Intel's newest Quad Xeon MP versus HP's DL585 Quad Opteron

Analyses: the Xeon MP and Opteron Server

A CPU is only one aspect of choosing a server; at the end of the day it is the server that you can afford that makes you decide for one platform or another. The 4U Intel SR4850HW4 isn't very different from the SR6850HW4, so we can compare our Xeon MP test machine to the HP Opteron server.

Server Feature Comparison
	SR6850HW4 (Intel SR4850HW4)	HP DL585 Model 2006
Hardware
CPU	4x Intel Xeon 70xx and 71xx	Opteron 8xx
Fastest CPU	Xeon MP 3.4 GHz /16MB L3	Opteron 885 2.6 GHz
Max Mem Capacity	64 GB DDR2 400 FB Dimms (16 x 4 GB)	128 GB DDR266 32 GB DDR400
Mem Type	ECC DDR2 400	DDR400/333/266
Chipset	E8501	AMD 8000 chipset
RAS
ECC Memory	Yes	Yes
Memory RAID	Yes	No
Hot plug memory	Yes	No
Memory Sparing	Yes	No
Memory Mirroring	Yes	No
Hotswappable PCI	Yes on PCI-X 133 and PCIe	No
Hotswappable Fans	6 (4)	8
Hotswappable PSU	Yes, 1+1	Yes,1+1
Integrated Onboard
Video Chip	ATI RADEON 7000 VGA PCI	ATI Rage XL
Video RAM	16 MB SDRAM	8 MB SDRAM
Max. Resolution	1600x1200	1280x1024
PCIe x16/x8	0/1	0/0
PCIe x4/x1	4/0	0/0
PCI-X (133/100)	1/2	2/6
PCI	0	0
USB Front	3	0
USB Rear	2	2
LAN	Intel Dual Gigabit	NC7782 Dual PCI-X Gigabit
Server management	Intel Server management	HP Ilo
Serial Ports	1	1
Storage
Controller	LSI Logic LSI53C1030	HP Smart Array 5i Plus Ultra 3
Cache	Optional	64 MB BBU
Interface	Dual-Channel Ultra320 SCSI SCA	Dual-Channel Ultra320 SCSI SCA
Disks	10 (5)	4
RAID	0,1,1E	0,1,1+0,5
5.25 bays	2	1
Dimensions & Power
Form Factor	6U (4U)	4U
Weight (kg)	60 (40)	30
PowerSupply	2x1570W	2x 870W
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URL	SR6850HW4	HP DL585 2006

The Xeon MP offers much more in the way of RAS features than the Opteron machine. The HP DL585 also has a few shortcomings: it does not offer any PCIe expansion slots, the SCSI controller is an old SCSI 160 model, and there are no USB ports on the front of the machine. Being able to quickly load some network drivers from a USB stick is very convenient compared to tinkering in the back of your rack.

However, the HP is the winner for memory intensive HPC applications: it can use DDR1-400 DIMMs which are quite a bit faster than the DDR2-400 FB DIMMs Intel uses. We were disappointed that both 4U designs do not offer more than 4-5 disk bays. If you are a medium sized enterprise and you have only one or a few heavy duty database applications, you can save a lot of money if you don't have to buy an external storage rack. With a RAID-1 setup for the operating system and programs, you only have two disks left to install your database on a second RAID-1 partition. Both the HP DL585 and the Intel SR4850HW4 basically force you to invest in an external storage rack in this case. Some 3U solutions like Supermicro's offer 16(!) disk bays and might be a better fit for a compute intensive transactional database. The HP and Intel machine are more suited for a HPC machine or as the host of a SAN storage rack to house a massive database/ERP system.

To make a fair comparison between the Xeon MP and AMD Opteron 8xx platforms, we decided to compare the costs of similar HP Xeon MP and HP Opteron machines, configuring them as similarly as possible.

