Hyper Threading

Intel's Hyper Threading technology has been widely accepted in the enterprise and desktop markets, to the point where the vast majority of systems ship with Hyper Threading enabled.

Our tests have shown that Hyper Threading improved performance 3% - 5% on average and thus, we left it enabled for all of our tests here.

The Tests

We ran two sets of tests for this comparison: an updated version of our own home-grown tests on the AnandTech Forums Database, as well as another more strenuous test representative of enterprise-class transactional database serving applications. We will discuss the two tests in greater detail in the coming pages, but first, the basic hardware configuration for our tests:

Opteron System
Dual 250 Opteron processors
4GB PC3200 DDR (Kingston KRX3200AK2) memory
Tyan K8W motherboard
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server (32 Bit)
8 x 36GB 15,000RPM Ultra320 SCSI drives in RAID-0

Xeon System
Dual 3.6GHz Xeon processors
4GB DDR2 memory
Intel SE7520AF2 motherboard
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server (32 Bit)
8 x 36GB 15,000RPM Ultra320 SCSI drives in RAID-0

Nocona - New Life into the Xeon Line-up Constructing a Database Benchmark (average load)
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  • TrogdorJW - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link

    41 - Oh, I know that. I've used Netware networks and I've used Windows Server networks. (I've administered both.) The Netware servers were less powerful machines, and yet they still tended to be faster, and NDS was so much less of a pain in the ass.... I used to live next door to Novell HQ, and I have lots of friends that work there, so it was always rather disappointing to see all the big corporations being sucked (*suck*ed) in by the MS marketing. These days, I work for a large corporation that went with Windows server for everything. It works, but I'm amazed at how slow a lot of operations are. Bah.
  • Cygni - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link

    Heres the link to the article:
    http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2163
  • Cygni - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link

    Mikeymasta's post is pure comedy. He’s apparently unaware that effectively 100% of Win DB work is done in a 32bit environment, unaware that Nocona is targeted directly at this Wintel server market, unaware that much DB work is done on NT/2k/2k3 based systems, and even unaware that anandtech HAS ALREADY DONE A Nocona Vs. Hammer for DB in 64bit Linux article. Heck, the kid doesnt even know that misleading is one word.

    I dont care how many trillions of linux based computers he claims to be the admin of, or how many billions of jillions of hits he gets per nanosecond, hes still an idiot to the nth power. Hes the "gayest", if you will.
  • johnsonx - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link

    TrogdorJW,

    NDS runs great on Windows servers; indeed most of Novell's product line runs on both NetWare and Windows Server, and alot of it runs on Linux too (much more now of course that Novell bought SUSE, plus NetWare 7 will be a customized Linux kernel so it'll ALL eventually be Linux). Even if you've GOT to run Windows, a network of Windows Servers running NDS, GroupWise, & ZENWorks will be a much happier network (with happier users and admins) than one running AD, Exchange and SMS.
  • TrogdorJW - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link

    #39 - Unless you are doing something much more complex than running a file server and domain controller (and firewall), I still say NetWare is tough to beat. I would also take Novell's Directory Services over Microsoft's Active Directory in a heartbeat. Ah, well - too late for that. Yet another instance of the superior Microsoft Marketing Machince winning out. :p
  • johnsonx - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link

    @Mikeymasta,

    Just because you are all geeked up about BSD doesn't mean the real world is. In the real world, a large majority of servers run Windows, like or not. Myself, I'm still geeked up about Novell NetWare, but I don't delude myself into thinking that everyone else is. Before you chuckle keep in mind that there are most likely more NetWare servers running out there in the real world of corporate IT than Linux servers.



  • Jason Clark - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link

    Mikey, the tests are absolutely not misleading, contrary to your belief ALOT of the IT organizations use windows and are not interested in BSD, or BSD based benchmarks. We're talking about an opterating system that has at least 80% of the market here, people are interested in how it currently peforms with the latest hardware.

    Since there is no RELEASED version of 64 bit windows yet, we have to wait for permission to run some benchmarks. We are working on it. As for linux benchmarks, visit the linux section.

    Relax.
  • mikeymasta - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link

    This has to be one of the gayest mis leading benchmarks I have ever seen, comparing server grade 64 bit CPUs on a 32bit operating system.
    As far as I am concerned Anandtech is still for average tech folks and you are seriously miss leading people and giving them opinions about these 64bit CPUs in a flawed test enviroment.
    Get FreeBSD or Linux 64 bit based OS's and do something real. convert your db system over to MySQL if you have to.

    Maybe I am being a bit harsh but you can't just do these kind of misleading kind of tests.
    As an admin/developer running many *nix based machines that get millions of hits a day this is just annoying article to read
    Your not helping anyone!
  • gchcker - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link

    just wondering
    do server boards use the 1000 ht bus that is available to desktops for amd?
    if they do are they being used on these benchmarks?
  • Pumpkinierre - Monday, September 13, 2004 - link

    For once I agree with Viditor- good article Jason and Ross. And I agree with karlreading on the phrasing and spelling. Only the petty get caught up with the detail. You guys are flat out with the new technology and we appreciate your sacrifice. Put the "broke wind" metaphor back in. Either in the vulgar sense or as I think you intended in the esoteric sense, it is good.

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