The new Opteron 6300: Finally Tested!
by Johan De Gelas on February 20, 2013 12:03 AM ESTConclusions
For those that prioritize performance/watt or performance/dollar and for the CPU enthusiasts, we've summarized our findings in a comparison table. We made four columns for easy comparison:
- In the first column, we compare the fastest Opteron with Intel's best offering. The closer the AMD Opteron can get to the E5-2660, the more price advantage can compensate for the higher power usage of the Opteron.
- In the second column, we compare the Opteron with the best performance per dollar ratio with a comparably priced Xeon.
- In the third column we measure how much progress AMD has made by replacing the Bulldozer core with the Piledriver core (higher IPC and clock).
- The fourth column gives you an idea of how much the small changes inside the Piledriver have improved the IPC.
We also group our benchmarks in different software groups and indicate the importance of this software group in the server market (we discussed this here). 100% means that both CPUs perform equally.
Software: Importance in the market |
Opteron 6380 vs Xeon E5-2660 |
Opteron 6376 vs Xeon E5-2630 |
Opteron 6380 vs Opteron 6276 |
Opteron 6376 vs Opteron 6276 |
Virtualisation: 20-50% |
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ESXi + Linux |
86% |
104% |
120% |
111% |
OLTP, ERP : 10% |
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|
SAP S&D 2-tier |
95%** |
N/A |
105%* |
100%* |
HPC: 5-7% |
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|
LS Dyna |
92% |
97% |
116% |
105% |
Back-end webserver: 10-15% |
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SPECjbb2013 |
85% |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
Rendering software: 2-3% |
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Cinebench |
84% |
98% |
115% |
106% |
3DS Max 2012 (Mental Ray) |
56% |
66% |
143% |
126% |
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|
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Other: N/A |
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Encryption Decryption AES |
71%77% |
94%96% |
101%101% |
100%100% |
Encryption Decryption Twofish/Serpent |
113%108% |
132%128% |
115%113% |
107%103% |
Compression decompression |
100%53% |
118%60% |
113%108% |
105%100% |
* estimate
** Rough estimate
After reviewing the Xeon-E5 we concluded:
"...it will be hard to recommend the current Opteron 6200. 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. Whether you want high performance per dollar or performance per watt, the Xeon E5-2660 is simply a home run. End of story."
To sum it up, the Xeon E5 was the best choice for most applications, as the Opteron 6200 could only leverage its price advantage in the low end virtualization and HPC market. But the lower acquisition costs were easily negated by the higher power draw and the fact that in most IT projects a few hundred dollars per server does not matter.
The new Opteron 6376 offers 5% to 11% better performance per clock, 8% lower energy consumption, 6% lower peak power draw, and an 11% lower price than the Opteron 6276. That's all good, but there is more. Keeping the G34 platform alive has a very positive effect on the OEM pricing: the Opteron servers are tangibly cheaper. The price difference is quite a bit higher than the CPU list prices suggest. You can get a 6380 based server for the price of a Xeon E5-2640 based server.
All these small steps forward make the AMD Opteron attractive again for the price conscious buyers looking for a virtualization host or an HPC crunching machine. The Opteron machines need more energy to do their job, but once again you get better performance per dollar than Intel's midrange offerings.
However, if your consulting or software costs are a lot higher than the hardware costs, the octal core Xeons offer an excellent performance/watt ratio and are by far the best performers too. In a nutshell, Intel's octal core Xeons are still unmatched, but AMD is putting some pressure on Intel's hex-core midrange offerings, and that is always good news for the customers.
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coder543 - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
You realize that we have no trouble recognizing that you've posted about fifty comments that are essentially incompetent racism against AMD, right?AMD's processors aren't prefect, but neither are Intel's. And also, AMD, much to your dismay, never announced they were planning to get out of the x86 server market. They'll be joining the ARM server market, but not exclusively. I'm honestly just ready for x86 as a whole to be gone, completely and utterly. It's a horrible CPU architecture, but so much money has been poured into it that it has good performance for now.
Duwelon - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
x86 is fine, just fine.coder543 - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
totes, ain't nobody got time for AMD. they is teh failzor.(yeah, that's what I heard when I read your highly misinformed argument.)
quiksilvr - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Obvious trolling aside, looking at the numbers and its pretty grim. Keep in mind that these are SERVER CPUs. Not only is Intel doing the job faster, its using less energy, and paying a mere $100-$300 more per CPU to cut off on average 20 watts is a no-brainer. These are expected to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with no stopping. That power adds up and if AMD has any chance to make any dent in the high end enterprise datacenters they need to push even more.Beenthere - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
You must be kidding. TCO is what enterprise looks at and $100-$300 more per CPU in addition to the increased cost of Intel based hardware is precisely why AMD is recovering server market share.If you do the math you'll find that most servers get upgraded long before the difference in power consumption between an Intel and AMD CPU would pay for itself. The total wattage per CPU is not the actual wattage used under normal operations and AMD has as good or better power saving options in their FX based CPUs as Intel has in IB. The bottom line is those who write the checks are buying AMD again and that's what really counts, in spite of the trolling.
Rory Read has actually done a decent job so far even though it's not over and it has been painful, especially to see some talent and loyal AMD engineers and execs part ways with the company. This happens in most large company reorganizations and it's unfortunate but unavoidable. Those remaining at AMD seem up for the challenge and some of the fruits of their labor are starting to show with the Jaguar cores. When the Steamroller cores debut later this year, AMD will take another step forward in servers and desktops.
Cotita - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Most servers have a long life. You'll probably upgrade memory and storage, but CPU is rarely upgraded.Guspaz - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Let's assume $0.10 per kilowatt hour. A $100 price difference at 20W would take 1000 kWh, which would take 50,000 hours to produce. The price difference would pay for itself (at $100) in about 6 years.So yes, the power savings aren't really enough to justify the cost increase. The higher IPC on the Intel chips, however, might.
bsd228 - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
You're only getting part of the equation here. That extra 20w of power consumed mostly turns into heat, which now must be cooled (requiring more power and more AC infrastructure). Each rack can have over 20 2U servers with two processors each, which means nearly an extra kilowatt per rack, and the corresponding extra heat.Also, power costs can vary considerably. I was at a company paying 16-17cents in Oakland, CA. 11 cents in Sacramento, but only 2 cents in Central Washington (hydropower).
JonnyDough - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
+as many as I could give. Best post!Tams80 - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
I wouldn't even ask the NYSE for the time day.