Intel "Harpertown" Xeon vs. AMD "Barcelona" Opteron
by Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on September 18, 2007 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Quest Software Benchmark Factory
We mentioned that the benchmarks we previously used are no longer useful, as we did not have the I/O capacity required to support them. We went looking for alternative benchmarks, and stumbled upon Benchmark Factory from Quest Software. Below is a description of the product and the benchmarks we used in this article.
Benchmark Factory for Databases is a performance and code scalability testing tool that simulates users and transactions on the database and replays a production or synthetic workload in non-production environments. This enables organizations to validate database scalability as user loads increase, application changes are made, and platform changes are implemented. Benchmark Factory is available for Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, MySQL and other databases via ODBC and Native connectivity.
Benchmark Factory provides many tests you can run, and has a very nice and customizable metric reporting engine. We decided to run the AS3AP test, and the Scalable Hardware CPU, Reads, and Mixed tests. Here is what Quest's help file says about these tests:
AS3AP
The AS3AP benchmark is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Structured Query Language (SQL) relational database benchmark. The AS3AP benchmark provides the following features:
Scalable Hardware
The Scalable Hardware benchmark measures relational database systems. This benchmark is a subset of the AS3AP benchmark and tests the following:
We run three iterations of each load point, and then average the results. We also monitor deviations to ensure they are within an acceptable range. We like to see a max deviation of +/- 3%.
Choosing the contenders
In previous articles, we've been asked to explain why we chose the parts we did for an article. For this article Intel sent us their 3.0 GHz Harpertown CPUs. We requested the 3.0 GHz Clovertown CPUs, which are 120 Watt TDP parts, to allow us to do a clock to clock comparison of Harpertown to Clovertown. We also tried to get Harpertown 2.66 GHz or 2.5 GHz CPUs but none were available. These would have provided us with the closest cost comparison to the Opteron 2350's, but it was not possible. We resourcefully acquired two of AMDs newest Opteron 2350's and we requested the Opteron 2222 3.0 GHz Opteron CPUs, which are the highest clock in the 95 Watt TDP envelope. We did review the results of the Opteron 2224SE 3.2 GHz 119W TDP CPUs but their performance was only marginally better than the 2222's and their performance/watt was consistently lower and thus we concluded of less of interest for this article.
We mentioned that the benchmarks we previously used are no longer useful, as we did not have the I/O capacity required to support them. We went looking for alternative benchmarks, and stumbled upon Benchmark Factory from Quest Software. Below is a description of the product and the benchmarks we used in this article.
Benchmark Factory for Databases is a performance and code scalability testing tool that simulates users and transactions on the database and replays a production or synthetic workload in non-production environments. This enables organizations to validate database scalability as user loads increase, application changes are made, and platform changes are implemented. Benchmark Factory is available for Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, MySQL and other databases via ODBC and Native connectivity.
Benchmark Factory provides many tests you can run, and has a very nice and customizable metric reporting engine. We decided to run the AS3AP test, and the Scalable Hardware CPU, Reads, and Mixed tests. Here is what Quest's help file says about these tests:
AS3AP
The AS3AP benchmark is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Structured Query Language (SQL) relational database benchmark. The AS3AP benchmark provides the following features:
- Tests database processing power
- Built-in scalability and portability that tests a broad range of database systems
- Minimizes effort in implementing and running benchmark tests
- Provides a uniform metric and straightforward interpretation of benchmark results
Scalable Hardware
The Scalable Hardware benchmark measures relational database systems. This benchmark is a subset of the AS3AP benchmark and tests the following:
- CPU
- Disk
- Network
We run three iterations of each load point, and then average the results. We also monitor deviations to ensure they are within an acceptable range. We like to see a max deviation of +/- 3%.
