The new Opteron 6300: Finally Tested!
by Johan De Gelas on February 20, 2013 12:03 AM ESTBenchmark Configuration
Unfortunately, the Intel R2208GZ4GSSPP is a 2U server, which makes it hard to compare it with the 1U Opteron "Interlagos" and 1U "Westmere EP" servers we have tested in the past. We will be showing a few power consumption numbers, but since a direct comparison isn't possible, please take them with a grain of salt.
Intel's Xeon E5 server R2208GZ4GSSPP (2U Chassis)
| CPU | Two Intel Xeon processor E5-2660 (2.2GHz, 8c, 20MB L3, 95W) |
| RAM | 64GB (8x8GB) DDR-1600 Samsung M393B1K70DH0-CK0 |
| Motherboard | Intel Server Board S2600GZ "Grizzly Pass" |
| Chipset | Intel C600 |
| BIOS version | SE5C600.86B (01/06/2012) |
| PSU | Intel 750W DPS-750XB A (80+ Platinum) |
The Xeon E5 CPUs have four memory channels per CPU and support DDR3-1600, and thus our dual CPU configuration gets eight DIMMs for maximum bandwidth. The typical BIOS settings can be found below.
Not visible in the above image is that all prefetchers are enabled in all of the tests.
Supermicro A+ Opteron server 1022G-URG (1U Chassis)
| CPU |
Two AMD Opteron "Abu Dhabi" 6380 at 2.5GHz Two AMD Opteron "Abu Dhabi" 6376 at 2.3GHz Two AMD Opteron "Bulldozer" 6276 at 2.3GHz Two AMD Opteron "Magny-Cours" 6174 at 2.2GHz |
| RAM | 64GB (8x8GB) DDR3-1600 Samsung M393B1K70DH0-CK0 |
| Motherboard | SuperMicro H8DGU-F |
| Internal Disks | 2 x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB |
| Chipset | AMD Chipset SR5670 + SP5100 |
| BIOS version | v2.81 (10/28/2012) |
| PSU | SuperMicro PWS-704P-1R 750Watt |
The same is true for the latest AMD Opterons: eight DDR3-1600 DIMMs for maximum bandwidth. You can check out the BIOS settings of our Opteron server below.
C6 is enabled, TurboCore (CPB mode) is on.
ASUS RS700-E6/RS4 1U Server
| CPU |
Two Intel Xeon X5670 at 2.93GHz—6 cores Two Intel Xeon X5650 at 2.66GHz—6 cores |
| RAM | 48GB (12x4GB) Kingston DDR3-1333 FB372D3D4P13C9ED1 |
| Motherboard | ASUS Z8PS-D12-1U |
| Chipset | Intel 5520 |
| BIOS version | 1102 (08/25/2011) |
| PSU | 770W Delta Electronics DPS-770AB |
To speed up benchmarking, we tested the Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron system in parallel. As we didn't have more than eight 8GB DIMMs, we used our 4GB DDR3-1333 DIMMs. The Xeon system only gets 48GB, but this isn't a disadvantage as our highest memory footprint benchmark (vApus FOS, 5 tiles) uses no more than 40GB of RAM. There is no real alternative as our Xeon has three memory channels and cannot be outfitted with the same amount of RAM as our Opteron 6300 or Xeon E5 system (four channels).
Common Storage System
For the virtualization tests, each server gets an Adaptec 5085 PCIe x8 card (driver aacraid v1.1-5.1[2459] b 469512) connected to six Cheetah 300GB 15000 RPM SAS disks (RAID-0) inside a Promise JBOD J300.
Software Configuration
All vApus testing is done on ESXi vSphere 5--VMware ESXi 5.1. All vmdks use thick provisioning, independent, and persistent. The power policy is "Balanced Power" unless otherwise indicated. All other testing is done on Windows 2008 Enterprise R2 SP1. Unless noted otherwise, we use the "High Performance setting" on Windows 2008 R2 SP1.
Other Notes
Both servers are fed by a standard European 230V (16 Amps max.) powerline. The room temperature is monitored and kept at 23°C by our Airwell CRACs. We use the Racktivity ES1008 Energy Switch PDU to measure power consumption. Using a PDU for accurate power measurements might seem pretty insane, but this is not your average PDU. Measurement circuits of most PDUs assume that the incoming AC is a perfect sine wave, but it never is. However, the Rackitivity PDU measures true RMS current and voltage at a very high sample rate: up to 20,000 measurements per second for the complete PDU.
