The Intel Xeon E7 v2 Review: Quad Socket, Up to 60 Cores/120 Threads
by Johan De Gelas on February 21, 2014 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Intel
- Xeon
- Ivy Bridge EX
- server
- Brickland
Our Benchmark Choices
To make the comparison more interesting, we decided to include both the Quad Xeon "Westmere-EX" as well as the "Nehalem-EX". Remember these heavy duty, high RAS servers continue to be used for much longer in the data center than their dual socket counterparts. Many people considering the newest Xeon E7-4800 v2 probably still own a Xeon X7500.
Of course, the comparison would not be complete without the latest dual Xeon 2600 v2 server and at least one Opteron based server. Due to the large number of platforms and the fact that we developed a brand new HPC test (see further), we quickly ran out of time. These time constrains and the fact that we have neglected our Linux testing in recent reviews in favor of Windows 2012 and ESXi led to the decision to limit ourself to testing on top of Ubuntu Linux 13.10 (kernel 3.11). You'll see our typical ESXi and Windows benchmarks in a later review.
Benchmark Configuration
There are some differences in the RAM and SSD configurations. The use of different SSDs was due to time constraints as we wanted to test the servers as much as possible in parallel. The RAM configuration differences are a result of the platforms: for example, the quad Intel CPUs only perform at their best when each CPU gets eight DIMMs. The Opteron and Dual Xeon E5-2680 v2 server perform best with one DIMM per channel (1 DPC).
None of these differences have a tangible influence on the results of our benchmarks, as none of them were bottlenecked by the storage system or the amount of RAM that was used. The minimum amount of 64GB of RAM was more than enough for all benchmarks in this review.
We also did not attempt to do power measurements. We will try to do an apples-to-apples power comparison at a later time.
Intel S4TR1SY3Q "Brickland" IVT-EX 4U-server
The latest and greatest from Intel consists of the following components:
| CPU |
4x Xeon E7-4890 v2 (D1 stepping) 2.8GHz 15 cores, 37.5MB L3, 155W TDP |
| RAM |
256GB, 32x8GB Samsung 8GB DDR3 M393B1K70DH0-YK0 at 1333MHz |
| Motherboard | Intel CRB Baseboard "Thunder Ridge" |
| Chipset | Intel C602J |
| PSU | 2x1200W (2+0) |
Total amount of DIMM slots is 96. When using 64GB LRDIMMs, this server can offer up to 6TB of RAM! In some cases, we have tested the E7-4890 v2 at a lower maximum clock in order to do clock-for-clock comparisons with the previous generation, and in a few cases we have also disabled three of the cores in order to simulate performance of some of the 12-core Ivy Bridge EX parts. For example, a E7-4890 v2 at 2.8 GHz with 3 cores disabled (12 cores total) gives you a good idea how the much less expensive E7- 8857 v2 at 3 GHz would perform: it would perform about 7% higher than the 12-core E7-4890 v2.
Intel Quanta QSCC-4R Benchmark Configuration
The previous quad Xeon E7 server, as reviewed here.
| CPU |
4x Xeon X7560 at 2.26GHz or 4x Xeon E7-4870 at 2.4GHz |
| RAM |
16x8GB Samsung 8GB DDR3 M393B1K70DH0-YK0 at 1066MHz |
| Motherboard | QCI QSSC-S4R 31S4RMB00B0 |
| Chipset | Intel 7500 |
| BIOS version | QSSC-S4R.QCI.01.00.S012,031420111618 |
| PSU | 4x850W Delta DPS-850FB A S3F E62433-004 850W |
The server can accept up to 64 32GB Load Reduced DIMMs (LR-DIMMs) or 2TB.
