Database Server CPU Comparison: Athlon MP vs. Hyper Threading Xeon

The Platforms: AMD 760MPX vs. Intel E7500

You should already be pretty familiar with the AMD 760MPX chipset from our review as well as its predecessor, the 760MP. We ran all of our Athlon MP benchmarks using Tyan's Tiger MPX platform, which is their entry-level Athlon MP workstation/server board.

Two sockets, six DIMM slots, and a large heatsink on the E7500 MCH

The newcomer to this comparison is Intel's E7500 chipset. As you may recall from our preview of the E7500 chipset, it is Intel's first dual channel DDR solution. With support for DDR200 SDRAM and by populating two memory banks at a time, the chipset is able to match the i850/860's dual-channel RDRAM memory bus in terms of memory bandwidth. The 3.2GB/s of main memory bandwidth offered by this solution is perfectly matched with the Xeon's 100MHz quad-pumped FSB, which also provides 3.2GB/s of bandwidth to the CPU.

The chipset currently lacks DDR266 support mainly because there's no need for it, so long as the Xeon remains at a 100MHz FSB. The Xeon platform will inevitably transition to a 133MHz FSB (much like the desktop Pentium 4), at which point the E7500's successor will be introduced with DDR266 support.

DIMMs must be installed in pairs

We'll save our review of the E7500 chipset for a separate article, but the only major shortcoming is that it is truly a server-only chipset as it has no AGP controller. It could indicate that Intel doesn't want the E7500 being used in markets that will be serviced by a forthcoming dual channel DDR solution for desktops/workstations. Do keep in mind that the server world saw Intel's first dual-channel RDRAM chipset (i840) before it ended up being on desktops with the i850. We will address this theory in our standalone E7500 review.

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We used Tyan's Thunder i7500 motherboard for all of our Xeon tests. Using the latest shipping BIOS we ran into no issues with the board and it completed all of our tests without faults.

The chipset itself is targeted at the entry-level to middle of the server market, leaving the highest demands for ServerWorks' platforms. The main limitation that keeps the E7500 from competing in those markets as well is, at least according to ServerWorks, a lack of I/O bandwidth to its PCI/PCI-X busses. To get an idea of what ServerWorks considers to be lacking, we're talking about 120-drive RAID arrays capable of eating up multiple gigabytes per second of I/O bandwidth. Even our most strenuous tests cannot even begin to saturate that sort of bandwidth.