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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Kevin G - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
With POWER8 due out later this year, I suspect they'll be updating their old benchmarks with the newer hardware.The real question is why hasn't IBM ever submitted benchmarks for their z-series mainframes? Performance data there is very lacking. Though z-series costumers tend to fall into two groups: legacy mainframe applications and those who desire ultimate RAS regardless of the performance.
Phil_Oracle - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Yes, we shall see what Power8 delivers and when.. Its already a year late according to IBM's "3-year cadence". Power7 is 4 years old this month! As for Mainframe, its not about performance, it’s about uptime but at some point, you can get uptime through clustering and redundancy and then performance becomes the issue. We once did a POC comparing performance of latest Mainframe vs SPARC M6 and we estimated SPARC M6-32 to be 2-3x higher MIPs! as you can imagine, customer is migrating.Kevin G - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Everyone has been suffering delays with chips it seems. Intel even with their process advantage looks to be a 9 month to a year beyond schedule for their 14 nm roll out. IBM/TSMC/GF/Samsung are similarly behind in their roll out of 22/20 nm class logic.There has been a desire for ages to get off of mainframes in some industries. Reliability is 'good enough' and performance is better but the reason some don't migrate is simply software costs. I used to work in such a shop and the mainframe hanged around due to the extensive cost of porting and validating all the legacy software. Also 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' was a theme at that place and well, the mainframe was never broken. I figure that many main frame shops fall into that category.
A decked out M6-32 out running a mainframe in some tests by 2x within reason for some CPU tests. I'm more curious as to what specific workloads they were. In IO bound tests, the mainframe is still competitive due to raw amount of coprocessors and dedicated hardware thrown into the niche. Flash in the enterprise have helped narrowed the IO gap significantly but I don't think it has managed to surpass the ancient mainframe architecture.
PowerTrumps - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
Probably because most of their numbers have held up by and large to the competition. Unlike Sun SPARC and now Oracle SPARC which had disappeared from the benchmark scene for years with T1-T3 and most Fujitsu based servers. Oracle had cherry picked obscure benchmarks with T4 and now with T5 they have had a lot to make up. So, although you make it sound impressive let's not forget the past and the gap that needed to be filled.Phil_Oracle - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
I'm a 15 yr Sun veteran now at Oracle so yes, I agree that in past, with older generation SPARC, especially the first generation T-Series, Sun only benchmarked where the T-Series did well and avoided benchmarks where it didn't as it was designed for web tier workloads. That was 5 generations ago! But that’s my point. A vendor isn't going to publish a poor or worse looking result that previous version so every vendor "cherry picks" as you say, Not having a benchmark tells me that either the previous version is better, new version isn't that much better or its worse (whether in throughput, per/core, etc). In any case, the more benchmarks, the better sign that its leading.. And while SPARC T4 was really the first Oracle SPARC developed processor, it caught up to competing CPUs, and with SPARC T5 and even SPARC M6, its hard to argue that SPARC T5 is not leading. With 16 x cores, 8 x threads/core @ 3.6GHz, and glue less scalability to 8-sockets, and SPARC M6 @ 12-cores, 8 x threads/core up to 32-sockets and now almost a year old, Intels latest Xeon Ivybridge-EX has finally caught up, but in certain areas, like DB and middleware performance, still lacking in benchmark proof points to show its superior. And as for Power8, well, we'll just have to wait and see what the systems will deliver and when. Clearly they are aiming at SPARC for high end, now that Itanium is all but dead, and on entry-mid range, competing against Xeon.thunng8 - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link
Great for intel that they have finally marginally overtaken a several year old IBM box in the sap sd benchmark. Only trouble is the 2.5x faster POWER8 (compared to POWER7) is coming in the next few months.extide - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link
Keep in mind that IBM POWER Chips are typically 200-250W TDP Chips. So yeah, on a performance per watt scale, these are quite impressive!Kevin G - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link
POWER7 is 200W and POWER7+ is 180W. Still higher than Intel but not as bad as you'd think.JohanAnandtech - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
Do you have a source for that? It is pretty hard to find good info on those CPUs. Or I have missed it somehow.Kevin G - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
IBM, like Intel, bins chips by power consumption. It looks like there are indeed 250W POWER7's but they do scale down to 150W.800W MCM for super computing, 200W POWER7 die @ 3.83 Ghz
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2009/11/27/ibm_...
The final shipping speed was 3.83 Ghz which falls into the 3.5 to 4.0 Ghz range target in the article.
250W for high end boxes & 150W for blade systems:
http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=12393...
Note that this was an early IBM paper and that 300W per socket figure could have been provisioning for future dual die POWER7+ modules
250W for POWER7 @ 4.0 Ghz and 250W for POWER7+ @ 4.5 Ghz:
http://www-05.ibm.com/cz/events/febannouncement201...
I'm trying to find the source to the 180W POWER7+ figure. The difficulty is that it appeared in a discussion about Intel's Poulson Itanium which consumes 10W less.