AMD's 12-core "Magny-Cours" Opteron 6174 vs. Intel's 6-core Xeon
by Johan De Gelas on March 29, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Virtualization & Consolidation
VMmark - which we discussed in great detail here - tries to measure typical consolidation workloads: a combination of a light mail server, database, fileserver, and website with a somewhat heavier java application. One VM is just sitting idle, representative of workloads that have to be online but which perform very little work (for example, a domain controller). In short, VMmark goes for the scenario where you want to consolidate lots and lots of smaller apps on one physical server.
(*) preliminary benchmark data
Cisco has produced the first VMmark score for the Xeon X5600 series. The Cisco server with two X5680s at 3.3GHz achieved an impressive 35.83 score with 26 VMmark tiles. Twenty-six tiles, that is good for 156 VMs! Based on this number we can estimate where the Xeon X5670 will land. The 6174 numbers are based on AMD’s own preliminary data.
VMmark is a clear victory for the Intel CPUs. Contrary to the SAP market, AMD can play the pricing card here. As long as you do not require dynamic resource scheduling, the software licences costs are nowhere like those of typical ERP projects. So the pricing of the hardware matters more. Also, contrary to other applications, there is no bonus for single threaded performance. The usage models of Databases, 3D Animation software and other all include scenarios where a number of cores will be idling while the others are working very hard. In a virtualization scenario where you are running tons of VMs, single threaded performance does not matter. So while Intel is clearly winning here, servers based on the newest Opteron might still be on the shortlist of those looking for good performance per dollar.
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Cogman - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
It should be noted that newer nehelam based processors have specific AES encryption instructions. The benchmark where the xeon blows everything out of the water is likely utilizing that instruction set (though, AFAIK not many real-world applications do)Hector1 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I read that Intel is expected to launch the 8-core Nehalem EX today. It'll be interesting to compare it against the 12-core Magny Cours. Both are on a 45nm process.spoman - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
You stated "... that kind of bandwidth is not attainable, not even in theory because the next link in the chain, the Northbridge ...".How does the Northbridge affect memory BW if the memory is connected directly to the processor?
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Depending on your definition, the nortbridge is in the CPU. AMD uses "northbride" in its own slides to refer to the part where the memory controller etc. resides.Pari_Rajaram - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Why don't you add STREAM and LINPACK to your benchmark suites? These are very important benchmarks for HPC.JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Stream... in the review.piooreq - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Hi Johan,For last few days I did several tests with Swingbench CC with similar database configuration but I achieved a bit different results, I’m just wondering what exactly settings you put for CC test itself. I mean about when you generate schema and data for that test? Thanks for answer.
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
Your question is not completely clear to me. What is the info you would like? You can e-mail if you like at johanATthiswebsitePointcomzarjad - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Can't figure out if hyperthreading were enabled on Intels. Particularly interested in virtualization benchmark with hyperthreading both enabled and disabled. Also of interest would be an Office benchmark with a bunch of small VMs (1.5 to 2GB) to simulate VDI configuration.JohanAnandtech - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
Hyperthreading is always on. But we will follow up on that. A VDI based hypervisor tests is however not immediately on the horizon. The people of the VRC project might do that though. Google on the VRC project.