Our Benchmark Methods and Choices
As is traditional now with AMD CPU launches, we got very little time to perform our benchmarks. By the time we were running with the right BIOS and figured out that our Adaptec RAID cards absolutely refused to work with this new BIOS, we had less than a week left to do our server benchmarks which take at least a few hours per setup. So we had to make some choices. Without our Adaptec card, we had to cancel the most disk intensive test we used so far: the transactional DVD Store test. For all other tests, our four local SLC SSD’s kept disk queues more than low enough.
Despite timing constraints, we tried to stay as faithful as we can to our new benchmark methodology. Remember that instead of throwing every software box we happen to have on the shelf, we decided that the “buyers” should dictate our benchmark mix. Basically, every software type that is really important should have at least one and preferably two representatives in the benchmark suite. In the table below you can find an overview of the software types servers are bought for and the benchmarks you may expect in this review. We add the “relevance” column, as “Istanbul” only targets a part of this market. Very few people will buy a hex-core for print, domain controller or mailservers.
| Server Software Market | Importance | Benchmarks Used | Relevance (Six-Core) |
| ERP, OLTP | 10-14% | SAP SD 2-tier (Industry Standard benchmark) Oracle Charbench (Free available benchmark) | High, but not yet published High |
| Reporting, OLAP | 10-17% | MS SQL Server (Real world + vApus) | Very high |
| Collaborative | 14-18% | MS Exchange Loadgen (TBD) | Medium |
| Software Dev. | 7% | Not yet | Medium |
| e-mail, DC, file/print | 32-37% | MS Exchange Loadgen (TBD) | Very Low (not CPU intensive) |
| Web | 10-14% | MCS eFMS (Real World + vApus) | Low |
| HPC | 4-6% | TBD | Only specific dense matrix apps are relevant |
| Other | 2%? | 3dsmax (Our own bench) | Medium |
| Virtualization | 33-50% | VMMark (Industry standard), vApus Mark I | Very High |
Due to time constraints, we decided to postpone the Exchange and Linpack benchmarking. Their relevance for evaluating “Istanbul” is low anyway. SAP benchmarks were not available at the time that we wrote this.
Benchmark Configuration
None of our benchmarks required more than 20 GB. Database files were placed on a 3 drive RAID-0 Intel X25-E SLC 32 GB SSD, log files on one Intel X25-E SLC 32 GB.
Xeon Server 1: ASUS RS700-E6/RS4 barebone
Dual Intel Xeon "Gainestown" X5570 2.93GHz
ASUS Z8PS-D12-1U
6x4GB (24GB) ECC Registered DDR3-1333
NIC: Intel 82574L PCI-E Gbit LAN
Xeon Server 2: Intel "Stoakley platform" server
Dual Intel Xeon E5450 "Harpertown" at 3GHz
Supermicro X7DWE+/X7DWN+
24GB (12x2GB) Crucial Registered FB-DIMM DDR2-667 CL5 ECC
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
Xeon Server 3: Intel "Bensley platform" server
Dual Intel Xeon X5365 "Clovertown" 3GHz
Dual Intel Xeon L5320 at 1.86GHz
Dual Intel Xeon 5080 "Dempsey" at 3.73GHz
Supermicro X7DBE+
24GB (12x2GB) Crucial Registered FB-DIMM DDR2-667 CL5 ECC
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
Opteron Server: Supermicro SC828TQ-R1200LPB 2U Chassis
Dual AMD Opteron 2435 at 2.6GHz
Dual AMD Opteron 8384 at 2.7GHz
Dual AMD Opteron 2222 at 3.0GHz
Dual AMD Opteron 8356 at 2.3GHz
Supermicro H8QMi-2+
24GB (12x2GB) DDR2-800
NIC: Dual Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC
vApus/Oracle Calling Circle Client Configuration
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz
Foxconn P35AX-S
4GB (2x2GB) Kingston DDR2-667
NIC: Intel PRO/1000
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solori - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
I should have said "abundant (cheap) memory."mkruer - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
I am disappointed that you did not bench X5550 vs 2435. This is the chip that the Opteron 2435 was designed to go up against, not the X5570 which is clocked 300MHz higher and 40% more expensive. Heaven forbid that you try to include chips at the same price point. That being said other sites that did compare based upon price, and not top of the line, show that the Opteron 2435 is indeed comparable to the X5550 at the same price point and speed. Now if AMD can up the speed of the hex core, then it will be a more direct comparison to the X5570. The X5570 is 50% faster but it is also >50% more in cost.mino - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
Right.Actually, I have no qualms with comparing the best with the best, but the commentary is mostly out-of-place.
