New Xeon CPU Hot and Underpowered

Kasracer writes "Web Sites The Register and GamePC received several of the new dual-core processors from Intel, dubbed 'Paxville', and ran a battery of tests on them. What did they find? From the article: 'There's no doubt about it, Intel's dual-core Xeons are their most power hungry Xeons to date ... Even when idling, two dual-core Xeons consume nearly 400W of power at any given time, which is amazingly high, even by Intel's standards ... their new dual-core chips (while powerful in their own right) simply are bested across the board by AMD's dual-core Opteron processors. Even worse, the Opterons typically perform much better while running at slower clock speeds and only having half the amount of on-die L2 cache to utilize.'"

Comments

oh my god.

[imsabbel]

The _last_ intel CPU a few days ago was already found hot and underpowered by gamePc.
That means this _new_ intel CPU really must be craptastic...

Re:oh my god.

[kjots]

> While I expect the benchmark results to be fairly accurate, news sites and games sites don't really strike me as the best for reviewing chips for the server market.

That's a nice sentiment, but I would prefer to believe that Intel has lost it (It's just more entertaining this way!).

The King (*cough*intel*chough*) is Dead, Long Live the King (*sniff*amd*cough*)!

oh well

[Janek Kozicki]

Dell wants dualcore to sell, so they have it.

how long before they realize that it was a fatal move?

Re:oh well

[Spacejock]

When all their 350w power supplies melt.

AMD's new ad campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

Paris Hilton looking an Intel Inside sticker and saying "That's hot."

400W?

[danharan]

That's going to be the SUV of its category. Big, ugly, inefficient design catering to those who desperately need the ego boost.

It will hopefully die (yeah, bad pun) a very prompt death.

Re:400W?

[gringer]

All it needs is to be powered by gasoline, and it'll be sold quicker than a 6th generation iPod.

Re:400W?

[zerojoker]

Even though it might be a little offtopic (But hey, this is slashdot ;-) :
Unfortunately that's not correct. Cars in Germany are quite expensive. If you compare the prices in Germany with those in the US for typical german brands like BMW, Mercedes, Audi you will notice that in fact those cars are usually cheaper in the US.

Concerning SUVs: I never understood why those cars with heavily overpowered engines are so popular in the US. I mean a typcial car with a 1.6 16V engine will have around 110 hp. That's enough to drive speeds up to ~200km/h (I think around 125mp/h?!) so it's sufficient to drive on the autobahns. And you can actually drive these speeds!
In the US, what's the usual speed limit? Like 90 mp/h? Why do you need such a strong engine, then? You can't use it anyway!

Re:400W?

[FlopEJoe]

I think it would be cheeper to buy a t-shirt that says, "I have a small penis."

Re:400W?

[rocjoe71]

In the US, what's the usual speed limit? Like 90 mp/h?

It's 65mp/h! Please try not to laugh your head off the next time you're driving an autobahn.

The real irony is they put it the low speed limit to save lives and gasoline, then they go and build SUVs that guzzle gasoline and are prone to rolling over at high speeds.

Re:400W?

[the eric conspiracy]

SUV's are high off the ground and comfortable.

That high off the ground also makes SUVs very unsafe - the death rate in SUVs is higher than in any other 4 wheel vehicle type because of the high center of gravity leads to a lot of rollovers. Even a simple tire failure or striking a guard rail can cause these things to flip.

Then there is of course the toll on the occupants of other vehicles these things hit. Car occupants are 50% more likely to be killed in a SUV-car accident than in a car-car accident.

The problem is so bad that the decline in highway deaths in the US has hit a plateau. Death rates in SUVs is actually rising.

Analysis of the statistics gives estimates that SUVs lead to an additional 6000 deaths on US highways every year.

Re:400W?

[jo42]

> SUV's are also particularly comfortable if you're overweight.

Which covers like over 80% of Americans. This is the #1 reason why SUVs, pickup trucks and minivans are so popular - they need large vehicles to haul their fat arses around...

Re:400W?

