The new Opteron 6300: Finally Tested!
by Johan De Gelas on February 20, 2013 12:03 AM ESTBenchmark Configuration
Unfortunately, the Intel R2208GZ4GSSPP is a 2U server, which makes it hard to compare it with the 1U Opteron "Interlagos" and 1U "Westmere EP" servers we have tested in the past. We will be showing a few power consumption numbers, but since a direct comparison isn't possible, please take them with a grain of salt.
Intel's Xeon E5 server R2208GZ4GSSPP (2U Chassis)
| CPU | Two Intel Xeon processor E5-2660 (2.2GHz, 8c, 20MB L3, 95W) |
| RAM | 64GB (8x8GB) DDR-1600 Samsung M393B1K70DH0-CK0 |
| Motherboard | Intel Server Board S2600GZ "Grizzly Pass" |
| Chipset | Intel C600 |
| BIOS version | SE5C600.86B (01/06/2012) |
| PSU | Intel 750W DPS-750XB A (80+ Platinum) |
The Xeon E5 CPUs have four memory channels per CPU and support DDR3-1600, and thus our dual CPU configuration gets eight DIMMs for maximum bandwidth. The typical BIOS settings can be found below.
Not visible in the above image is that all prefetchers are enabled in all of the tests.
Supermicro A+ Opteron server 1022G-URG (1U Chassis)
| CPU |
Two AMD Opteron "Abu Dhabi" 6380 at 2.5GHz Two AMD Opteron "Abu Dhabi" 6376 at 2.3GHz Two AMD Opteron "Bulldozer" 6276 at 2.3GHz Two AMD Opteron "Magny-Cours" 6174 at 2.2GHz |
| RAM | 64GB (8x8GB) DDR3-1600 Samsung M393B1K70DH0-CK0 |
| Motherboard | SuperMicro H8DGU-F |
| Internal Disks | 2 x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB |
| Chipset | AMD Chipset SR5670 + SP5100 |
| BIOS version | v2.81 (10/28/2012) |
| PSU | SuperMicro PWS-704P-1R 750Watt |
The same is true for the latest AMD Opterons: eight DDR3-1600 DIMMs for maximum bandwidth. You can check out the BIOS settings of our Opteron server below.
C6 is enabled, TurboCore (CPB mode) is on.
ASUS RS700-E6/RS4 1U Server
| CPU |
Two Intel Xeon X5670 at 2.93GHz—6 cores Two Intel Xeon X5650 at 2.66GHz—6 cores |
| RAM | 48GB (12x4GB) Kingston DDR3-1333 FB372D3D4P13C9ED1 |
| Motherboard | ASUS Z8PS-D12-1U |
| Chipset | Intel 5520 |
| BIOS version | 1102 (08/25/2011) |
| PSU | 770W Delta Electronics DPS-770AB |
To speed up benchmarking, we tested the Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron system in parallel. As we didn't have more than eight 8GB DIMMs, we used our 4GB DDR3-1333 DIMMs. The Xeon system only gets 48GB, but this isn't a disadvantage as our highest memory footprint benchmark (vApus FOS, 5 tiles) uses no more than 40GB of RAM. There is no real alternative as our Xeon has three memory channels and cannot be outfitted with the same amount of RAM as our Opteron 6300 or Xeon E5 system (four channels).
Common Storage System
For the virtualization tests, each server gets an Adaptec 5085 PCIe x8 card (driver aacraid v1.1-5.1[2459] b 469512) connected to six Cheetah 300GB 15000 RPM SAS disks (RAID-0) inside a Promise JBOD J300.
Software Configuration
All vApus testing is done on ESXi vSphere 5--VMware ESXi 5.1. All vmdks use thick provisioning, independent, and persistent. The power policy is "Balanced Power" unless otherwise indicated. All other testing is done on Windows 2008 Enterprise R2 SP1. Unless noted otherwise, we use the "High Performance setting" on Windows 2008 R2 SP1.
Other Notes
Both servers are fed by a standard European 230V (16 Amps max.) powerline. The room temperature is monitored and kept at 23°C by our Airwell CRACs. We use the Racktivity ES1008 Energy Switch PDU to measure power consumption. Using a PDU for accurate power measurements might seem pretty insane, but this is not your average PDU. Measurement circuits of most PDUs assume that the incoming AC is a perfect sine wave, but it never is. However, the Rackitivity PDU measures true RMS current and voltage at a very high sample rate: up to 20,000 measurements per second for the complete PDU.
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arnd - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
I have dual Opteron 6344 workstation system, which tends to be either near complete idle or near complete busy, so C states are extremely important to me. The CPU has power sensors that are exposed in Linux using the 'sensors' tool. With C6 enabled, I get the power consumption per socket down to 42 Watts, which still seems like a lot, but disabling C6 made it jump to 104W per socket, when under 100% load it is constantly within 1W of the 115W TDP limit.I did not see a significant impact of C1E, neither with C6 enabled nor disabled, presumably because I rarely have cores that are idle for a short period.
More annoying to me is the lack of S3 suspend mode, the system still consumes around 100W on S1.
nevertell - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
The difference I believe is that you cannot use AES-NI instructions when using Twofish and serpent. I guess that AMD's AES-NI implementation is just slower.JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Sounds reasonable. The question is then why Twofish and serpent are so fast on the Opteron. They probably scale very well with cores.Yorgos - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
I've been abandoning tech sites due to stupid posters and internet trolls.There is so much addition info and questions in the comments and I don't know why are you letting people ruin that feature from your site?
You should make a ranking system(similar to /. ) for users, in order to automatically hide someone's comments, so we don't have to double check every time the poster and/or the comment.
I feel stupid for making that type of comment, also reading specific stupid opinions, below that article.
silverblue - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
I like your ideas, however most of the laugh (or should I say cringe?) worthy comments would be hidden and the entertainment value would be tainted by having to click the Show button all the time. ;)lwatcdr - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Or requiring real names.JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
I had meetings and people visiting me, so I could not "baby sit" the reactions. But if you don't react to the offensive message we can delete them. So the best way to deal with th trolls is to ignore. Sooner or later, they will be banned.coder111 - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Because some of the people posting here are obviously trolling for Intel and do not bring anything constructive to the discussion.MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Yes, it is quite pathetic. An ignore button would take care of this situation nicely.iamezza - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
An ignore button and a report button would be great!