The Xeon E5-2600: Dual Sandy Bridge for Servers
by Johan De Gelas on March 6, 2012 9:27 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Virtualization
- Xeon
- Opteron
- Cloud Computing
Since you can save quite a bit of power when running at 50% CPU load and lower by enabling the "Balanced" power policy, we test our medium load (125 users) benchmark with both the "Balanced" as the "High Performance" setting.
No real surprises, besides a small one: the Xeon 5650 manages to keep up with the best Xeon E5. The Xeon E5 seems to favor the lower p-states in the "Balanced" mode, as the response times double compared to high performance mode. In the case of the Xeon E5, this is not really a problem: a 2.2 GHz Xeon E5 still manages to respond as fast as a 3 GHz Opteron.
Despite the fact that our server was equipped with lots of expansion capabilities, the Xeon E5 manages to keep the power consumption very low. Even the 135W TDP Xeon E5-2690 consumes 6% less than the previous generation of 95W Xeons and up to 27% less than the Opterons with the balanced power policy. The new Xeons E5 offer an unbeateable performance/watt ratio when running SQL databases.
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MrSpadge - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link
Put some sarcasm tags in there to save some people from getting confused...cynic783 - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link
definitely sarcastic. i was actually surprised not to see any fanbois so I thought I'd pretendbadjohny - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link
I have no doubt these chips or something similar will end up in the new mac pros. Who are in a very bad need of a refresh.Shuxclams - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link
Looking at a complete visualization transformation in our server room, looks like the decision was made for us as far as architecture. Wow....TeXWiller - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link
<quote>The new Xeon also supports faster DDR-3 1600. Contrary to the Interlagos Opteron which can only support this memory speed with one DIMM per channel</quote>Interlagos supports memory up to DDR3-1600 using two single rank memory modules, or one single rank and one double rank module if using registered memory, and two single rank modules if using unbuffered memory. DDR3-1866 is supported on a single load-reduced registered, or on a single unbuffered module per channel. It depends on the board manufacturer and more importantly, it can be all read on the manual, so to speak.davegraham - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link
AMD Interlagos can support more than 1 DDR3-1600 ECC/REG dimm per channel. I run 8 on a single socket 6276 and it works at the rated speed.TeXWiller - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Too bad these kinds of errors in the articles are not usually fixed.JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
I will double check .meloz - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link
Just wanted to congratulate Johan on a job well done. Very thorough analysis, Intel have achieved a very dominant position with this new platform and this is reflected in pricing of their processors as well!AMD was already a sub 10% niche (with a market share to mirror) in the data center, now even that niche has evaporated.
New Opterons (based on Piledriver) might decrease the performance gap to Intel under certain benchmarks, but I doubt they will beat Intel. Intel has plenty of SKUs above the quickest AMD Opterons to adjust prices and kill any new challenge from AMD, instantly.
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Thanks! Although I hope Intel gets a bit more competition though.