Linux Shootout: Opteron 150 vs. Xeon 3.6 Nocona
by Kristopher Kubicki on August 12, 2004 2:35 PM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Although this latest attempt to produce an accurate, unbiased, real world comparison of these two processors is likely more thorough than the review earlier this week, there are still critical issues we will address to get out of the way.
First of all, AMD's Opteron 150 is the highest performing AMD workstation CPU money can buy. Thus, it is priced around $600 at time of publication. (The nearly identical FX-53 is priced slightly higher). Intel's Xeon 3.6GHz / Pentium 4 3.6F processor is the highest performing Intel workstation CPU money can't buy; although it has shown up in various OEM channels, it really has not hit the market in full force yet. When it does, we are expected to see it retail for $850. This automatically raises the question as to whether or not these two are directly competing processors. Since prices in the market fluctuate daily depending on vendor stock with such high end CPUs, we leave that decision up to the reader.
Secondly, GCC 3.3.3 optimizations became a larger than expected variable in these tests. As shown in the TSCP benchmark, changing the optimization flags wildly changed performance of the Opteron CPU, while the Nocona only received mild benefits. We also hear that GCC 3.4 tends to increase performance on the Opteron CPUs even further, although we ran out of time to complete that test.
After all is said and done it became difficult (nearly impossible?) to justify the Xeon processor in a UP configuration over the Opteron 150, but perhaps we will see significant changes in dual and four way configurations. We have Linux benchmark shootout between the two processors coming up, as well as a Windows analysis too.
Once again special thanks to Super Micro for providing us with the hardware on such short notice for this review.
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epicstruggle - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
"The 3.6F will still be marketed against the 3500+/3800+ dual channel AMD CPUs. The benchmarks were messed up in that article, not our processor choice. This was addressed at the beginning of both articles"First great redo. :) I dont care who wins or looses, but at least now the comparision is fair.
About the above quote, who is doing this marketing/comparison. Im assuming Intel? Doesnt it look suspect that they want to compare a 800+ dollar processor with one in the low 300s? Why fall for marketing pr/fud?
again, thanks for the info.
epic
dke - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
I enjoyed this article much more than the first one. This one is much more accurate in my opinion.I would like to point out that you can purchase an Opteron 150 (boxed) for $594.49 with free shipping at
http://www.chumbo.com/info.asp?s=030143803701&...
and not $850 like you quoted in your "Final Thoughts" page. Additionally, AMD's pricing page suggests that the Opteron 150 be priced at $637. Any store pricing the Opteron 150 at $800 or $850 will not make any sales, so, I don't think you can justify your statement, "Thus, it is priced around $850 at time of publication." That is the only thing I think you should change with this article. That sentence should be changed to, "Thus, it is priced (by AMD) at around $650 and can be purchased at around $600 at time of publication."
Other than that, I think you've written a wonderful article. I'd also like to thank you for doing this during your "vacation" time. I suppose that wasn't much of a vacation. I think what you did shows quite a bit of dedication to your work, and I (for one) appreciate it.
love4ever - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
thanks Kristopher.very nice review.
Carfax - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Kris, that's fine man.. Good work on this review, and I look forward to seeing the 32 and 64 bit Nocona benches in a future review!KristopherKubicki - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
datacipher: The 3.6F will still be marketed against the 3500+/3800+ dual channel AMD CPUs. The benchmarks were messed up in that article, not our processor choice. This was addressed at the beginning of both articles/Kristopher
datacipher - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Sorry for the empty posts, I just signed up to say this....I think I can speak from a different perspective as I am not a techhead. I do keep a casual eye on hardware and have done extensive programming so I would not classify myself as computer illiterate.
Still I WOULD not have noticeed the rediculous choice of cpu's used in the 1st article. I would have just skimmed the article and assumed that a reasonable choice of benchmark material was used. I would not have known about any of the flaws in the benchmarks. I WOULD have accepted and given weight to the conclusion...which was clearly unwarranted given this second review.
I would like to thank all the posters who criticized that review because without you watchdogs, I would have blindly accepted the article as I used to do with Anandtech which I always though was a reliable source.
Kristopher, it's good you posted a new article, but honestly, your first article was extremely misleading...almost fraudulent...it really changes the nature of Anandtech in my mind...I thought I could rely on you fellows...
If you had initially even written of your reasoning as to why you were using such an uncomparable processor and then properly framed your conclusions it would have been fine....but in the article itself you seemed to be saying that it was a reasonable comparision and the conclusions were not given proper reference.
I'm really disappointed.
KristopherKubicki - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Carfax:I will address that in a future review. I just didnt have the time to do it all over again :'(
Kristopher
Carfax - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
This review is MUCH better.. But still, WHY aren't there reference 32 bit scores for the Noconca, so we can see how much of a difference between 32 and 64 bit performance there is?TotalImmortal - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
thanks to all you guys at anandtech, never let it be said that you don't listen to your readership!sprockkets - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
At the end of page 5, the last paragraph is worded weird. Page 6 graph at the top, "Opteron 250"?I realize that you probably were sleeping when you did this :).
The only thing else I don't like and I know it's out of your control is those stupid "get the facts" propaganda from Micro losers.