[Anonymous Coward]

What type of car you have and drive is a big ego booster here in the US. This has been happening so long and has become such a normal part of life here that people do not even think about the actual purpose and real utility of a specific vehicle. People try to rationalize such vehicle purposes and honestly believe they can justify it to themselves. It really is comical to listen to educated people ramble on about needing a 350HP 9 passenger urban assult vehicle for their four person family that may travel to the beach in the summer and the four wheel drive because their area gets some snow. That same person will then laugh at the thought of getting a less powered minivan or a station wagon and try to justify why those vehicles would not be sufficent. Even if gas mileage and internal space were equal (which they typcially are not), there is the ego buster that the neighbors might laugh at your minivan and it is not cool. I get the biggest laugh from the huge 3/4 ton diesel trucks (Ford F350/GM 3500) with dual rear tires and bed liner that have NEVER had anyhting in the bed, never towed anything, and look like the came off the showroom floor even after being in use for years around town. Yes it can pull 17000 lbs and carry another 3000 lbs but it will NEVER happen by that person.
My commuter car has a 1.3 liter 60HP engine. I can drive and maintain myself in highway traffic up to about 80mph without revving to high. During light load traffic (which does not happen often at all in my area) I do get passed by some but I am still within the average bulk of traffic flow.

Re:400W?

[grazzy]

I took the liberty to translate some of your sentences.

People spend a long time on the roads commuting. SUV's are high off the ground and comfortable. This is important, many people spend more time in their SUV's than they do with their families.

Some people should get a divorce.

SUV's are also particularly comfortable if you're overweight.

So fat people can fit their fat asses in the car.

The engines are good for acceleration, low and high end. It makes up in part for the automatic transmission.

Some people cant drive.

You need the automatic transmission so that you can eat your breakfast or speak on the cell phone while in traffic. It's also less frustrating in a traffic jam. You need the acceleration to be able to cut people off on the roads, and the height lets you see over sedans.

So the fat people can get fatter.

Finally, relatively speaking, gas is cheap in the U.S.

Our president has bombed enough arab states for the oil to be cheap, relatively speaking to the number of dead arabs.

Re:400W?

[Jeremi]

but there havw been times my honda accord couldn't cut the mustard and I wish I had one

You're in luck -- with an Honda, there's no need to buy a more powerful car. Instead, just add decals until it's fast enough.

Re:400W?

[sznupi]

Funny, there are videos of crash test of two Renault vehicles. One is Megane (you'd have hard time seeing such small thing in US probably...), the other is...truck comparable to your 18 wheelers. Both head on head, 60 kmph (contrary to what most people think, most of crashes happens at around that speed - drivers usually brake a substantiall bit).
Result: the truck barely notices the crash, the engine compartment of Megane dissapears...BUT the safety cage of Megane is basically untouched!

Only one detail: the truck was newest model, with very, very low bumper, designed so the small car won't drive under the truck, but...well, bump off.

It's not the issue of weight. It's the issue of bad, unsafe design.

And that issue is also present in SUVs. Look how heigh their bumper is (oh, but it must look cool and bad...)

Re:400W?

[Jeremi]

If you took the time to research the facts and accepted truths that are different than your opinion, you'd know that the Fed has actually received MORE money because of the tax cuts. It's called the Laffer curve, google it.

You realize how arrogant and condescending you sound, don't you? I'm aware of the Laffer curve, and I'm also aware that it has two sides: the left side, where raising taxes increases revenue, and the right side, where raising taxes further decreases it. You seem pretty convinced that we stand on the right-hand side, but what makes you so sure of that? Increased revenues can just as easily be due to the normal economic cycle. Not to mention that it is an oversimplification: it's not just the total amount of taxation that affects GDP, but also who gets taxes and how. Some taxes will hurt the economy more than others, even if they cost their targets the same amount in dollar terms. In any case, I think it's just common sense that we shouldn't spend money we don't have -- so if the government thinks it is really important to spend more money on Iraq or whatnot, they need to raises taxes to cover that spending. If the public agrees, then the public will tolerate the extra taxes. If not, the public will elect different leaders. Hiding the costs by passing them on to future generations to pay back with interest is a lousy scam.

Re:400W?

