Intel's newest Quad Xeon MP versus HP's DL585 Quad Opteron
by Johan De Gelas on November 10, 2006 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Server CPUs overview
As the CPU is still one of the most important cost factors in a server, we want to give an overview of the currently available server CPUs. We'll start with the Intel CPUs.
The biggest advantage of Intel's newest Bensley platform is the longevity: the Dempsey, Woodcrest, and quad core Clovertown Xeon all use the same socket and "Bensley" platform. Even the successor of Clovertown, the 45nm Harpertown, is confirmed to be compatible with the Bensley platform.
The Opteron CPU comes in two forms: one for DDR and one for DDR-2. The DDR-2 version uses 4 model numbers, the DDR version three.
The Opteron's TDP numbers are the maximum power consumption numbers, while Intel's numbers are "thermal solution design targets". In practice, this means that you should subtract about 5% from AMD's TDP numbers to compare the two brands. AMD is not doing too well in the dual CPU arena: it needs about 30W more power per dual core CPU and CPU clock speed has hardly increased the past two years. Luckily for AMD, the power disadvantage is negated by the use of FB-DIMMs instead of DDR2 on the Intel platform.
As the CPU is still one of the most important cost factors in a server, we want to give an overview of the currently available server CPUs. We'll start with the Intel CPUs.
The biggest advantage of Intel's newest Bensley platform is the longevity: the Dempsey, Woodcrest, and quad core Clovertown Xeon all use the same socket and "Bensley" platform. Even the successor of Clovertown, the 45nm Harpertown, is confirmed to be compatible with the Bensley platform.
| Intel Xeon Overview | |||||||||
| Intel CPU | Clock | Codename | L2 | L3 | FSB | Mem bandwidth | TDP | In test? | Price |
| Xeon MP 7140M | 3.4GHz | Tulsa | 2x1MB | 16MB | 200 MHz Quad | 6.4 GB/s | 150W | No | $1,980 |
| Xeon MP 7130M | 3.2GHz | Tulsa | 2x1MB | 8MB | 200 MHz Quad | 6.4 GB/s | 150W | yes | $1,391 |
| Xeon MP 7120M | 3GHz | Tulsa | 2x1MB | 4MB | 200 MHz Quad | 6.4 GB/s | 95W | No | $1,117 |
| . | |||||||||
| Xeon DP 5160 | 3GHz | Woodcrest | 4MB | - | 333 MHz Quad | 21 GB/s | 80W | Yes | $851 |
| Xeon DP 5150 | 2.66GHz | Woodcrest | 4MB | - | 333 MHz Quad | 21 GB/s | 65W | No | $690 |
| Xeon DP 5148 | 2.33GHz | Woodcrest | 4MB | - | 333 MHz Quad | 21 GB/s | 40W | No | $519 |
| Xeon DP 5140 | 2.33GHz | Woodcrest | 4MB | - | 333 MHz Quad | 21 GB/s | 65W | No | $455 |
| Xeon DP 5130 | 2GHz | Woodcrest | 4MB | - | 333 MHz Quad | 21 GB/s | 65W | No | $316 |
| Xeon DP 5120 | 1.86GHz | Woodcrest | 4MB | - | 266 MHz Quad | 17 GB/s | 65W | No | $256 |
| . | |||||||||
| Xeon DP 5080 | 3.73GHz | Dempsey | 2x2MB | - | 266 MHz Quad | 8.5 GB/s | 130W | No | $851 |
| Xeon DP 5063 | 3.2GHz | Dempsey | 2x2MB | - | 266 MHz Quad | 8.5 GB/s | 95W | No | $369 |
| Xeon DP 5060 | 3.2GHz | Dempsey | 2x2MB | - | 266 MHz Quad | 8.5 GB/s | 130W | No | $316 |
The Opteron CPU comes in two forms: one for DDR and one for DDR-2. The DDR-2 version uses 4 model numbers, the DDR version three.
