The Best Server CPUs part 2: the Intel "Nehalem" Xeon X5570
by Johan De Gelas on March 30, 2009 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
| OLTP: Oracle Charbench "Calling Circle" | |
| Operating System | Windows 2008 Enterprise RTM (64-bit) |
| Software | Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2) for 64-bit Windows |
| Benchmark software | Swingbench/Charbench 2.2 |
| Database Size | 9 GB |
| Typical error margin | 2-2.5% |
In our last review, we included our first Oracle benchmark. In this review, we are happy to announce that we finally tamed the Oracle beast … somewhat. The first benchmark we tried (see our AMD Opteron 8384 2.7GHz review) was "Order Entry", but this benchmark is designed for Oracle Real Application Clusters and right now we could not make it scale above eight cores. Even the gains from four to eight cores were pretty small, despite many experiments (increasing the number of users and so on). With Calling Circle, we increased the database size to 9.5GB to make sure that once again locking contention was not completely killing off multi-core performance. To reduce the pressure on our humble storage system, we increased the SGA size (Oracle buffer in RAM) to 10GB and the PGA size was set at 1.6GB. A calling circle test consists of 83% selects, 7% inserts, and 10% updates.
The "calling circle" test runs for 10 minutes. The test is repeated six times and the results of the first run are discarded. The reason for discarding the first run is that the disk queue length is sometimes close to 1, while the second run and later have a DQL of 0.2 or lower. In this case it was rather easy to run the CPUs at 99% load. All configurations below are dual CPUs.
We have seen this picture before: the latest Opteron has no problem with leaving the older generations of Xeons behind. However, the newest Xeon is simply running circles around the rest of the pack. It is a mind blowing 95% faster than the Xeon 5472 and 85% than the Opteron 8384 2.7GHz. SMT is formidable weapon, as Oracle makes good use of the extra threads, and it provides a 35% performance increase.
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Veteran - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
I didn't mean to offend you, because i can imagine how much time it takes to test hardware properly. And i personally think that OLTP/OLAP testing is very innovative and needed. Because otherwise people would have no idea what to buy for servers. You cannot let you server purchase be influenced with meaningless (for servers) simple benchmarks like 3D 2006/Vantage/FPS test etc.You guys always are doing a great a job at testing any piece of hardware, but it is just feeling to much biased towards Intel. For example, at the last page of this review you get a link to Intel resource Center (in the same place as the next button). If you have things like that, you are not (trying to be) objective IMO.
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
Thank you for clarifying in a very constructive way."the last page of this review you get a link to Intel resource Center"
I can't say I am happy with that link as it creates the wrong impression. But the deal is: editors don't involve in ad management, ad sales people don't get involved when it comes to content.
So all I can say is to judge our content, not our ads. And like I said, it didn't stop us from claiming that Shanghai was by far the best server CPU a few months ago. And that conclusion was not on many sites.
Veteran - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
Thanks for clarrifying this matter.But ad sales people should know this creates the wrong impression. A review site (for me at least) is all about objectivity and credibility. When you place a link to Intel's Resource Center at the end of every review, it feels weird. People on forums already call Anandtech, Inteltech. And i don't think this is what you guys want.
I always liked Anandtech since when I was a kid, and I still do. You guys always have one of the most in-depth reviews (especially on the very technical side) and I like that. But you guys are gaining some very negative publicity on the net.
BaronMatrix - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Unfortunately, I don't buy from or recommend criminals.carniver - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
AMDZone is the biggest joke on the internet. I just went there to see how the zealots like abinstein are still doing their damage control; just like before he went on rambling how the Penryn is still weak against Shanghai, and the old and tired excuses like how if people all bought AMD they can drop in upgrades etc etc. ZootyGray...he's the biggest joke on AMDZone. None of them had the mental capacity to accept AMD has been DEFEATED, which is disappointing but funny to say the leastduploxxx - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
It's not just AMDZone, you are just the opposite. Its like in Woodcrest and conroe times, it's not because the high-end cpu is the best of all that the rest of the available cpu's in the line is by default better. It's all about price performance ratio. Like many who were buying the low-end and think they had bought the better system, well wrong bet.As mentioned before, why not test the mid range that is where the sales will be. Time to test 5520-5530 against 2380-82 after all those have the same price.
carniver - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
Your argument is valid, however, it just so happens that for low end 1S systems the Penryns are doing just fine against the Shanghais, for higher end 2S systems they used to be limited by memory bandwidth and AMD pulls ahead. No more is this the case, Intel now beats AMD in their own territory.CHADBOGA - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
You probably also can't afford to buy a computer, so I doubt that Intel will be too concerned with your AMDZone insanity. LOL!!!!smilingcrow - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Those grapes you are chewing on sure sound sour to me. Try listening to a few tracks by The Fun Loving Criminals to help take away the bad taste.cjcoats - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
There's more to HPC applications than you indicate: environmental modeling apps, particularly, tend to be dominated by memory access patterns rather than by I/O or pure computation. Give me a ring if you'd like some help with that -- I'm local for you, in fact...