Linux Database Server CPU Comparison
by Johan De Gelas on June 17, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
The current market situation
Depending on the source and the definition of "server", the x86 servers are good for about 33% - 50% of the revenue ($49 billion) of the server market. Depending on the report, the AMD Opteron has captured a bit more than 5% of the total x86 server market.It is interesting to note that Linux is the server operating system of a little more than 9% of the servers, but the number of Linux servers is growing with about 40%. More than 60% of the Opteron servers are running Linux (according to IDC), while the lion share of the Xeons are running 32 bit Windows. It is clear that the Opteron rise in the market share is not only slowed down by the rapid ramp of EM64T Xeons, but also by the lack of a 64 bit Windows 2003.
In the second half of 2004, already one million EM64T Xeons were shipped, about three times as many as the total number of Opterons shipped until then. The percentage of 64 bit systems deployed is thus increasing rapidly, making the switch to 64 bit software more interesting for developers too.
Xeon and Opteron
Since our previous test, four interesting new CPUs have entered the scene. First of all, there is the Pentium-D. Although the Pentium D is a desktop CPU, it is a very interesting low cost solution for low end servers, so we decided to include it in this review. Of course, a Pentium-D server does not have the same RAS features as an Opteron or Xeon based machine. The Pentium-D requires a heavy power supply: cheap 400 Watt power supplies in our lab were not able to power up the Pentium-D, even with a relatively slow Geforce FX 5600 PCIe video card.Secondly, there is the Intel Xeon Irwindale, which is essentially the Xeon version of the desktop Pentium 6xx series ("Prescott core") that includes a massive 2 MB L2-cache. Also interesting is the "Demand Based Switching" feature of the new Xeons: this allows them to throttle back to 2.8 GHz when the load on the server is low. This results in about 15 to 20% in power savings on the CPU's power dissipation. The Xeon Irwindale is a demanding CPU: it requires 110 Watt under full load.
Cool'n quiet is functional on the new 2.6 GHz Opteron 252, and offers much more impressive power gains. Power dissipation is reduced from 92.6 W (only attainable under extreme conditions) to less than 20 Watt.
The new Dual core Opteron makes our test complete. While Windows (XP and 2003) recognized and utilized the cores easily, SUSE SLES 9 Linux was a little more stubborn. With the original SLES 9 kernel 2.6.5-97, the dual Opteron would just crash. We applied Service Pack 1 and the new Opteron would boot and recognize the two cores, but the second CPU was disabled because of APIC IRQ problems.
Therefore, we were only able to run the Dual core Opteron on Gentoo with a 2.6.12 kernel.
A quick table to refresh your memory and to enable you to compare price/performance:
| Intel Xeon CPUs | Core | L2 cache | L3-cache | x86 -64 bit? | Power saving? | In test? | Price |
| 3.60 GHz w/ 2M cache 800 MHz FSB (90nm) | Irwindale = "Nocona, twice as big L2" | 2 MB | No | Yes | DBS | Yes | $851 |
| 3.2 GHz w/ 2M cache 800 MHz FSB (90nm) | Irwindale = "Nocona, twice as big L2" | 2 MB | No | Yes | DBS | Yes | $455 |
| 3.60 GHz w/ 1M cache 800 MHz FSB (90nm) | Nocona = " Prescott server" | 1 MB | No | Yes | DBS | Yes | $690 |
| 3.40 GHz w/ 1M cache 800 MHz FSB (90nm) | Nocona = " Prescott server" | 1 MB | No | Yes | DBS | No | $455 |
| 3.20D GHz w/ 1M cache 800 MHz FSB (90nm) | Nocona = " Prescott server" | 1 MB | No | Yes | DBS | No | $316 |
| 3 GHz w/ 1M cache 800 MHz FSB (90nm) | Nocona = " Prescott server" | 1 MB | No | Yes | DBS | No | $256 |
| 3.20C GHz w/ 2M cache 533 MHz FSB (.13) | Galatin = "P4 EE Server" | 0,5 MB | 2 MB | No | No | Yes | $1,043 |
| 3.20 GHz w/ 1M cache 533 MHz FSB (.13) | Galatin = "P4 EE Server" | 0,5 MB | 1 MB | No | No | No | $690 |
| 3.06A GHz w/ 1M cache 533 MHz FSB (.13) | Galatin = "P4 EE Server" | 0,5 MB | 1 MB | No | No | Yes | $455 |
| 3.06 GHz w/ 512k cache 533 MHz FSB (.13) | Prestonia = "Northwood Server" | 0,5 MB | No | No | No | Yes | $316 |
| Pentium 4-D | "Dual Prescott - Smithfield" | 2 x 1 MB | No | No | No | Yes | $312 |
| AMD Opteron CPU's | Core | L2 cache | L3-cache | x86 -64 bit? | In test? | Price | |
| Model 275 (2x 2.2 GHz) | Dual core | 2x 1 MB | No | Yes | Cool'n Quiet | Yes* | $1299 |
| Model 265 (2x 1.8 GHz) | Dual core | 2x 1 MB | No | Yes | Cool'n Quiet | No | $851 |
| Model 252 (2.6 GHz) | Troy | 1 MB | No | Yes | Cool'n Quiet | Yes | $851 |
| Model 250 (2.4 GHz) | Sledgehammer | 1 MB | No | Yes | No | Yes | $690 |
| Model 248 (2.2 GHz) | Sledgehammer | 1 MB | No | Yes | No | Yes | $455 |
| Model 246 (2.0 GHz) | Sledgehammer | 1 MB | No | Yes | No | No | $316 |
| Model 244 (1.8 GHz) | Sledgehammer | 1 MB | No | Yes | No | Yes | $209 |
The introduction of Irwindale resulted in Intel reducing the prices of the Xeon "Nocona", making this CPU more attractive. The Dual core Opteron is still a bit pricey, but definitely an alternative for two Opterons or two Xeons.
