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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JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Per Core. So with the -np 32 setting. I have tried less before, but the LS-DYNA really likes the extra load and store units of the second unit. so 32 MPI processes give a 30% boost.alpha754293 - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
That's a healthy boost! It's amazing how these technologies are maturing to the point where conventional wisdom that they might be starved for FPU resources isn't enough to slow them down.It'd be interesting to see whether it makes a difference if you were to let the OS handle the job/process scheduling or whether manual intervention can help reduce some of the thread/process migration overhead, especially across 16 FPUs.
dmytty - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
Before the benchmarks came in, I looked at an HPC build for the new 6300 series. I saw the real sweet spot for AMD being the 6344 which is a CPU of type 2.6 Ghz @ 12 or 6 core (depending how you define a 'core'). Anandtech never mentioned this CPU in the review. (?)In simple $ terms for the CPU, it's the E5 2640 @ $815 vs the Opteron 6344 @ $415. So how does AMD not have a decisive price advantage?
In 4S land the price advantage widens.
AMD 4S...I priced a build (not including a case) at ~$3860 for 4 x 6344, 128 GB RAM, mobo and PSU. Note that this mobo could also go out to 256 GB. CPU cost is 4 x 6344 = $1660. Again, total system cost was $3860.
Intel 4S...I picked the 4607 as being the best 'bang for the buck processor'. It's 6 cores @ 2.2 Ghz. However, at $885 per 4607 processor the CPU cost is more than double than AMD (ie 4x Intel 4607 = $3540). The same build cost using the Intel 4607 would then be $5740.
AMD @ $3860 vs Intel @ $5740. Why did Anandtech not talk about 4S? Why no mention of the 6344?
dmytty - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
I forgot to mention that the Intel board I specified for 4S build was $1200 whereas the AMD board was $800.A marketing person would call the system cost comparison ~$3k vs $~6k.
Again, am I missing something?
The AMD 6344 based 4S system has a ~19% clockspeed advantage and comes in at 62% of the cost.
Worried about electrical cost? You can buy 700 watts of PV solar panels with the cost savings between AMD and Intel. 700 watts peak = ~3.5 kwh daily output. That would nicely mitigate (and then some) the 20 watts/cpu difference (80 watts total with 4x cpu) between AMD 6344 and Intel 4607. You would net about 1.5 kwh/day electricity going with the AMD + PV over the slightly more efficient Intel.
geok1ng - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
this is all and good, but looking at spec int 2006 results, Abu Dhabi still does not match performance/watt of Magni Cours opterons. And the best competition AMd can offer against 2 gen old Xeons is still the Opteron 6180.