AMD's 3rd generation Opteron versus Intel's 45nm Xeon: a closer look
by Johan De Gelas on November 27, 2007 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Words of Thanks
Many people gave us assistance with this project, and we would of course like to thank them.
Trevor Lawless, Intel US
Sanjay Sharma, Intel US
Matty Bakkeren, Intel Netherlands
(www.intel.com)
Damon Muzny, AMD US
Joshua Mora, AMD US
Brett Jacobs, AMD US
(www.amd.com)
Randy Chang, ASUS
(www.asus.com)
Kelly Sasso, Crucial Technology
Benchmark configuration
Here is the list of the different configurations. We flashed all servers to the latest BIOS, and unless we add any specific comments to the contrary, the BIOS are set to default settings.
Xeon Server
1: Intel "Stoakley platform" server
Supermicro X7DWE+/X7DWN+ Bios rev 1.0
2x Xeon E5472 at 3GHz
8GB (4x2GB) Crucial Registered FB-DIMM DDR2-667 CL5 ECC
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
Xeon
Server 2: Intel "Bensley platform" server
2x Xeon E5365 at 3GHz or 2x Xeon E5345 at 2.33GHz
Intel Server Board S5000PSL - Intel 5000P Chipset
8GB (4x2GB) Crucial Registered FB-DIMM DDR2-667 CL5 ECC
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
Opteron 2350 Server: ASUS KFSN4-DRE
Dual Opteron 2350 2GHz
Asus KFSN4DRE BIOS version 1001.02 (8/28/2007) - NVIDIA nForce Pro 2200 chipset
8GB (4x2GB) Crucial Registered DDR2-667 CL5 ECC
NIC: Broadcom BCM5721
Opteron Socket F 1207 Server: Tyan Transport
TA26 - 2932
Dual Opteron 2222 3GHz/2224SE 3.2GHz
Tyan Thunder n3600m (S2932) - NVIDIA nForce Pro 3600 chipset
8GB (4x2GB) Crucial Registered DDR2-667 CL5 ECC
NIC: nForce Pro 3600 integrated MAC with Marvell 88E1121 Gigabit Ethernet PHY
Client Configuration: Dual Opteron 850
MSI K8T Master1-FAR
4x512MB Infineon PC2700 Registered, ECC
NIC: Broadcom 5705
OS Software
64-bit SUSE Linux SLES 10 SP1 (Linux 2.6.16.46-smp x86_64)
32-bit Windows 2003 Enterprise SP1
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43 Comments
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Hans Maulwurf - Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - link
Agreed, I have not seen an article as good as this one for years at Anandtech. And not for some time on other review sites as well.Thank you.
JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
Thanks people. This kind of articles take ridiculously amounts of time and I really appreciate that you let me know that you liked the article. It keeps us going. (and I mean that!)magreen - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
Excellent article, thorough and with amazing depth and expertise. Keep up the great work AT!Bluestealth - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
I agree, it was a very well done article. I can't wait to see how Intel's processors preform on Hyper... errr... Common System Interface (next year?). I believe that I will be buying AMD until that happens though for any servers.Regs - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
Yeah, every time I see "Johan De Gelas" I have to read it.I like the added info on the Barc's L3 cache and the intro-factoid about the new architecture.
I agree that the Barc's arrival is a year late and joined the party a little too shy. Integer performance will likely have to be addressed in the Bulldozer in 2-3 years. Which is 2-3 years too long. I would be really surprised if they can manage anything other than a die shrink for Shanghi with maybe more L3 cache and some tweaks for cache latency and SSE.
Just seems like AMD took a nose dive in development for their processors in the past 3-4 years. After the K8 I would think they would be able to come up with something more innovative. Revolutionary should of never entered their heads and they should actually look down upon themselves for using such a word after 4 years.
jones377 - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
Any chance you could use the same tools to profile desktop applications as well in the future?DigitalFreak - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
Three months or so since "launch", and you still can't get a server with AMD quad-core chips from any of the big 3 vendors (HP, Dell, IBM). AMD really screwed the pooch on this one.jojo4u - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
Yuck, ugly GIF on the first page. Please use PNG because 256 colors are not enough for screenshots ;)deathwombat - Saturday, December 1, 2007 - link
In addition to being less ugly, PNG's higher compression would also make the file smaller (using less bandwidth), which I assume is what they were going for.jkostans - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
Didn't even notice.