks like their work has paid off.classy - Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - link
With the rapid increase of virtualization, AMD is looking really strong. We have begun using 3.5 Vmware and are expanding the use of it. Virtualization is truly becoming a big thing in server choice.