Intel Xeon 3.6 2MB vs AMD Opteron 252 Database Test
by Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on February 14, 2005 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
SQL Stress Tool Benchmark
Our first benchmark was custom-written in .NET, using ADO.NET to connect to the database. The AnandTech Forums database, which is over 14GB in size at the time of the benchmark, was used as the source database. We'll dub this benchmark tool "SQL Stress Tool" for the purposes of discussing what it does. We have done some updates to the tool since we first used it; it now supports Oracle, and MySQL. We also adjusted the test time for this test and future tests to 20 minutes. The reason for this was to ensure that we used as much memory as possible for future planned 64 bit tests.
Click to enlarge.
SQL Stress allows us to specify the following: an XML based workload file for the test, how long the test should run, and how many threads it should use in which to load the database. The XML workload file contains queries that we want executed against the database, and some random ID generator queries that populate a memory resident array with ID's to be used in conjunction with our workload queries. The purpose of using random ID's is to keep the test as real-world as possible by selecting random data. This test should give us a lot of room for growth, as the workload can be whatever we want in future tests.
Example workload:
Example Random ID Generator:
The workload used for the test was based on every day use of the Forums, which are running FuseTalk. We took the most popular queries and put them in the workload. Functions, such as reading threads and messages, getting user information, inserting threads and messages, and reading private messages, were in the spotlight. Each reiteration of the test was run for 20 minutes, with the first being from a cold boot. SQL was restarted in-between each test that was run consecutively.
The importance of this test is that it is as real world as you can get; for us, the performance in this test directly influences what upgrade decisions we make for our own IT infrastructure.
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Jason Clark - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
bthomas, read page 1 please. We focus on the window side of the house and there is no released 64bit OS or SQL server yet.Quanticles, the only measure we has was ntune which reported the HT bus running at 1GHz. Dual configuration for all tests.
Quanticles - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Did you check to make sure the HT bus was actually running at 1 GHz with an o-scope?Where you running these systems as 1P or 2P? I got the impression that you were running the tests as 1P systems and then was making recommendations on 2P systems.
bthomas - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Geez. Nobody is mentioning the fact that the Opteron is running on a 32-bit OS in these tests.Yeah, its basically a wash under these conditions, but so what..the real test would be under 64 bit. DB applications/servers are supposed to really thrive in the 64-bit realm. Why didnt you test under a 64 bit OS/DB software like Linux/Postgres|MySQL/etc ?!?
=b.t.
rivieracadman - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
I forgot to ask; Does the 152 offer SSOI or is it still SOI. From the power ratings I can guess it's still SOI. Just curious ...chucky2 - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
I like how vendors cripple the AMD offerings...sometimes ever so slightly, other times largely. Take a look at the two HP offerings listed out at the end of the article and tell me which one you'd like to buy? For $900 extra, I'll give up whatever performance benefit I'd see for the managability any day.Not AMD's fault...it's the vendors... :(
Chuck
Fluff - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Was NUMA enabled on 2003 Enterprise Edition for the 252?Did it make any difference?
This was not made clear in the article.
Unless /PAE is the equivalent.
mlittl3 - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
For those of you who are interested in what opterons will be made using 90 nm and 1 GHz hypertransport, here is the link on amd's website.http://www2.amd.com/us-en/OPN_Printer/1,,,00.html?...
Sorry it is so long but there is a lot of scripting for filtering results on the page.
To summarize, Opterons 242 (1.6 GHz) to 852 (2.6 GHz) are being updated to the new die process and HT bus.
I would like to recommend to the author of the article to include a reference section at the end of every review to relevant websites for more information. This would be similar to the reference section in the article from Johan. The above link should go there as well as any links to more indepth architecture info on both AMD's and Intel's websites. Just a thought.
skiboysteve - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
that extra period at the end of post #28 made what would have been a normal statement entirely creepy as hell...snorre - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
It would be more interesting with an update to these articles:http://anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=1982
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.html?i=1935
"The true test that remains, however, is a test comparing AMD’s Opteron to Intel’s Itanium 2. Intel was not very receptive to the idea of doing a head-to-head; not out of a fear of losing, but out of a desire not to lend AMD any credibility by showing that the Opteron is indeed a competitor to the Itanium 2. While we do believe that the Itanium 2 in its 128-way configurations is definitely out of the Opteron’s league, in the 2-way and 4-way configurations that we are interested in comparing, the two are absolutely competitors.
Whether Intel is looking to supply us with an Itanium 2 system or not, we will make that comparison."
We're still waiting...
SpaceRanger - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
I'd love to see it Jason..