Kougar
06-08-2006, 01:12 PM
Here is a great review for anyone interested in a more technical review between Intel, Opteron, and Sun dual/multi-core systems. http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2772 (http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2772)
For anyone just wanting the nitty gritty... This would appear to put a damper on the 65nm Brisbanes due out by December, as a simply clock speed ramp won't be enough to secure them back the performance/watt crown. If/when AMD ramps up the ghz, Intel already has plenty of headroom left to reciprocate and retain their current leads.
The Intel Xeon 5160, a.k.a. Woodcrest, will simply be the most powerful server CPU this year (though it's not yet available for purchase of course). As our extrapolated calculations show, even a 2.6 GHz Woodcrest will outperform the current Opteron 285 with a 5 to 55% margin, nothing short of impressive. The new Xeon is however not invincible: the Opteron can still give some serious resistance when running some instruction mixes with lots of rotates, add-carry or load effective address instructions. RSA, AES and other benchmarks clearly show this. Intel will still have to convince some software vendors to port to SSE if it wants Woodcrest to be the completely superior CPU. The advantage in MySQL is also rather small, a result of the relatively high latency of the FB-DIMMs. But we are nitpicking: Intel's newest Xeon has taken back the performance/Watt crown. In one word: Woodcrest rocks!
...The result is that AMD will not be able to regain the performance crown in the dual and quad-core market until the K8L arrives.
For anyone just wanting the nitty gritty... This would appear to put a damper on the 65nm Brisbanes due out by December, as a simply clock speed ramp won't be enough to secure them back the performance/watt crown. If/when AMD ramps up the ghz, Intel already has plenty of headroom left to reciprocate and retain their current leads.
The Intel Xeon 5160, a.k.a. Woodcrest, will simply be the most powerful server CPU this year (though it's not yet available for purchase of course). As our extrapolated calculations show, even a 2.6 GHz Woodcrest will outperform the current Opteron 285 with a 5 to 55% margin, nothing short of impressive. The new Xeon is however not invincible: the Opteron can still give some serious resistance when running some instruction mixes with lots of rotates, add-carry or load effective address instructions. RSA, AES and other benchmarks clearly show this. Intel will still have to convince some software vendors to port to SSE if it wants Woodcrest to be the completely superior CPU. The advantage in MySQL is also rather small, a result of the relatively high latency of the FB-DIMMs. But we are nitpicking: Intel's newest Xeon has taken back the performance/Watt crown. In one word: Woodcrest rocks!
...The result is that AMD will not be able to regain the performance crown in the dual and quad-core market until the K8L arrives.