Intel "Harpertown" Xeon vs. AMD "Barcelona" Opteron
by Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on September 18, 2007 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
AS3AP
This graph shows that at idle the Intel systems use approximately 28% more power than the AMD systems. We can safely assume this is mostly due to Intel's use of FB-DIMMs -- and the results will be even worse as additional memory is added.
For the first two load points it is very close but AMD is able to lead by a small margin. Once we hit load point three the Xeon E5472 is able to take the lead with the X5365 close behind. You can clearly see the improvement of Harpertown over Clovertown here as Harpertown is as much as 13% faster than an equivalently clocked Clovertown. Harpertown is also able to outpace Barcelona by as much as 27%. You can also see that Barcelona is able to outperform dual-core Opteron by as much as 38%, despite the much slower clock speed.
All quad-core processors exhibit similar CPU utilization for all load points. Again, we see the improvements of Harpertown as it consistently uses less CPU than Clovertown.
Keep in mind that the Xeon X5365 parts are 120W TDP and the Xeon E5472 parts are 80W TDP. Intel is getting much closer to competing with AMD on system power consumption but is still not there. Harpertown still uses as much as 14% more power than AMD.
At the lower load points, where the platforms are very similar in performance, the AMD systems are able to take the lead by as much as 17%. From load point four and above the Xeon E5472 is able to pull ahead slightly, ending with a maximum lead of 11%.
This graph shows that at idle the Intel systems use approximately 28% more power than the AMD systems. We can safely assume this is mostly due to Intel's use of FB-DIMMs -- and the results will be even worse as additional memory is added.
For the first two load points it is very close but AMD is able to lead by a small margin. Once we hit load point three the Xeon E5472 is able to take the lead with the X5365 close behind. You can clearly see the improvement of Harpertown over Clovertown here as Harpertown is as much as 13% faster than an equivalently clocked Clovertown. Harpertown is also able to outpace Barcelona by as much as 27%. You can also see that Barcelona is able to outperform dual-core Opteron by as much as 38%, despite the much slower clock speed.
All quad-core processors exhibit similar CPU utilization for all load points. Again, we see the improvements of Harpertown as it consistently uses less CPU than Clovertown.
Keep in mind that the Xeon X5365 parts are 120W TDP and the Xeon E5472 parts are 80W TDP. Intel is getting much closer to competing with AMD on system power consumption but is still not there. Harpertown still uses as much as 14% more power than AMD.
At the lower load points, where the platforms are very similar in performance, the AMD systems are able to take the lead by as much as 17%. From load point four and above the Xeon E5472 is able to pull ahead slightly, ending with a maximum lead of 11%.
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Final Hamlet - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
I don't wanna argue with you over AMD vs. Intel, because you know: Doing so on the Internet is like running in the Special Olympics - even if you win, you are still retarded...Nevertheless, you can't even calculate.
If 2.0 GHz is the basis and you lift it to 2.5 GHz, it is NOT a 20% improvement, but RATHER 25%. Learn calculating percentages, it helps man, it helps...
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Dude, you just don't have a clue....Accord99 - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Barcelona only kills on $/performance because it's being compared to the higher-end Intel SKUs . There are much cheaper 2.33GHz Clovertowns and comparable Harpertowns. Meanwhile Harpertown pretty much guarantees Intel performance superiority for the forseeable future.Justin Case - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Beyond a certain price difference, it's cheaper to buy two systems than to buy a faster system. Most (granted, not all) software that can run efficiently on multi-core CPUs can also run efficiently on multiple nodes. A single, more expensive system can still be preferable if you have space constraints, of course, but I suspect Intel will lower its prices a bit as a response to Barcelona.Personally I would like to see a comparison between two systems with a similar price.
Accord99 - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Most (granted, not all) software that can run efficiently on multi-core CPUs can also run efficiently on multiple nodes.I wouldn't say most, more like a few. Plus, a lot of expensive software are licensed by the socket, so any savings on the CPU is minor compared to the overall costs of software.
Two systems also take up more space and consume more power, and the trend of virtualization also leads to fewer, bigger servers.
Justin Case - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Just out of curiosity, what software are you thinking about that scales well to multiple cores but cannot run on multiple nodes?Rendering can be done in render farms, most servers can run in multi-node load-balancing configrations, etc.. The only field that comes to mind where multiple nodes really aren't doable is scientific / HPC, which needs very fast access to a shared memory pool. But the days of glory of the monolithic supercomputer are kind of past.
chucky2 - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
At work (extremely large telecomm company) we don't run each box more than 50% load for failover reasons. So when I'm looking at these numbers, to me it seems like AMD is doing pretty good with 2.0GHz CPU's vs. 3.0GHz Intel CPU's.I'd really like to see how the scaling goes with Barcelona from say 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0GHz.
I think at 2.5-2.7GHz is when we're really going to see Barcelona start to come into its own...
Chuck
Justin Case - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
I think this shows the same trend from the previous generation, in terms of performance per watt: AMD rules for servers (low / medium CPU loads), Intel rules for workstations and render nodes (high CPU loads).And both are complete overkill for desktop systems, but I'm sure Microsoft will find a way to make Windows crawl on them. :)
HPC / FEA / etc. is also high CPU load but it also needs low memory latency and high bandwidth (where AMD has an advantage), so these benchmarks don't really tell us much. My guess is Intel will have a small advantage (despite the slower memory access), at least until Barcelona hits 2.5 GHz or so.
firewolfsm - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
This review seems biased. If you want to run only the 2GHz part at least calculate the performance per clock because it looks like Barcelona has Intel beat in a lot of the benchmarks. Meaning 2.5GHz would be much more competitive. and you also should have run the 3.2 GHz K8.Jason Clark - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
As for 3.2GHz, our reasoning was it was a high wattage part, and it didn't make sense to include it. At the wattage it runs at, perf/watt was not pretty.