I guess this was written after 3 days without sleep, but anyway.
After an excelent vAPUS Mark 1 article I would expect better that old-school style:
"1000 $ Pentium 4 3.2 EE is clearly (15%) better than $400 Athlon 3200+ so Athlon is clearly a piece of junk. Well maybe for games not so much but generally it is a piece of junk."
Thank god the numbers tell their own story.
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
It seems that some people like to create the impression that we did not take into account that both CPUs were not at the same pricing.However:
http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...">http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...
[quote]"However, as the Opteron 2435 competes with 2.66 GHz Xeon and not the Xeon 2.93 GHz, this is the first benchmark where “Istanbul” is competitive."[/quote]
http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...">http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...
[quote]"The Nehalem-based Xeon moves forward, but does not make a huge jump. Performance of the six-core Opteron was decreased by 2%, which is inside the error margin of this benchmark. It is still an excellent result for the latest Opteron: this results means it will have no trouble competing with the 2.66 Ghz Xeon X5550. "
[/quote]
http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...">http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...
[quote]"The new Opteron 2435 at 2.6 GHz was a pleasant surprise on vApus Mark I: it keeps up with more expensive Xeons on ESX 3.5 update 4 while consuming less, and offers a competitive performance/watt and performance/price ratio on vSphere 4. The six-core Opteron is about 11 to 30% slower on vSphere 4 than the 2.93 GHz Xeon X5570 but the overall cost of the Istanbul platform is significantly lower (DDR-2 versus DDR-3) and the 2.6 GHz 2435 consumes less power in a virtualized environment "
[/quote]
And I have confidence that the vast majority of my readers are intelligent people who can decrease the benchmarks with 8 to 10% to see what a Xeon x5550 would do
mino - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
No, I do not like that, nor like to create such an impression.The article presents the numbers reasonably well for me. It is just that your (justified) love for Nehalem is glowing through and many, many comments were out of place.
I believe this was not intentional but cause by your love for the Nehalem platform which is otherwise great.
All the numbers tell one thing - Istanbull is generally on par with Nehalem clock for clock +- 10% depending on the workload.
About that glowiong love for Nehalem:
>>>MCS eFMS 9.2
"A single 8-thread Xeon X55xx is by far the best choice here."
Why ? There is no 1*2435 number.
Based on the numbers published single 2435 will get about 55-58rps which for all practical needs is identical performance to _flagship_ Nehalem.
>>>3ds Max 2008 32b
"We are sure that there are probably more efficient render engines out there, but it is simply not a market the AMD six-core should cater to. Nehalem-based Xeons are simply way too powerful for this kind of application. Render engines scale almost perfectly with clockspeed. So if cost is your main concern, consider the Xeon E5520 at 2.26 GHz, the cheapest CPU that still supports HT. We will test this one soon, but we expect it to deliver 67 frames per hour, which is still more than 20% better than any Opteron."
OK, so first bash(rightfully) the application fo it rigid resource use pattern, than say that for Nehalem is "way too powerfull for this KIND of application" for Opteron to compete with.
You managed to contradict your own reasoning to promote Nehalem for rendering while the numbers speak about single improperly optimized app.
Which it is pretty certain SW vendor will take care of in due time. These numbers are just a result of no (affordable) 6-core presence on the market up to now.
By these 2 comments you took the article balance from "Instanbul is generally about 5% slower per_clock than Nehalem, in certain apps it is on par or better while in other loses about 15%" - which is what the numbers tell - to "Instanbul is good for VMware, forget about it elsewhere".
Which is about as much bad publicity you could give to the second fastest CPU on the market by_large_margin.
Fact is, at a given price, Nehalem box is ALMOST IDENTICAL performance-wise to Istanbul box. While both crush everything else on the market by 30+ %.
lopri - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
Page 2, "..The most recent data is however in CPU’s L2-cache" I think you meant CPU #2?JohanAnandtech - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
Yes, good catch. Fixed the issue.classy - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
I skipped right to the virtualization portions. It is by far becoming the most dominate criteria for most of the IT world. The 6 core opty looks solid there, so it will come down to price. Now with the quickly developing virtual desktop infrastructures, how well a platform does virtualization makes it just two fold more important. Many folks have already virtualized mission critical apps. I know we're doing exchange in the near future. The days of seperate physical servers and desktops are going the way of the dodo bird. Its becoming all about virtualization.genkk - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
why power consumption not shown here....the bench mark guys in anandtech lost the papers...or they don't want you to seeany way go to techreport.com where istanbul wins
JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
More detailed power consumption numbers will be available in the next review.