The Intel Xeon E7-8800 v3 Review: The POWER8 Killer?
by Johan De Gelas on May 8, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- IT Computing
- Intel
- Xeon
- Haswell
- Enterprise
- server
- Enterprise CPUs
- POWER
- POWER8
Benchmark Configuration
As far as reliability is concerned, while we little reason to doubt that the quad Xeon OEM systems out there are the pinnacle of reliability, our initial experience with Xeon E7 v3 has not been as rosy. Our updated and upgraded Quad Xeon Brickland system was only finally stable after many firmware updates, with its issues sorted out just a few hours before the launch of the Xeon E7 v3. Unfortunately this means our time testing the stable Xeon E7 v3 was a bit more limited than we would have liked.
Meanwhile to make the comparison more interesting, we decided to include both the Quad Xeon "Westmere-EX" as well as the "Nehalem-EX". Remember these heavy duty, high RAS servers continue to be used for much longer in the data center than their dual socket counterparts, 5 years or more are no exception. Of course, the comparison would not be complete without the latest dual Xeon 2699 v3 server.
All testing has been done on 64 bit Ubuntu Linux 14.04 (kernel 3.13.0-51, gcc version 4.8.2).
Intel S4TR1SY3Q "Brickland" IVT-EX 4U-server
The latest and greatest from Intel consists of the following components:
| CPU | 4x Xeon E7-8890v3 2.5 GHz 18c, 45 MB L3, 165W TDP or 4x Xeon E7-4890 v2 (D1 stepping) 2.8GHz 15 cores, 37.5MB L3, 155W TDP |
| RAM | 256 GB, 32x 8 GB Micron DDR-4-2100 at 1600MHz or 256 GB, 32x8GB Samsung 8GB DDR3 M393B1K70DH0-YK0 at 1333MHz |
| Motherboard | Intel CRB Baseboard "Thunder Ridge" |
| Chipset | Intel C602J |
| PSU | 2x1200W (2+0) |
Total amount of DIMM slots is 96. When using 64GB LRDIMMs, this server can offer up to 6TB of RAM.
If only two cores are active, the 8890 can boost the clockspeed to 3.3 GHz (AVX code: 3.2 GHz). The 4890v2 reaches 3.4 GHz in that situation. Even with all cores active, 2.9 GHz is possible (AVX code: 2.6 GHz).
Intel Quanta QSCC-4R Benchmark Configuration
The previous quad Xeon E7 server, as reviewed here.
| CPU | 4x Xeon X7560 at 2.26GHz, or 4x Xeon E7-4870 at 2.4GHz |
| RAM | 16x8GB Samsung 8GB DDR3 M393B1K70DH0-YK0 at 1066MHz |
| Motherboard | QCI QSSC-S4R 31S4RMB00B0 |
| Chipset | Intel 7500 |
| BIOS version | QSSC-S4R.QCI.01.00.S012,031420111618 |
| PSU | 4x850W Delta DPS-850FB A S3F E62433-004 850W |
The server can accept up to 64 32GB Load Reduced DIMMs (LR-DIMMs) or 2TB.
Intel's Xeon E5 Server – "Wildcat Pass" (2U Chassis)
Finally, we have our Xeon E5 v3 server:
| CPU | Two Intel Xeon processor E5-2699 v3 (2.3GHz, 18c, 45MB L3, 145W) |
| RAM | 128GB (8x16GB) Samsung M393A2G40DB0 (RDIMM) |
| Internal Disks | 2x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB |
| Motherboard | Intel Server Board Wilcat pass |
| Chipset | Intel Wellsburg B0 |
| BIOS version | August the 9th, 2014 |
| PSU | Delta Electronics 750W DPS-750XB A (80+ Platinum) |
Every server was outfitted with two 200 GB S3700 SSDs.
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MyNuts - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Charles Babbage would be upsetquadibloc - Thursday, May 14, 2015 - link
I'm shocked to hear that Oracle and IBM are charging more for their SPARC and PowerPC chips, respectively, than Intel is charging for comparable x86 chips - or, at least, I presume they are, if servers using those chips are more expensive. Since x86 has the enormous advantage of being able to run Microsoft Windows, the only way other ISAs can be viable is if they offer better performance or a lower price.Kevin G - Thursday, May 14, 2015 - link
Actually IBM comes in cheaper than Intel for comparable POWER8 hardware. IBM now is offering the processor to outside system builders so the actual prices are some what known. Tyan used to have the raw prices on their site but I can't find them again.Regardless, this article indicates that they top out at $3000 which is less than equivalent Xeon E7's.
kgardas - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
Sure, SPARC and POWER are (was in case of POWER) more expensive, but usually hardware price is nothing in comparison with software price if you are running enterprise. Also SPARC is also Oracle preferred over POWER/Itanium by Oracle's price ratios... Anyway, POWER8 looks so powerful that it may even be cheaper software wise in comparison with SPARC, but that would need some clever Oracle DB benchmarking...HighTech4US - Friday, May 15, 2015 - link
Power 9 will be available when?Phiro69 - Friday, May 15, 2015 - link
I wanted to compare the E7's in this review to the E5's reviewed a few months back in your benchmark comparison tool, but I'm not seeing any of this data in it? Is it going to be there?