Choosing the contenders
In previous articles, we've been asked to explain why we chose the parts we did for an article. For this article Intel sent us their 3.0 GHz Harpertown CPUs. We requested the 3.0 GHz Clovertown CPUs, which are 120 Watt TDP parts, to allow us to do a clock to clock comparison of Harpertown to Clovertown. We also tried to get Harpertown 2.66 GHz or 2.5 GHz CPUs but none were available. These would have provided us with the closest cost comparison to the Opteron 2350's, but it was not possible. We resourcefully acquired two of AMDs newest Opteron 2350's and we requested the Opteron 2222 3.0 GHz Opteron CPUs, which are the highest clock in the 95 Watt TDP envelope. We did review the results of the Opteron 2224SE 3.2 GHz 119W TDP CPUs but their performance was only marginally better than the 2222's and their performance/watt was consistently lower and thus we concluded of less of interest for this article.
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Final Hamlet - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
I don't wanna argue with you over AMD vs. Intel, because you know: Doing so on the Internet is like running in the Special Olympics - even if you win, you are still retarded...Nevertheless, you can't even calculate.
If 2.0 GHz is the basis and you lift it to 2.5 GHz, it is NOT a 20% improvement, but RATHER 25%. Learn calculating percentages, it helps man, it helps...
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Dude, you just don't have a clue....Accord99 - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Barcelona only kills on $/performance because it's being compared to the higher-end Intel SKUs . There are much cheaper 2.33GHz Clovertowns and comparable Harpertowns. Meanwhile Harpertown pretty much guarantees Intel performance superiority for the forseeable future.Justin Case - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Beyond a certain price difference, it's cheaper to buy two systems than to buy a faster system. Most (granted, not all) software that can run efficiently on multi-core CPUs can also run efficiently on multiple nodes. A single, more expensive system can still be preferable if you have space constraints, of course, but I suspect Intel will lower its prices a bit as a response to Barcelona.Personally I would like to see a comparison between two systems with a similar price.
Accord99 - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Most (granted, not all) software that can run efficiently on multi-core CPUs can also run efficiently on multiple nodes.I wouldn't say most, more like a few. Plus, a lot of expensive software are licensed by the socket, so any savings on the CPU is minor compared to the overall costs of software.
Two systems also take up more space and consume more power, and the trend of virtualization also leads to fewer, bigger servers.
Justin Case - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Just out of curiosity, what software are you thinking about that scales well to multiple cores but cannot run on multiple nodes?Rendering can be done in render farms, most servers can run in multi-node load-balancing configrations, etc.. The only field that comes to mind where multiple nodes really aren't doable is scientific / HPC, which needs very fast access to a shared memory pool. But the days of glory of the monolithic supercomputer are kind of past.
chucky2 - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
At work (extremely large telecomm company) we don't run each box more than 50% load for failover reasons. So when I'm looking at these numbers, to me it seems like AMD is doing pretty good with 2.0GHz CPU's vs. 3.0GHz Intel CPU's.I'd really like to see how the scaling goes with Barcelona from say 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0GHz.
I think at 2.5-2.7GHz is when we're really going to see Barcelona start to come into its own...
Chuck
Justin Case - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
I think this shows the same trend from the previous generation, in terms of performance per watt: AMD rules for servers (low / medium CPU loads), Intel rules for workstations and render nodes (high CPU loads).And both are complete overkill for desktop systems, but I'm sure Microsoft will find a way to make Windows crawl on them. :)
HPC / FEA / etc. is also high CPU load but it also needs low memory latency and high bandwidth (where AMD has an advantage), so these benchmarks don't really tell us much. My guess is Intel will have a small advantage (despite the slower memory access), at least until Barcelona hits 2.5 GHz or so.
firewolfsm - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
This review seems biased. If you want to run only the 2GHz part at least calculate the performance per clock because it looks like Barcelona has Intel beat in a lot of the benchmarks. Meaning 2.5GHz would be much more competitive. and you also should have run the 3.2 GHz K8.Jason Clark - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
As for 3.2GHz, our reasoning was it was a high wattage part, and it didn't make sense to include it. At the wattage it runs at, perf/watt was not pretty.