Low Power Server CPU Redux: Quad-Core Comes to Play
by Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on September 13, 2007 6:05 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
AS3AP
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For the first four load points, all of the parts perform about the same but for load point five and six there is no competition as the Clovertown part is able to beat the others by as much as 53%.
There are no real surprises here. The dual-core parts are relatively similar, though the Opteron CPU load is consistently higher. The quad-core Clovertown shows significantly lower CPU utilization and thus headroom beyond load point four.
Power Analysis
Looking at the power requirements, we see that the Intel configurations use significantly more power than the AMD configurations. The Woodcrest system uses as much as 46W more power than the AMD system, and the Clovertown system uses as much as 76W more power than the AMD system. Recall however that FB-DIMMs from the Intel system use approximately 60W more than the DIMMs in the AMD system, so the difference is in the platform rather than in the CPUs.
Up to and including load point four Opteron is the clear winner. Beyond load point four Clovertown steals the show with a lead as great as 17% over the Opteron.
Transactions/sec
For the first four load points, all of the parts perform about the same but for load point five and six there is no competition as the Clovertown part is able to beat the others by as much as 53%.
There are no real surprises here. The dual-core parts are relatively similar, though the Opteron CPU load is consistently higher. The quad-core Clovertown shows significantly lower CPU utilization and thus headroom beyond load point four.
Power Analysis
Looking at the power requirements, we see that the Intel configurations use significantly more power than the AMD configurations. The Woodcrest system uses as much as 46W more power than the AMD system, and the Clovertown system uses as much as 76W more power than the AMD system. Recall however that FB-DIMMs from the Intel system use approximately 60W more than the DIMMs in the AMD system, so the difference is in the platform rather than in the CPUs.
Up to and including load point four Opteron is the clear winner. Beyond load point four Clovertown steals the show with a lead as great as 17% over the Opteron.
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flyck - Friday, September 14, 2007 - link
why didn't you wait to revail this article when the tests were done on a barcelona system ?Now it is just comparing apples with oranges and thus making the conclusion obsolete.
Phynaz - Friday, September 14, 2007 - link
Since you can't buy a Barcelona based system at this point in time, this article is hardly "obsolete".JarredWalton - Friday, September 14, 2007 - link
You'll get Barcelona results for this sort of testing soon enough. The problem is, AnandTech isn't a single location; like many websites, we have people scattered around a large area. Johan and Christoph are even located in Europe, for example. So just because one of us has immediate access to certain hardware (i.e. the Barcelona launch CPUs) doesn't mean we all have access at the same time. Besides, the Barcelona launch articles literally had access to the CPUs for about four days before launch, and they were busy running other tests for the duration of that time.Justin Case - Saturday, September 15, 2007 - link
This article was published 3 days after Johan's Barcelona article.I suppose it's beyond Anandtech's technical ability to run the same benchmarks in the "european" and "american" systems, and compare the results? Maybe they wouldn't be valid due to the time zone or the metric system or something...?
Or maybe this article's "conclusions" had already been written, and doing a real quad vs. quad (instead of quad vs. dual) comparison would have spoiled things?
JarredWalton - Saturday, September 15, 2007 - link
As a matter of fact, yes, the article testing was indeed completed before Barcelona officially launched. The introduction and conclusion were edited to account for the fact that Barcelona is now officially launched (though not actually available for purchase anywhere). Will we test Barcelona performance/watt for a future article? Yes, and probably sooner rather than later. Does that make this article wrong? Nope. The conclusion is that a currently available quad-core Clovertown LV can beat a dual-core Opteron in some cases."In this article we see the tables turn somewhat. With two extra cores the Intel Clovertown parts are able to easily outpace the AMD Opteron, at least when overall load is near saturation. At low to average workloads, there is little difference between any of the parts, in which case server consolidation might be a better solution. Obviously, the quad-core parts are best suited for loaded database servers and their sweet spot is in virtualized environments." (Emphasis added.)
I'm not exactly sure what the problem is with that conclusion. Quad-core is better in heavy load environments, and having the ability to choose between quad and dual-core CPUs certainly can't be bad for companies. I guess you would rather have nothing than an article that examines one more facet of the performance spectrum? FB-DIMMs still use a lot of power, but it's nice to see that as the number of CPU cores ramps up, the overall penalty isn't quite as severe. How will Barcelona and Harpertown change the picture? We will have an article on that subject soon enough.
Proteusza - Sunday, September 16, 2007 - link
Then you should have pulled the article. It makes no sense now. "Quad core comes to play"?Intels quad core has been out for how long now? Quad core comes to play, in my mind, implies that either Intels quad cores are new, or that we have quad cores from both tested in this article.
Neither is true.
JarredWalton - Sunday, September 16, 2007 - link
Intel LV Quad-core is in fact brand new, however, and it's actually available for purchase right now. That is what this article is about, and the introduction makes it pretty clear. If the title makes some people click through to check out the article, and they end up disappointed that Barcelona isn't present, they can get over it. I'm sure when we post the Barcelona equivalent that it will have some equally catchy title to get people to give it a look.Perhaps by that point in time Barcelona procs will actually be available at major vendors. You can find prices for the Opteron 2350 at a lot of places, but every site that I've checked out is "temporarily backordered" or "out of stock". At $400-$500, the Opteron 2350 will certainly be an interesting alternative. Companies that have Socket F/1207 servers will definitely be interested. Of course, before they switch they'll want to test for at least a few weeks (or months) in a non-production environment. BIOS flashing on a server is not something IT departments like to do on a regular basis, and my bet is we will see several BIOS updates before the transition is done.
Proteusza - Monday, September 17, 2007 - link
Its LV quad core may be brand new, but quad core itself isnt.Quad core itself is a year old, or more, and your title implies otherwise to me.
JarredWalton - Monday, September 17, 2007 - link
"Low Power" is in the title... I'm not sure we can really do much more beyond changing the title to "Low Power Quad-Core Xeon without Barcelona"... but just wait a bit longer and then you can see other results for other CPUs.Justin Case - Monday, September 17, 2007 - link
So you're saying that this article was published now due to the release of new low-voltage Xeon models, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Barcelona launch?'mkay...
Following that line of thought, the article's title should have been "Quad-core Xeons: Low power models come to play". The "new" thing (and thus what now "comes to play") is the low voltage, not the fact they are quad-core.
It would still be odd (to say the least) that you didn't run a single benchmark on a Barcelona system, but at least the article's title wouldn't be so blatantly deceptive.