The Xeon E5-2600: Dual Sandy Bridge for Servers
by Johan De Gelas on March 6, 2012 9:27 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Virtualization
- Xeon
- Opteron
- Cloud Computing
Conclusions
Our conclusion about the Xeon E5-2690 2.9 GHz is short and simple: it is the fastest server CPU you can get in a reasonably priced server and it blows the competition and the previous Xeon generation away. If performance is your first and foremost priority, this is the CPU to get. It consumes a lot of power if you push it to its limits, but make no mistake: this beast sips little energy when running at low and medium loads. The price tag is the only real disadvantage. In many cases this pricetag will be dwarfed by other IT costs. It is simply a top notch processor, no doubt about it.
For those that prioritize performance/watt or performance/dollar, we've summarized our findings in a comparison table. We made 3 columns for easy comparison:
- In the first column, we compare Intel's newest generation with the previous one. We compare the CPUs with midrange TDP (95W).
- In the second column, we compare Intel's and AMD's midrange offerings.
- In the third column we compare CPUs with a similar pricepoint as we believe that a six-core E5-2660 will be very close to the performance of 2.3 GHz Xeon E5-2630.
We also group our benchmarks in different software groups and indicate the importance of this software group in the server market (we motivated this here).
| Software: Importance in the market |
Xeon E5-2660 vs Xeon X5650 |
Xeon E5-2660 vs Opteron 6276 |
Xeon E5-2660 6C vs Opteron 6276 |
Virtualisation: 20-50% |
|||
| ESXi + Linux |
+40% |
+40% |
+7% |
OLAP Databases: 10-15% |
|
|
|
| MS SQL Server 2008 R2 |
+30% |
+34% |
+8% |
HPC: 5-7% |
|
|
|
| LS Dyna |
+77% |
+26% |
+15% |
Rendering software: 2-3% |
|
|
|
| Cinebench |
+50% |
+37% |
+9% |
| 3DS Max 2012 (iRay) |
2% |
+12% |
+18% |
| Blender |
+9% |
+32% |
+26% |
|
|
|
|
|
Other: N/A |
|
|
|
| Encryption/Decryption AES |
+42/41% |
+38/32% |
+8/4% |
| Encryption/Decryption Twofish/Serpent |
+37/49% |
+5/2% |
-19%/-19% |
| Compression/decompression |
+35/37% |
+105/13% |
+66/-11% |
It is pretty amazing that with the exception of two rendering applications with relatively mediocre scaling, the new Xeon is able to outperform the previous Xeons by a large margin (from 30% up to 60%) in a wide range of applications. All that performance comes with lower energy consumption and a very fast I/O interface. Whether you want high performance per dollar or performance per watt, the Xeon E5-2660 is simply a home run. End of story.
For those who are more price sensitive, the Xeon E5-2630 costs less than the Opteron 6276 and performs (very likely) better in every real world situation we could test.
And what about the Opteron? Unless the actual Xeon-E5 servers are much more expensive than expected, it looks like it will be hard to recommend the current Opteron 6200. However if Xeon E5 servers end up being quite a bit more expensive than similar Xeon 5600 servers, the Opteron 6200 might still have a chance as a low end virtualization server. After all, quite a few virtualization servers are bottlenecked by memory capacity and not by raw processing power. The Opteron can then leverage the fact that it can offer the same memory capacity at a lower price point.
The Opteron might also have a role in the low end, price sensitive HPC market, where it still performs very well. It won't have much of chance in the high end clustered one as Intel has the faster and more power efficient PCIe interface.
Ultimately, our hope for stiffer competion lies with the newest Opteron "Abu Dhabi" which is based upon the "Piledriver" core. The new Opteron was after all made to operate at 3 GHz and higher clockspeeds as opposed to the meager 2.3/2.6 GHz we have seen so far. Apparantely AMD will not only be able to boost IPC a bit (by 10% or more) but they may also significantly boost the clockspeed as we have learned from this ISSC paper: "a AMD’s 4+ GHz x86-64 core code-named “Piledriver” employs resonant clocking to reduce clock distribution power up to 24% while maintaining a low clock-skew target."
