Intel Woodcrest, AMD's Opteron and Sun's UltraSparc T1: Server CPU Shoot-out
by Johan De Gelas on June 7, 2006 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Introduction
In Q1 of 2006, AMD-based systems accounted for over $1 billion, or one sixth of the x86 server space. The Opteron grew from a 6% market share to 15% market share in the astonishingly short period of only one year. In four socket servers, the Opteron grabbed 48% of the US market, up from 23% last year. What's more, this is not a "US only" phenomenon: the Opteron has a firm grip on 36% of the worldwide four socket market. Bear in mind that less than 4 years ago, AMD was nothing more than a blip on the server CPU radar.
Sun, which was getting strangled by the high volume Intel Xeon and the mighty Itanium, has also made a big comeback. An attractive UltraSparc IV+ with a fast, integrated L2 cache and massive L3 cache keeps the traditional Sparc buyers loyal, while the well-designed Galaxy Opteron based servers are pretty popular and the UltraSparc T1 "throughput CPU" attacks the midrange x86 market.
It's high time for Intel to find a proper response, as the competition is taking the wind out of Intel's server CPU sails. What's the answer? A Xeon based on the Core architecture: Woodcrest. We compared the Core and K8 architectures just a month ago. Memory disambiguation, large OOO buffers and a large but low latency shared L2 cache should make the Core architecture more efficient in server related tasks than any other x86 CPU.
This article compares a Woodcrest based Intel server with its closest rivals: AMD Opteron based servers such as the HP DL385 and MSI K2-102A2M and the UltraSparc T1 based Sun T2000 server.
In Q1 of 2006, AMD-based systems accounted for over $1 billion, or one sixth of the x86 server space. The Opteron grew from a 6% market share to 15% market share in the astonishingly short period of only one year. In four socket servers, the Opteron grabbed 48% of the US market, up from 23% last year. What's more, this is not a "US only" phenomenon: the Opteron has a firm grip on 36% of the worldwide four socket market. Bear in mind that less than 4 years ago, AMD was nothing more than a blip on the server CPU radar.
Sun, which was getting strangled by the high volume Intel Xeon and the mighty Itanium, has also made a big comeback. An attractive UltraSparc IV+ with a fast, integrated L2 cache and massive L3 cache keeps the traditional Sparc buyers loyal, while the well-designed Galaxy Opteron based servers are pretty popular and the UltraSparc T1 "throughput CPU" attacks the midrange x86 market.
It's high time for Intel to find a proper response, as the competition is taking the wind out of Intel's server CPU sails. What's the answer? A Xeon based on the Core architecture: Woodcrest. We compared the Core and K8 architectures just a month ago. Memory disambiguation, large OOO buffers and a large but low latency shared L2 cache should make the Core architecture more efficient in server related tasks than any other x86 CPU.
This article compares a Woodcrest based Intel server with its closest rivals: AMD Opteron based servers such as the HP DL385 and MSI K2-102A2M and the UltraSparc T1 based Sun T2000 server.
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zsdersw - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
I'm not saying the board is particularly stellar.. I'm saying that it's referred to by MSI as a "server" product.ashyanbhog - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
Irespective of what MSI says,fact is there were better mainstream boards for Anandtech to choose from if a honest, independent review was their intention
zsdersw - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
I.E., your comment belongs under someone else's.. not mine.zsdersw - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
And that's completely irrelevant to what I was saying.ashyanbhog - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
all I was saying is, its nice to see Intel finally making a comebackbut Anandtech seems have conducted a skewed benchmark that favours Intel, that unfairly increases the performance gap between Opteron and Woodcrest
In the final summary of the review he says
"In one word: Woodcrest rocks!"
There are quite a few holes in the review, the motherboard is just on of them,
I quoted MySQL number errors in my posts above,
just search for "ashyanbhog" in the page and read my earlier comments if you are interested.
AnandThenMan - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
What you're saying in general is irrelevant. Intel calls their integrated graphics "high performance" but that doesn't make it so.
MSI calling that a server board is just marketing, it does not represent what a true, high performance server class mobo is all about. Not that it's a bad piece of hardware, it is good for the price to be sure. But it is NOT a server class product.
zsdersw - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
At a certain price point, it could certainly be a nice entry-level server board.Performance alone isn't what makes a server-class motherboard a server-class motherboard.
ashyanbhog - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
One of the motherboards used in this review is a cheap piece that trades performance to keep price low.
Why was that motherboard selected over mainstream server/workstation boards that are proven to offer slightly better performance? Why pick a 250$ MSI board for opteron over $500 boards from Tyan, Iwill, Supermicro or others. The Intel Xeon "Inderwale" gets a $500 board, so price could not have been the issue.
So what's the point in using a Single Channel board for this benchmark, when price was not a limitation?
Single memory channel boards like the one from MSI, are known to offer lower performance than dual / dedicated memory channel boards when used in 2P Opteron configurations. Dual Channel boards are the mainstream boards for 2P Opteron systems. There are plently Server boards available in Dual / dedicated memory lane configuration. There are enough reviews on the net to show the performance diff b/w single memory channel boards and dual memory channel boards
The issue is not about the MSI or its class, the issue is why did Anandtech pick a Single memeory channel board instead of a more mainstream dual memory channel board.
Hope that clears up "zsdersw"'s query
zsdersw - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
I'm not making excuses for the choices that were made regarding this comparison test. I'm talking about what constitutes a "server-class" motherboard.ashyanbhog - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
Game PC review link for the above commenthttp://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=tig...">http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=tig...