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
Conclusions
Our conclusion about the Xeon E5-2690 2.9 GHz is short and simple: it is the fastest server CPU you can get in a reasonably priced server and it blows the competition and the previous Xeon generation away. If performance is your first and foremost priority, this is the CPU to get. It consumes a lot of power if you push it to its limits, but make no mistake: this beast sips little energy when running at low and medium loads. The price tag is the only real disadvantage. In many cases this pricetag will be dwarfed by other IT costs. It is simply a top notch processor, no doubt about it.
For those that prioritize performance/watt or performance/dollar, we've summarized our findings in a comparison table. We made 3 columns for easy comparison:
- In the first column, we compare Intel's newest generation with the previous one. We compare the CPUs with midrange TDP (95W).
- In the second column, we compare Intel's and AMD's midrange offerings.
- In the third column we compare CPUs with a similar pricepoint as we believe that a six-core E5-2660 will be very close to the performance of 2.3 GHz Xeon E5-2630.
We also group our benchmarks in different software groups and indicate the importance of this software group in the server market (we motivated this here).
| Software: Importance in the market |
Xeon E5-2660 vs Xeon X5650 |
Xeon E5-2660 vs Opteron 6276 |
Xeon E5-2660 6C vs Opteron 6276 |
Virtualisation: 20-50% |
|||
| ESXi + Linux |
+40% |
+40% |
+7% |
OLAP Databases: 10-15% |
|
|
|
| MS SQL Server 2008 R2 |
+30% |
+34% |
+8% |
HPC: 5-7% |
|
|
|
| LS Dyna |
+77% |
+26% |
+15% |
Rendering software: 2-3% |
|
|
|
| Cinebench |
+50% |
+37% |
+9% |
| 3DS Max 2012 (iRay) |
2% |
+12% |
+18% |
| Blender |
+9% |
+32% |
+26% |
|
|
|
|
|
Other: N/A |
|
|
|
| Encryption/Decryption AES |
+42/41% |
+38/32% |
+8/4% |
| Encryption/Decryption Twofish/Serpent |
+37/49% |
+5/2% |
-19%/-19% |
| Compression/decompression |
+35/37% |
+105/13% |
+66/-11% |
It is pretty amazing that with the exception of two rendering applications with relatively mediocre scaling, the new Xeon is able to outperform the previous Xeons by a large margin (from 30% up to 60%) in a wide range of applications. All that performance comes with lower energy consumption and a very fast I/O interface. Whether you want high performance per dollar or performance per watt, the Xeon E5-2660 is simply a home run. End of story.
For those who are more price sensitive, the Xeon E5-2630 costs less than the Opteron 6276 and performs (very likely) better in every real world situation we could test.
And what about the Opteron? Unless the actual Xeon-E5 servers are much more expensive than expected, it looks like it will be hard to recommend the current Opteron 6200. However if Xeon E5 servers end up being quite a bit more expensive than similar Xeon 5600 servers, the Opteron 6200 might still have a chance as a low end virtualization server. After all, quite a few virtualization servers are bottlenecked by memory capacity and not by raw processing power. The Opteron can then leverage the fact that it can offer the same memory capacity at a lower price point.
The Opteron might also have a role in the low end, price sensitive HPC market, where it still performs very well. It won't have much of chance in the high end clustered one as Intel has the faster and more power efficient PCIe interface.
Ultimately, our hope for stiffer competion lies with the newest Opteron "Abu Dhabi" which is based upon the "Piledriver" core. The new Opteron was after all made to operate at 3 GHz and higher clockspeeds as opposed to the meager 2.3/2.6 GHz we have seen so far. Apparantely AMD will not only be able to boost IPC a bit (by 10% or more) but they may also significantly boost the clockspeed as we have learned from this ISSC paper: "a AMD’s 4+ GHz x86-64 core code-named “Piledriver” employs resonant clocking to reduce clock distribution power up to 24% while maintaining a low clock-skew target."
This should allow AMD to get higher clockspeeds within the same power envelope. Until then, it is the Xeon E5-2600 that rules the server world.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
81 Comments
View All Comments
silverblue - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
You've put that Interlagos has 4x2MB L2, but that would only be true for Valencia; Interlagos is 8x2MB.aranyagag - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
you forgot the E5-2687W with a 150w tdp and higher speedscolonelclaw - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Hi There,Thanks for an excellent article. With regards to the rendering benchmarks, would you consider using VRay as a rendering engine? It's fast becoming industry standard, is compatible with all the big hitters (Max, Maya, Softimage etc), is cross platform, and I believe, is incredibly well coded to scale with cores.
It's also incredibly popular, not something you could say about iRay right now.
Slik - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
Would be nice if some game benchmark was included as well.colonelclaw - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Bloody hell those chips look good, and don't Intel know it; those prices make me wince.Having waited what seems like forever, I was thrilled to see the Xeon E5s finally available, right up until I did some quick maths and figured out that for my business to buy a new 2U Twin squared rendernode with 16/32 cores per node will cost us around £10,000. Still the thing is, now that those chips are available, next time we buy kit we can't afford not to choose them.
Skouperd - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
Great article... but can it run crysis?Seriously, what will happen if you plug in some high end graphics card in that machine, how will that compare from a gaming perspeective to say an LGA2011 cpu?
;-)
fudd101 - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
From the 'article' .....'The Opteron might also have a role in the low end, price sensitive HPC market, where it still performs very well. It won't have much of chance in the high end clustered one as Intel has the faster and more power efficient PCIe interface'
Well, if that's the case, why exactly would AMD be scoring so many design wins with Interlagos. Including this one ...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394515,00.as...
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Cray-Ti...
U think those guys at Cray were going for low performance ? In fact, seems like AMD has being rather cleaning up in the HPC market since the arrival of Interlagos. And the markets have picked up on it, AMD stock is thru the roof since the start of the year. Or just see how many Intel processors occupy the the top 10 supercomputers on the planet. Nuff said ...
jaskhoo - Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - link
Hi, abit blur here and would like to know if there's anyone who could enlighten abit.I'm looking to purchase a new server to work with an SQL 2012 4 core, the initial ppreference was for an E5620 which is now an outdated model but I can't go for higher E5-xxx models as all are 6 core and will affect the 4 core SQL licensing. I'm not running a huge databse but would like to know if there are any serious performance difference between the two processor. Appreciate it.
famalosa - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Les deux platines ci-dessus commençons par lance Gobelins ou la bombe tour/Canon au début de la bataille lorsque la barre de l'élixir obtient autour de 10. Je vais tout d'abord si l'ennemi a au compteur et ils ont habitude de laisser tomber tout d'abord une grosse carte ou utilisez les flèches. Puis jouer à votre avantage avec le coût de l'élixir, troupes pour la défense et une attaque forte. Déposer le Canon ou la tour au milieu de rerouter les agresseurs et pour la défense.<a href="http://clashroyalhack.fr/">CR hack</a>
famalosa - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Le pont sur la gauche est une mise en page « plus grand risque de mieux récompenser », tandis que celui de droite est un jeu plus lent que prendra de temps et patience pour gagner. Tous deux sont extrêmement compétents et me laisser pousser à Arena 7.http://clashroyalhack.fr/