This should allow AMD to get higher clockspeeds within the same power envelope. Until then, it is the Xeon E5-2600 that rules the server world.
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think-ITB-live-OTB - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link
Can i ask you a question? do you at least get paid when you bend over for Intel?These are Server Chips - who cares about single-threaded application performance.. or Corporate IPOs. AMD has delivered far greater TCO/performance than Intel has for at least a Decade and running.
You want to praise a company like a Deity? ARM Holdings. nuff said. They can design a 35 dollar computer that can decode H.264 better than Intel can on SoCs that run 4x's the price. Currently have more Chips in more devices than in Intels entire history and Push Power envelopes far beyond anything Intel could ever muster.
Just you wait before the Storm ARM and its Licensees unleash as it will eventually take over ALL markets including the Server space (Calxeda much?). Oh and as for Apple. (an ARM Licensee itself... i can see them moving to in-house ARM designs pretty soon). 4-6-8 Core Cortex A15 (with A7 core for low power iPod/tablet sync) Macbook Airs anyone?
Intel is becoming the strongest of the Dinosaurs. But even the T-Rex fell eventually.
swizeus - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
We have been using the Flemish/Dutch Web 2.0 website Nieuws.be as a benchmark for some time. 99% of the loads on the database are selects and about 5% of them are stored procedures.The database is loaded 104%. is it possible ?
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Stored procedures can contain selects :-)fredisdead - Saturday, April 7, 2012 - link
From the 'article' .....'The Opteron might also have a role in the low end, price sensitive HPC market, where it still performs very well. It won't have much of chance in the high end clustered one as Intel has the faster and more power efficient PCIe interface'
Well, if that's the case, why exactly would AMD be scoring so many design wins with Interlagos. Including this one ...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394515,00.as...
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Cray-Ti...
U think those guys at Cray were going for low performance ? In fact, seems like AMD has being rather cleaning up in the HPC market since the arrival of Interlagos. And the markets have picked up on it, AMD stock is thru the roof since the start of the year. Or just see how many Intel processors occupy the the top 10 supercomputers on the planet. Nuff said ...
InsaneScientist - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Johan, where in the specs where you have this line:Transistors (Billion) 2,26 2x 1,2 2x 904 1,17
I sure hope that 2x 904 (Billion) is a typo... otherwise AMD has some serious explaining to do. ;)
Should be 2x ,904 (I think? Would be 2x .904 for me, I assume you follow the same rules...)
iliev - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Page 5, Benchmark ConfigurationR2208GZ4GSSPP specs table... E5-2660 is 2.2Ghz, and not 2.9GHz
dodge776 - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Hi Johan,Always look forward to reading your server reviews at AT, but no SAPS benchmarks this time?
ppennisi - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
For maximum VMware performance on Opteron Interlagos cpu under VMWARE it's better to disable C1E and enable, where available, HPC mode.I found myself on a fresh installation of ESXi 5.0 on Dell R715 that leaving C1E enable literally crippled vm performance.
boudini - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
I'm not sure I would recommend using iray as a reliable benchmark renderer in 3ds max. It is not a self configuring mental ray, but an unbiased renderer which behaves fairly differently to mental ray, and most other renderers such as vray, final render and brazil. It is comparible to maxwell and fryrender, but is very new compared to those two longer established unbiased render engines. It also attempts to use the gpu to add to its calculations as well - which could significantly skew results.Using mental ray or vray might well give you quite a different result, and besides I don't think iray is widely used in the industry.
omega4711 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
This. The results of iray are mostly dependent on the GPU. The lack of proper scaling certainly isn't due to Amdahl's law. Just use mentalray with small enough render buckets and you can easily satisfy 64+ threads.Also, due to the limitations of iray, it can (at this moment) only be used in about 1-3% of real world scenarios.
Please, for all the people that care about these benchmarks, use mentalray and/or vray.
Otherwise, it's a brilliant article.