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45 Comments
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Guspaz - Friday, June 17, 2005 - link
Why are there no graphs like other Anandtech articles? Why is everything in hard to read tables with broken formatting? This one seems a bit rough around the edges compared to the usual Anandtech quality.juhl - Friday, June 17, 2005 - link
I find it quite odd that you claim to be testing with a 2.6.12 Linux kernel despite the fact that that kernel has not yet been released in a final version.If you are using one of the pre-release kernels you should explicitly say so, and tell us which one.
The latest stable kernel at the time I write this is 2.6.11.12, the latest development kernels are 2.6.12-rc6, 2.6.12-rc6-git8 & 2.6.12-rc6-mm1 . There's also the question of wether or not you used a stock kernel.org kernel or a "patched to hell-and-back with crap" gentoo kernel...
So, what were you really using?
sinisterDei - Friday, June 17, 2005 - link
#20Correct me if I'm wrong, but would not the query cache positively affect the scores of both vendor's chips?
I suppose I don't have a pair of database machines just sitting around to test it out, but I'd imagine that if query cache was enabled the Opteron would experience similar performance boosts to the Xeon- if not more of a boost thanks to the higher-performing memory subsystem.
Just my $.02 to counteract the fear-monger :)
Viditor - Friday, June 17, 2005 - link
"Translation: We didn't want our beloved AMD to lose, so we doctored the test"Translation of the translation...
Shoot the messenger! :-)
michaelpatrick33 - Friday, June 17, 2005 - link
#20 Ah yes the conspiracy theories begin. Just like AMD with Tomshardware. The server results here appear pretty consistent with every other server test I have seen on review sites but who knows.# 19. Intel is only at 90nm but do have 300mm wafers. That is why Fab36 is so important for AMD. 300mm wafers and 65nm by Q2 of 2006 should put them pretty equal with Intel's fabrication level. Production level is still way, way in favor of Intel though.
Pricing, as I said before the Opteron dualcore chips are way cheaper than Intel dualcore server chips because Intel doesn't have any.
Questar - Friday, June 17, 2005 - link
"The " query cache" was off, as we wanted to test worst case performance. In some cases, the query cache was able to push a single Xeon to 1000 queries per second, and the CPU was still capable of doing more, as the CPU load was at 50% - 70%. "Translation: We didn't want our beloved AMD to lose, so we doctored the test.
thegagman - Friday, June 17, 2005 - link
BTW guys, one reason why AMD may be pricing its chips mihc higher is the MFG process. Unless I am mistaken (and someone correct me if I am wrong), they are still using 200mm wafers on a 90 or 110 process. Intel is using 300mm at 65 nm...this results in a huge difference in throuhput. Since AMD is already pricing its CPUs very agressively to gain market share, and the die of those dual-cores is much bigger (anybody know the real %?) then it is to be anticipated that their dual-cores are much more exspensive. They are probably gambling on selling dual-core Opterons at high-margins via Sun and other OEMs first,which will probably take most of their wafers. This is why their Desktop parts are coming later I would bet...thegagman
nserra - Friday, June 17, 2005 - link
#17 Good answers but, "Depends on the applications you run. On single threaded code, the faster single core will run your code faster."Doesn’t explain what I was meaning, so for you is OK to pay more for a single core processor, because runs faster some times (may run slower other times), how will you know what it will happen? (Supposing that you don’t know shit about your software requirements).
. AMD don’t have this problem so why would amd for example release an 4200+ processor at the same price of the 3500+ ? If the performance is equal or superior?
I think amd have made they right decisions, like intel have made his.
They all play with what they have, and not with they haven’t.
fitten - Friday, June 17, 2005 - link
"Explain me something:- how do you explain or how Intel will explain that their single core processor cost more than the dual core ones? "
Because Intel sets the prices of their chips. They want to push dual-core to the masses so they price them accordingly.
"- Why should you buy a single core over a dual core if it cost more? "
Depends on the applications you run. On single threaded code, the faster single core will run your code faster.
"- How good is this Intel market decision (marketing). "
Probably pretty good. Considering you have to buy a new motherboard to use the dual-core Intel parts, they dropped the price so that the CPU + motherboard cost is about the same (or less than still) the cost of just the dual-core CPU from AMD. Sounds like a good strategy to me.
michaelpatrick33 - Friday, June 17, 2005 - link
I also think it is safe to say that Amd's dualcore Opterons will be cheaper than any Intel dualcore server chip for the next six to eight months since there aren't any Intel dualcore server chips. IDC just released market research that showed AMD with 30% of the 4way server sales in Q1 '05. That is what AMD is after. The 64bit performance difference is surprising to say the least.