Price Comparison
Server	HP ProLiant DL580 G4 3.20GHz	HP ProLiant DL585 G2 2.4GHz - Rack Server
CPUs	4x Intel Xeon MP 7130 M	4x AMD Opteron 8216 DC
Memory	4 Memory boards x 2 x 1 GB DDR2-400	8x 1 GB DDR2-667
Storage	HP Smart Array P400/256 PCIe Controller	HP Smart Array P400/512 Controller with battery
NIC	HP Dual embedded NC371i Gigabit	HP Dual embedded NC371i Gigabit
PSU	Dual 910/1300W power supplies	Dual 910/1300W hot plug power supplies
DVD	SlimLine DVD-ROM Drive (8x/24x) Option Kit	SlimLine DVD-ROM Drive (8x/24x) Option Kit
Price	$15,343	$13,184

The price disadvantage of the Xeon MP is more than $2000, which is not huge but still tangible. It is the result of the fact that you have to pay an extra $400 per Xeon CPU and $1000 for two extra memory boards. It is possible to save $1000 if you only get two memory boards, but that is not advisable. As 4GB DIMMs are extremely expensive, this means that you limit your server to 16GB (8x2GB) and that you cannot use the more advanced RAS features such as memory mirroring.

Power

How much power can we save by choosing the 95W TDP Opteron over the 150W TDP Xeon MP? We tested all machines with only one power supply running. DBS and PowerNow! were not enabled.

Power Requirements
System	Configuration	Max / Idle Power Usage (100% / <1% CPU load, W)
HP DL585	4 CPUs - 16 GB RAM	657 / 520
Intel Xeon MP 7130M	4 CPUs - 16 GB RAM	885 / 460 (620)

Both machines use huge fast turning fans which consume a lot of energy. To give you an idea of what this means, while idling the power consumption of the Xeon MP machine fluctuated between 460W and 620W. The 620W figure was generated when all the fans where turned on, while the 460W result was measured when the fans were silent. The HP DL585 did not use this on/off fan system, and consumed 520W while running idle. Once running at 100% load, the Xeon MP consumed 200W more than the Opteron machine while running SPECjbb2005. For your information, our Supermicro system consumed 310 W with 4 GB and about 360 W with 12 GB of RAM

Conclusion so far

Yes, our testing is not done. We still have to test other databases, and we are running benchmarks with Bea's JVM while you are reading this. Those benchmarks will be presented in our Clovertown - Intel's new quad core server CPU - review. In this review we focused a little more on the actual servers. So what can we conclude so far?

The Xeon 7140MP "Tulsa" is nothing less than a massive improvement over the previous Xeon 7041: it consumes less, performs a lot better (see the SPEC int/fp numbers) and is much less expensive. The new Xeon MP needs fewer optimizations than the Opteron to perform well in Java applications. Or if we look at our preliminary Bea Webrockit numbers, it performs better than the quad Opteron with a highly optimized JVM in applications with a big memory footprint (like SPECjbb2005) thanks to its massive L3 cache. In applications where the large L3 cache doesn't play a big role, the relatively poor server performance of the "NetBurst" architecture becomes visible again: our MySQL benchmark runs a lot better on the AMD Opteron and Intel's newest Core architecture Xeons. Power consumption is still rather high though, and the HP Opteron server consumed over 230W less.

In a nutshell, the new Xeon MP will have a hard time convincing people who are leaning towards an Opteron server or want the best performance/watt. But on the other hand, the decent performance and superior RAS features will keep the customers who desire high availability in the Intel camp, while the previous Xeon MP was such a poor performer that many people had no other choice than the AMD Opteron in the quad socket market.

When "High-end RAS" is less important, the excellent performance of the Xeon 5160 based Supermicro 6015 server shows how much potential the Xeon DP "Clovertown" has. Clovertown is nothing more than two Xeon DP 51xx on one chip, but it could give our quad monsters a hard time. You will find out more very soon....