The Intel Xeon 5670: Six Improved Cores
by Johan De Gelas on March 16, 2010 3:39 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Decision Support benchmark: Nieuws.be
| Decision Support benchmark Nieuws.be | |
| Operating System | Windows 2008 Enterprise RTM (64 bit) |
| Software | SQL Server 2008 Enterprise x64 (64 bit) |
| Benchmark software | vApus + real-world "Nieuws.be" Database |
| Database Size | > 100GB |
| Typical error margin | 1-2% |
The Flemish/Dutch Nieuws.be site is one of the newest web 2.0 websites, launched in 2008. It gathers news from many different sources and allows the reader to completely personalize his view on all this news. Needles to say, the Nieuws.be site is sitting of top of a pretty large database, more than 100 GB and growing. This database consists of a few hundred separate tables, which have been carefully optimized by our lab (the Sizing Server Lab).
Nieuws.be was so kind to let us test the MS SQL 2008 database for CPU benchmarking. We used a log taken between 10 and 11 AM, when traffic is at its peak. VAPUS, the stress testing software developed by the Sizing Server Lab, analyzes this log and simulates real users by performing the actions they performed on the website. In this case we used the resulting load on the database for our test. 99% of the load on the database are selects, about 5% of them are stored procedures. Network traffic is 6.5 MB/s average and 14 MB/s at the most. So our 1 gigabit connection has still a lot of headroom. Disk Queue Length (DQL) is at 2 in the first round of tests, but we only report the results of the subsequent rounds where the database is in a steady state. We measured a DQL close to 0 during these tests, so there is no tangible intervention of the harddisks. This test is as real world as it gets! All servers were tested in a dual CPU configuration.
The Dual Xeon X5670 is not scaling so well here, as 50% more cores only result in 20% higher performance. Still, until the newest AMD Opterons arrive, there is not any competition for the six-core Xeon. It outperforms the nearest competitor by 40%.
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DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
Are you seriously going to buy a dual socket server (or workstation at a minimum) to play games? I'd rather see them take the time to do more enterprise benchmarking than waste it on what 0.00001% of the market wants.Starglider - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - link
No but some HPC / CAD / scientific computing benchmarks would be good. Presumably we'll get the full suite when Nehalem EX and Magny Cours turn up.vitchilo - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
I want to encode video, I mean a s***load of video + play games from time to time.rajod1 - Monday, February 1, 2016 - link
You see you are writing server cpu reviews to punk kids that somehow only think of playing a game on a server. They just do not get it. Babies with computers, maybe this could play mario. These are good for boring server work, database, HyperV, etc. ECC ram. And they are still the best bang for the buck in a used server in 2016.Starglider - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
> You can now use up to two DIMMs at 1333MHz,> while the Xeon 5500 would throttle back to
> 1066MHz if you did this.
Presumably you mean 'up to two DIMMs per channel'?
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
Not sure about the 2 DIMMs per channel forcing 1066Mhz. We've been ordering Dell R710s with the X5570 and 12x4GB of memory, which runs at 1333Mhz.TurboMax3 - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - link
You are right. I work for Dell, since a couple of months after the launch of the 5500 Xeons we could do 2 DIMM per Channel (DPC) at 1333 MHz. It is a property of the chipset, rather than the CPU.Also, going to 3 DPC will clock the memory down to 800 MHz, and this has been available in R710 (and similar products from others) for some time now.
The 8GB DIMM is getting cheap enough to be quoted without shame. 16 GB DIMMS still cost as much as my car.
Navier - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
Do you have information on Nehalem-EX and how that is going to fit in the updated road map with the latest 6 core systems?DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
The Nehalem-EX (probably called the Xeon 7500 series) are for quad socket boxes. From what I've been hearing, they should be released on 3/30. Not sure when the Poweredge R910 and Proliant DL580 G7 will show up though.duploxxx - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - link
it is launched on 30/3 but actually only available mid june, call it a paper launch or whatever you want.