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Sivar - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Please go away. You don't add any new information to the discussion.Your writing is of a teenager who knows nothing of processor architecture, the brilliant engineers at both AMD and Intel, or the competitive landscape.
You present no data, only misinformed opinion. You reduce the quality of this discussion, and have shown no interest in improving your knowledge.
JamesAnthony - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
In the article it mentions you were using the E5-2660 CPU (8 core 2.2 GHz) 95W, in a Dell PowerEdge R720 serverIt may have been a lot more useful to also have included the E5-2680 (8 core 2.7 GHz) and the E5-2690 (8 Core 2.9 GHz) as while they are 130W parts, they are ones that are often used in the PowerEdge R720 and from what we find in a lot of server sales the higher performance ones are very popular for transactional database servers and payment processing servers.
If you want to go head to head on Intel's top part vs AMD's top part, then it would seem it should be the E5-2690 vs 6386 SE
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
We all know that when you want top performance, Intel is the way to go. So I don't really see the point, even AMD will tell you that the 6376 and 6380 are their most competitive parts.. It is pretty obvious that the E5-2690 2.9 GHz will be faster and consume less than a 6386SE. I don't think our readers really need to see numbers on that.And I really doubt that the E5-2690 are sold that much. Most reports say that the top bins with the highest TDP are less than 5% of the total sales.
lwatcdr - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Wow this is about the most gibberish I have seen in a post ever.Good heavens you are an idiot.
Let's just tear this post bits so this person will NEVER post on here again.
1"No, it's worth per dollar that you have paid to buy Intel based servers. Intel is more reliable because it has Hyperthreading so you can reduce the latencies that will occur in every workloads."
Hyperthreading has nothing to do with reliability. So that was a waste of bandwidth.
"Unlike AMD's engineers who can not design a microprocessor properly. It was AMD's own fault why AMD did not have money like Intel"
My I introduce you to Titan http://www.olcf.ornl.gov/titan/ The worlds most powerful computer and powered by AMD cpus. AKA yea I think that AMD can actually do pretty well at designing CPUs so this part of your post is also pure manure.
"Look 99% Bank's in the world uses Intel based ATM as Intel processor can send information without any error." And here we can see that you understand nothing about digital theory or communications. Again a waste of bandwidth.
"That is why IBM itself does not use Power based processors for its ATM machine because its CEO has admitted that its engineers are not capable to design a lower power processor. So, IBM uses Intel as the standard processor to exchange information between ATM machine to server, so every digits that sent will come in exact same digits when it has been received."
The IBM power line is for high end systems not for ATM machines. Odds are good that many banks use Power based system for handling ATM transactions. IBM uses Intel or AMD because it is cheap and you can get standard boards. As to the every digit sent nonsense. IT IS DIGITAL you MORON. The communications links have error checking and correction not the CPUs. Please NEVER WASTE OUR TIME AGAIN, YOU KNOW NOTHING OF VALUE ON THIS SUBJECT.
toyotabedzrock - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Something is wrong with the LZMA benchmarks.Can you do a realworld test? There are scripts out there to do this.
LZMA is built around the idea that decompression is supposed to be much faster than compression.
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
From the 7zip manual:"The benchmark shows a rating in MIPS (million instructions per second). The rating value is calculated from the measured speed, and it is normalized with results of Intel Core 2 CPU with multi-threading option switched off. "
So that is the reason why the compression MIPS values are in the same order as the decompression. The decompression "MB/s" values are indeed about 10x and more higher than compression.
Oldboy1948 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
It is an interesting bench and if cache and memory are fast decompress and compress will be very close. It looks better for Bulldozer in this:http://www.7-cpu.com/
ARM has a long way to go if it will be a server one day.
extide - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Can we PLEASE get folding@home benches?! musky on the hardocp forums has come up with a system where you can run repeatable benchmarks. Myself as well as many others would really love to see F@H benches on systems like this!JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Ok, Link? :-)alpha754293 - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Because of the way that the current Opteron architecture is (1 FPU per module), did you run with the number of LS-DYNA processes equal to the number of FPUs on chip or did you run it based on per "core" (i.e. 2 processes per module)?