| AMD Opteron Overview | |||||||||
| AMD CPU | Clock | Codename | L2 | L3 | HT | Mem bandwidth | TDP | In test? | Price |
| Opteron 8220 SE | 2.8GHz | Santa Rosa | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 8.5 GB/s | 119W | No | $2,149 |
| Opteron 8218 | 2.6GHz | Santa Rosa | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 8.5 GB/s | 95W | No | $1,514 |
| Opteron 8216 | 2.4GHz | Santa Rosa | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 8.5 GB/s | 95W | No | $1,165 |
| Opteron 8214 | 2.2GHz | Santa Rosa | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 8.5 GB/s | 95W | No | $873 |
| Opteron 8216 HE | 2.4GHz | Santa Rosa | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 8.5 GB/s | 68W | No | $1,340 |
| . | |||||||||
| Opteron 885 | 2.6GHz | Egypt | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 6.4 GB/s | 95W | No | $1,514 |
| Opteron 880 | 2.4GHz | Egypt | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 6.4 GB/s | 95W | yes | $1,165 |
| Opteron 875 | 2.2GHz | Egypt | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 6.4 GB/s | 95W | No | $873 |
| Opteron 875 HE | 2.2GHz | Egypt | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 6.4 GB/s | 55W | No | $1,514 |
| . | |||||||||
| Opteron 2220 SE | 2.8GHz | Santa Rosa | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 8.5 GB/s | 95W | No | $786 |
| Opteron 2216 | 2.6GHz | Santa Rosa | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 8.5 GB/s | 95W | No | $611 |
| Opteron 2214 | 2.4GHz | Santa Rosa | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 8.5 GB/s | 95W | No | $450 |
| Opteron 2214 | 2.2GHz | Santa Rosa | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 8.5 GB/s | 95W | No | $377 |
| Opteron 2216HE | 2.4GHz | Santa Rosa | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 8.5 GB/s | 68W | No | $531 |
| . | |||||||||
| Opteron 285 | 2.6GHz | Italy | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 6.4 GB/s | 95W | No | $611 |
| Opteron 280 | 2.4GHz | Italy | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 6.4 GB/s | 95W | No | $450 |
| Opteron 275 | 2.2GHz | Italy | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 6.4 GB/s | 95W | No | $377 |
| Opteron 275 HE | 2.2GHz | Italy | 2x1MB | - | 1000 MHz DDR | 6.4 GB/s | 55W | yes | $611 |
The Opteron's TDP numbers are the maximum power consumption numbers, while Intel's numbers are "thermal solution design targets". In practice, this means that you should subtract about 5% from AMD's TDP numbers to compare the two brands. AMD is not doing too well in the dual CPU arena: it needs about 30W more power per dual core CPU and CPU clock speed has hardly increased the past two years. Luckily for AMD, the power disadvantage is negated by the use of FB-DIMMs instead of DDR2 on the Intel platform.
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Niv KA - Saturday, November 11, 2006 - link
I belive Clovertown is going to be announced somethime in the next week or two. On thursday I went to the "Microsoft: Ready for a New Day" here in Belgium (where Bill gates made an appearance of about half an hour, although not related!) and at the Intel booth they were showing off 4 servers which where running an "unannounced platform"! One of the technical guys at the booth let me in on a little "secret"! The Supermicro Systems were running "two sockets each box, each socket 4 cores! Eight cores each box! And the best part is its woodcrest arch!". I asked him if it was clovertown and he sayed that he "is just a technical assistant, not alowed to say anything" but he made the answer clear on his face! Clovertown is ready to go, and its FAST! They were running benchmarks all the time! I will post pictures on the fourms if I have enough time, but I have a HUGE project I need to hand in by tuesday so I might forget!
---Niv K Aharonovich
PS: About the "outdated" system comments above, I am fully on Anandtechs side, it is impossible for an online newspaper company to make enough money to BUY everything, esp. in the $15,000 area! The only way is to ask for it from the vendors, and the vendors decide what to provide! Good job anandtech and continue the good work!!!!!!!
Dennis Travis - Saturday, November 11, 2006 - link
Great job as usuall. Keep up the excellent work.AnandThenMan - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link
Another bullshit "comparison" nice job guys. You are comparing an AMD system that has been out for over 2 years. Useless review as usual. Why are you not comparing new with new? Why don't you use a Xeon box that was out 2 years ago?Anandtech's reviews have become more and more worthless.
JohanAnandtech - Saturday, November 11, 2006 - link
1. AMD has confirmed that they feel the HP DL585 with 4x 880 is a worthy competitor for our Tulsa machine.2. This server is 5 months old, not 2 years. As I made clear in the article, this is the 2006 revision.
As we invest a lot of time of effort to convince OEMs and others to send us extremely expensive hardware for review, spend weeks tweaking benchmarks and OS to give you benchmarks, we hope we may expect some useful feedback from our readers.
Just writing "useless" with little or no explanation why you feel it is worthless is not helping anyone.
AnandThenMan - Sunday, November 12, 2006 - link
I was going to post an explanation as to why the "review" is very poorly done. But Scientia over at AMDz did a far better explanation then I could come up with.http://www.amdzone.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&...">http://www.amdzone.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&...
Either the review is intentionally authored to show Intel in as best light as possible, or the author is incompetent and should not be doing reviews at all. I stand by what I originally posted, the review is bullshit.
primer - Saturday, November 11, 2006 - link
Agreed.goldfish2 - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link
Can I just quickly mention how nice it is to read an article where the author has managed to present all the relevant informatiom in as concise a manner as is possible, good job.JohanAnandtech - Saturday, November 11, 2006 - link
Thanks!Server reviews are extremely time consuming so most publications are not interested in it, so I am glad AT allows me to do this kind of reviews.
AllYourBaseAreBelong2Us - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link
Can you guys get a new DL585 G2 and do benchmarks with this new model instead?Viditor - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link
I thought this too...the G2 has 7 PCIe slots (3 x8, 4 x4), is $800 less expensive, and offers newer SCSI controllers.