Intel's Xeon E5 server R2208GZ4GSSPP (2U Chassis)
This is the server we used in our Xeon "Ivy bridge EP" review.
| CPU | 2x Xeon processor E5-2680 (2.8GHz, 10c, 25MB L3, 115W) |
| RAM |
128GB (8 x 16GB) Micron MT36JSF2G72PZ – BDDR3-1866 |
| Internal Disks | 2 x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB |
| Motherboard | Intel Server Board S2600GZ "Grizzly Pass" |
| Chipset | Intel C600 |
| BIOS version | SE5C600.86B (August the 6th, 2013) |
| PSU | Intel 750W DPS-750XB A (80+ Platinum) |
The Xeon E5 CPUs have four memory channels per CPU and support up to DDR3-1866, and thus our dual CPU configuration gets eight DIMMs for maximum bandwidth.
Supermicro A+ Opteron server 1022G-URG (1U Chassis)
This Opteron server is not comparable in any way with the featured Intel systems as it is not targeted at the same market and costs a fraction of the other machines. Nevertheless, here's our test configuration.
| CPU | 2x Opteron "Abu Dhabi" 6376 at 2.3GHz |
| RAM | 64GB (8x8GB) DDR3-1600 Samsung M393B1K70DH0-CK0 |
| Motherboard | SuperMicro H8DGU-F |
| Internal Disks | 2 x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB |
| Chipset | AMD Chipset SR5670 + SP5100 |
| BIOS version | R3.5 |
| PSU | SuperMicro PWS-704P-1R 750Watt |
The Opteron server in this review is only here to satisfy curiosity. We want to see how well the Opteron fares in our new Linux benchmarks.
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JohanAnandtech - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
I meant, I have never seen an independent review of high-end IBM or SUN systems. We did one back in the T1 days, but the product performed only well in a very small niche.Phil_Oracle - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
Contact your Oracle rep and I am sure we'd be glad to loan you a SPARC T5 server, which we have in our loaner pool for analysts and press. Would be nice if you had a more objective view on comparisons.Phil_Oracle - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
If you look at Oracles Performance/Benchmark blog, we have comparisons between Xeon, Power and SPARC based on all publicly available benchmarks. As Oracle sells both x86 as well as SPARC, we sometimes have benchmarks available on both platforms to compare.https://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/
Will Robinson - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
Intel and their CPU technology continues to impress.Those kind of performance increase numbers must leave their competitors gasping on the mat.
Props for the smart new chip. +1
Nogoodnms - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
But can it run Crysis?errorr - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
My wife would now the answer to this considering she works for ibm but considering software costs far exceed hardware costs on a life cycle basis does anyone know what the licensing costs are between the different platforms.She once had me sit down to explain to her how CPU upgrades would effect db2 licenses. The system is more arcane and I'm not sure what the cost of each core is.
For an ERP each chip type has a rated pvu metric from IBM which determines the cost of the license. Are RISC cores priced differently than x86 cores enough to partially make up the hardware costs?
JohanAnandtech - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
I know Oracle does that (risc core <> x86 core when it comes to licensing), but I must admit, Licensing is extremely boring for a technical motivated person :-).Phil_Oracle - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
In total cost of ownership calculations, where both HW and SW as well as maintenance costs are calculated, the majority of the costs (upwards of 90%) are associated with software licensing and maintenance/administration- so although HW costs matter, it’s the performance of the HW that drives the TCO. For Oracle, both Xeon and SPARC have a per core license factor of .5x, meaning 1 x license for every two cores, while Itanium and Power have a 1x multiplier, so therefore Itanium/Power must have a 2x performance/core advantage to have equivalent SW licensing costs. IBM has a PVU scale for SW licensing, which essentially is similar to Oracle but more granular in details. Microsofts latest SQL licensing follows similarly. So clearly, performance/CPU and especially per core matters in driving down licensing costs.Michael REMY - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
that would have be very good to test this cpu on 3D rendering benchmark.i can imagine the gain of time in a workstation...even the cost will be nearest a renderfarm...
but comparing this xeon to other one in that situation should have bring a view point.
JohanAnandtech - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
What rendering engine are you thinking about? Most engines scale badly beyond 16-32 threads