Westmere-EX: Intel's Flagship Benchmarked
by Johan De Gelas on May 19, 2011 1:30 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Intel
- Xeon
- Cloud Computing
- Westmere-EX
vApusMark II Response Time
Each tile in vApusMark II demands 18 virtual CPUs: four for the Oracle OLTP test, eight for the MS SQL Server OLAP test, and six for the three web application VMs (two CPUs each). Therefore, a four tile test will require 72 virtual CPUs. A quad Xeon E7-4870 contains 40 cores and 80 threads with Hyper-Threading enabled. With a test that puts 72 virtual CPUs to work, you cannot measure the total throughput of the quad Xeon E7. In fact, some of those 72 virtual CPUs are not working at 100% all of the time. For example, the CPU load caused by the web VMs shows a lot of spikes. Thus, we can not interprete the throughput numbers without a look at the response times.
Back to our benchmark or throughput scores. Ideally, we should measure throughput at exactly the same response times. But with our current stress testing software, trying to keep response time the same would be an extremely time consuming process.
Since the quad Opteron shows a 40% increase in response time from 4 to 5 tiles (or from 20 to 25 VMs), we believe that the four tile score (149) is more representative of the "real performance". The extra throughput that the five tile test delivers comes at a response time price that is too high.
The response time of the Quad Xeon 7560 increases 9% when we try to load it with five extra VMs. In this case, the "real and fair" throughput score is a little bit harder to determine. It is somewhere between the score of 4 tiles and 5 tiles, probably around 180 or so.
In case of the Quad Xeon E7, however, things are crystal clear. Running 20 or 25 VMs does not make any difference: the response times stay in the same league. In this case we take the highest score to be the real one.
So if we take response times into account, the quad E7-4870 is about 35% faster than its predecessor (243 vs 180) and about 63% faster than the AMD system in our test (243 vs 149). AMD's fastest processor is the 2.5GHz 6180SE now. This CPU is clocked around 13% higher and should thus be able to reach a score of around 168. That means the Xeon E7-4870 should still have a 44% (or more) advantage over its nearest but much cheaper competitor in this particular workload.
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L. - Thursday, June 2, 2011 - link
Err... no it's not the same price.Besides, "a lot worse on benchmarks" is a huge pile of shit, if that was the case, why would Cray and others take Opteron for SC ?
Why would anyone, in fact, go out of their habits to buy a chip from the underdog ?
Believe me, even if you see a lot favoring Intel, there's a lot favoring AMD that's less shown but there regardless..
As I said, same perf/watt on the anand benchmarks for two chips that are a die shrink away from each other... this is ludicrous.
Casper42 - Thursday, May 19, 2011 - link
I had heard previously that 32GB DIMM Support (Quad Rank) was actually coming from Westmere CPUs themselves as opposed to Mobo or Chipset.The part of the review where you talk a little about the Hardware Intel sent over makes it seem like the Server is the part responsible for the 32GB DIMM support.
Perhaps you could research and clarify a little?
Michael REMY - Friday, May 20, 2011 - link
cinebench benchmark is missing so much...My lord anandtech...?
why didn't you test cinebench on this god machine ?
why not ?
why do you thinh this kind of machine is preferend to server/network instead 3D application ?
even a single cinebench (which is a x64 portable application in windows ) need less 15 minutes to download, unpack, run,re-rerun the test...
why no 3d benchmark in this test. i 'm so desapointed...
:-(
JohanAnandtech - Saturday, May 21, 2011 - link
I'll run that for you, but Cinebench is limited to 64 threads. Other suggestions you would like to see?Veteran_69 - Friday, May 20, 2011 - link
Looking at the power consumption and results. It is clear to me that AMD is better in the Perf/Watt performance. Even with an outdated platform (Why no tests with magny-cours again?)they manage to perform better with the same currentdraw.
JohanAnandtech - Saturday, May 21, 2011 - link
"(Why no tests with magny-cours again?)"What do you mean by this? The AMD Opteron 6174 is one of the best Magny-cours available.
Veteran_69 - Friday, May 20, 2011 - link
Since my previous comment was deleted for whateve reason. I'll rephrase.Why arent there any perf/wat figures? If you look at the data it is Clear that an old AMD platform offers superior Perf/Watt. I also noticed any tests with Magny-cours as a competition is missing?
silverblue - Friday, May 20, 2011 - link
The Opteron 6174 and 6176 are Magny-Cours processors, so they were indeed tested. I believe the choice in using the 6174 for the majority of the review would be down to the 6176's higher TDP as discussed at the following link:http://www.anandtech.com/show/2978/amd-s-12-core-m...
behold4r - Friday, May 20, 2011 - link
I have very much enjoyed reading this article as well as the previous one about the 4p systems of intel which are in fact very interesting i must say, because benchmarks about such systems are very rare to find on the net.I would only like to ask anandtech.com if it is possible to see any rendering benchmarks on such a system. I am using some 3D software and i would very much like to see how the AMD system with the 48 cores is doing when rendering (with mental ray and vray preferably).
I focus on the AMD server system because it really is a very good price per performance example whereas Intel is indeed ahead performance wise, but the prices for an Intel 4P system are astronomical to say the least. I personally believe that very few companies need such a thing, while most of them can do well with an AMD system.
And since you are talking about virtualization, if a company needs more power, just buy another 4P AMD system, the overall result will be a faster system (by far) than a single Intel one, while having the price of a single Intel server! (3K+ for a single intel cpu chip is just outrageous, intel charges like there is noone else on this planet with an equivalent product, at least for the x86 market). Though two AMD systems will use a little more power than a single Intel one (~1150W for 2 AMD servers instead of ~900W for a single Intel based on the info of this article, which is not that much ahead if you think of the performance you gain).
Then again there are the infrastructure costs (more 10 gig ports for the extra system, extra UPS load thus more UPS power to handle the extra system, extra space in the rack, and of course extra cooling for the 2nd system). Which I think these issues are the real deal and hence will make the final decision.
Anyway, that's all i wanted to say. Again i only wanted to ask for some rendering benches, if it such a hustle than at least a mere cinebench 11.5 would be fine.
Thanks
Kiijibari - Saturday, May 21, 2011 - link
Where is AES in the CPU-Z screenshot, is it not supported ?Would be very strange for a server CPU, wouldn't it ?