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
The SKUs
The Opteron 6176 looks a bit ridiculous as it delivers only 4% more performance at 30% higher power and 20% higher prices. The real reason behind this CPU is to battle another tanker, the Nehalem EX that Intel is going to launch tomorrow. The TDP and clockspeeds of that huge chip are very similar. If your application scales poorly and you don't care about power consumption, the X5677 is your champion; it is probably the fastest chip on the market for applications with low thread counts.
| AMD vs. Intel 2-socket SKU Comparison | |||||||||
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Intel Xeon Model
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Cores | TDP | Speed (GHz) | Price | AMD Opteron Model | Cores | TDP | GHz | Price |
| W5680 | 6 | 130W | 3.30 GHz | $1663 | 6176 SE | 12 | 105/137W | 2.3 GHz | $1386 |
| X5670 | 6 | 95W | 2.93 GHz | $1440 | |||||
| X5660 | 6 | 95W | 2.80 GHz | $1219 | 6174 | 12 | 80/115W | 2.2 GHz | $1165 |
| X5650 | 6 | 95W | 2.66 GHz | $996 | 6172 | 12 | 80/115W | 2.1 GHz | $989 |
| X5677 | 4 | 130W | 3.46 GHz | $1663 | 2439SE | 6 | 105/137W | 2.8 GHz | ? |
| X5667 | 4 | 95W | 3.06 GHz | $1440 | |||||
| 6168 | 12 | 80/115W | 1.9 GHz | $744 | |||||
| E5640 | 4 | 80W | 2.66 GHz | $744 | 6136 | 8 | 80/115W | 2.4 GHz | $744 |
| E5630 | 4 | 80W | 2.53 GHz | $551 | 6134 | 8 | 80/115W | 2.3 GHz | $523 |
| E5620 | 4 | 80W | 2.40 GHz | $387 | 6128 | 8 | 80/115W | 2.0 GHz | $266 |
| L5640 | 6 | 60W | 2.26 GHz | $996 | 6164 HE | 12 | 65/? W | 1.7 GHz | $744 |
| 6128 HE | 8 | 65/? W | 2.0 GHz | $523 | |||||
| 6124 HE | 8 | 65/? W | 1.8 GHz | $455 | |||||
| L5630 | 4 | 40W | 2.13 GHz | $551 | |||||
| L5620 | 4 | 40W | 1.86 GHz | $440 | |||||
The most interesting parts that AMD offers are the dodeca-core 6174 (2.2GHz), the octal-core 6136 (2.4GHz) and the octal-core low power 6128 (2.0GHz). The 6174 targets those with well scaling multi-threaded applications such as huge databases and virtualized loads. The 8-core 6136 might even be better as most schedulers find it easier to distribute threads and process over a power of 2 cores. Lots of applications also don't scale beyond 16 cores and the chip comes with a 200MHz clockspeed bonus and a very reasonable price.
The 6128 HE is also an interesting one. The 6128 HE might be a good way to reconcile low response times with low power, but we'll have to find that out later.
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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.