The Intel Xeon 5670: Six Improved Cores
by Johan De Gelas on March 16, 2010 3:39 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Benchmark configuration
First of all, I like to offer my thanks to my colleague Tijl Deneut who helped me out with the complex virtualization benchmarks.
None of our benchmarks required more than 20 GB of RAM. Database files were placed on a three drive RAID0 Intel X25-E SLC 32GB SSD, with log files on one Intel X25-E SLC 32GB. Adding more drives improved performance by only 1%, so we are confident that storage is not our bottleneck.
Important note: We threw in our older results of the “Expensive Quad Sockets vs. Ubiquitous Dual Sockets” article. We are well aware that a quad Opteron system is not the natural competitor for a dual Xeon X5670 CPU setup. However, the performance of the quad socket AMD systems should give us a very rough estimate where the new octal core and twelve core Magny Cours Opterons will land. So we reused our 4 month older benchmarks to get an idea what Magny Cours is capable off.
Xeon Server 1: ASUS RS700-E6/RS4 barebone
Dual Intel Xeon "Gainestown" X5570 2.93GHz, Dual Intel Xeon “Westmere” X5670 2.93 GHz
ASUS Z8PS-D12-1U
6x4GB (24GB) ECC Registered DDR3-1333
NIC: Intel 82574L PCI-EGBit LAN
PSU: Delta Electronics DPS-770 AB 770W
Opteron Server 1 (Quad CPU): Supermicro 818TQ+ 1000
Quad AMD Opteron 8435 at 2.6GHz
Quad AMD Opteron 8389 at 2.9GHz
Supermicro H8QMi-2+
64GB (16x4GB) DDR2-800
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
PSU: Supermicro 1000W w/PFC (Model PWS-1K01-1R)
Opteron Server 2 (Dual CPU): Supermicro A+ Server 1021M-UR+V
Dual Opteron 2435 "Istanbul" 2.6GHz
Dual Opteron 2389 2.9GHz
Supermicro H8DMU+
32GB (8x4GB) DDR2 800
PSU: 650W Cold Watt HE Power Solutions CWA2-0650-10-SM01-1
vApus/Oracle Calling Circle Client Configuration
First client (Tile one)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83 GHz
Foxconn P35AX-S
GB (2x2GB) Kingston DDR2-667
NIC: Intel PRO/1000
Second client (Tile two)
Single Xeon X3470 2.93GHz
S3420GPLC
Intel 3420 chipset
8GB (4 x 2GB) 1066MHz DDR3
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DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
Are you seriously going to buy a dual socket server (or workstation at a minimum) to play games? I'd rather see them take the time to do more enterprise benchmarking than waste it on what 0.00001% of the market wants.Starglider - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - link
No but some HPC / CAD / scientific computing benchmarks would be good. Presumably we'll get the full suite when Nehalem EX and Magny Cours turn up.vitchilo - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
I want to encode video, I mean a s***load of video + play games from time to time.rajod1 - Monday, February 1, 2016 - link
You see you are writing server cpu reviews to punk kids that somehow only think of playing a game on a server. They just do not get it. Babies with computers, maybe this could play mario. These are good for boring server work, database, HyperV, etc. ECC ram. And they are still the best bang for the buck in a used server in 2016.Starglider - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
> You can now use up to two DIMMs at 1333MHz,> while the Xeon 5500 would throttle back to
> 1066MHz if you did this.
Presumably you mean 'up to two DIMMs per channel'?
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
Not sure about the 2 DIMMs per channel forcing 1066Mhz. We've been ordering Dell R710s with the X5570 and 12x4GB of memory, which runs at 1333Mhz.TurboMax3 - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - link
You are right. I work for Dell, since a couple of months after the launch of the 5500 Xeons we could do 2 DIMM per Channel (DPC) at 1333 MHz. It is a property of the chipset, rather than the CPU.Also, going to 3 DPC will clock the memory down to 800 MHz, and this has been available in R710 (and similar products from others) for some time now.
The 8GB DIMM is getting cheap enough to be quoted without shame. 16 GB DIMMS still cost as much as my car.
Navier - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
Do you have information on Nehalem-EX and how that is going to fit in the updated road map with the latest 6 core systems?DigitalFreak - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
The Nehalem-EX (probably called the Xeon 7500 series) are for quad socket boxes. From what I've been hearing, they should be released on 3/30. Not sure when the Poweredge R910 and Proliant DL580 G7 will show up though.duploxxx - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - link
it is launched on 30/3 but actually only available mid june, call it a paper launch or whatever you want.