Intel Xeon 1.7GHz: King of the High End?

There are a few important points to take away from these results. First of all, it is obvious that the incredible FSB and memory bandwidth that the Xeon platform offers is coming in handy quite a bit in this test. Even the single processor Xeon at 1.7GHz is able to complete the test in less time than the Dual Pentium III 933.

The Dual Intel Xeon running at 1.7GHz is able to complete the test in 64% of the time of both the single Xeon 1.7 and the dual Pentium III 933.

The Xeon isn't the only kid on the block with a decent amount of bandwidth at its disposal as the single processor Athlon-C is actually able to beat the single Intel Xeon 1.7 by 19%. One can only wonder what a pair of these 1.2GHz processors would be able to accomplish in this test...

Final Words

We originally wanted to include Web Server benchmarks in this review as well, unfortunately our test creation took longer than expected so you won't get to see the Xeon as a Web Server until our next MP review which should be coming up soon.

Currently the new Intel Xeon has very little competition. With the incredible amount of FSB and memory bandwidth the platform offers, the Intel Xeon is unstoppable. We have proved that this sort of processing power not only comes in handy in the server arena but also in desktop and high-end workstation environments as well. It really comes down to the types of applications you run, and whether your usage patterns would be better helped by adding a second processor.

However there are a few hurdles that the Xeon must overcome in order for it to be successful. If you haven't noticed, with only two motherboard manufacturers signed on to produce i860 motherboards it's pretty obvious that very few are taking the Xeon seriously. This isn't without good reason; with support for no more than 4GB of RAM and with RDRAM still priced higher than DDR SDRAM, the i860 platform isn't ideal for the truly high end servers that demand a minimum of 4GB of memory. Luckily this will be taken care of with the ServerWorks Grand Champion HE, leaving the i860 to take the workstation/entry-level server markets.

The real question on everyone's mind is how does the i860 and the Intel Xeon compare to the upcoming 760MP and the Athlon 4? We have been benchmarking that very combination for weeks now and soon enough we will be able to provide you with the definitive answer in many more test scenarios than those we just presented to you.