[Arthur Dent]

The Fed has recd more money? You're joking right? Why don't you take your own advice and google it? Go over to the treasury web site at look at the summary of monthly receipts. Here's a brief summary:

Federal govt receipts:
1998 : 1.747 B
1999 : 1.857 B
2000 : 2.043 B (Last year of Clinton's presidency)
2001 : 1.994 B
2002 : 1.814 B
2003 : 1.795 B
2004 : 1.926 B

IANAE, but it looks to me that if the tax cuts had not been implemented, there wouldn't have been such a dramatic fall in revenues.... Laffer curve? I'm laughing so hard, I'm begining to cry....

Heat

[titla1k]

So they're a little bit hot, I see that as a good thing. Now you can cook breakfast on your case, without ever having to move!

Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

The Register didn't test anything. They're just providing a short and more to the point commentary on the GamePC review, who appear to have adopted a more diplomatic tone so as to receive Free Crap To Review in the future as well.

These things are apparent when you Read The Fucking Article, you know? The thing you're supposed to do before submitting? Gah.

This should change

[ottffssent]

The situation (Intel's, not necessarily the difference) should change RSN when Intel's 65nm process comes online. Looking at the huge lead AMD has right now, I don't see how Intel can beat them in both power and performance anytime soon unless they're willing to add a few hundred more pins to their sockets to accomodate on-die memory controller(s). I doubt Intel will do that. I also doubt they'll come back a bit from the 150W/CPU these Paxville chips crank out, so they'll be using the process headroom for higher clocks and/or larger caches.

Ultimately an on-die memory controller is the only way to bridge the increasingly large gap between the CPU and RAM. Intel's managed amazingly low latencies to RAM given that they've got an entire extra bus and chip to run through, but they're still ~50% higher than AMD's. The netburst architecture was supposed to be insensitive to RAM latencies but Intel is not keeping up in the bandwidth department either, and it's clear that these CPUs are suffering from a lack of RAM bandwidth (twice the processing power per chip, but no increase in bandwidth).

Re:This should change

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll give you a quick hint: the K8 (I.e. Opterons and Athlon 64 and X2 series) is a freaking marvel of technology. The dual-core variants even more so.

Intel's dual core chips are just two chips pasted on the same die. Take a look at a proper description of an X2 some time -- there's cache sharing, an inter-cache on-chip hypertransport bus and all that nice shit that Intel just doesn't have. It's not far-fetched to say that at the moment, speaking from a microarchitecture point of view, AMD is a generation ahead of Intel.

Re:This should change

[ottffssent]

It's less a matter of design flaws as marketing flaws, I think. The P4 sucks in a lot of ways, but it's also very well-done in a lot of ways. The big problem is not so much netburst as it is Intel's inertia. Intel's working on a way to transition their product matrix from netburst on the desktop and in server space to something based on the pentium-M. The faster pentium-Ms beat the fastest P4s hands down in most benchmarks, but there are no good desktop chipsets for it yet, etc. Eventually Intel will release a dual-core P-M-based design, hopefully with an on-die memory controller, and then the Opteron will finally have some real competition.

Even if Intel eventually hits a process wall, they'll still be able to rest on their huge manufacturing capacity. For the past 5ish years, Intel has been building bigger chips than AMD, mostly in terms of L2 cache. It's not necessarily the best way to improve performance, but it's fairly easy, and leverages Intel's manufacturing strengths. Intel can afford to crank out dies 50-100% larger than an equivalent AMD die, and still make money at it, and still not run out of capacity. The reason Intel has been having shortages of late in the chipset arena is not lack of capacity but bad capacity management. They mis-read the market 3ish months ago and are paying for it now.

Anyway, here's hoping AMD's 65nm transition goes as smoothly as their 90nm one.

Re:This should change

[corngrower]

I'm not sure if it's the case right now, but back 5 or 6 years ago, AMD's chip development engineers were using design automation tools substantially superior to those that Intel's engineers were using, allowing AMD's engineers to be much more productive. Intel's management, of course, didn't envision a 64 bit future for the x86 architecture.

400w?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet zombie Jesus, the heatsink must have fins like a '57 DeSoto! At 400w and using it 24/7 will make the cops think you're running a grow-op.

Re:And Apple wants to replace PPCs with *THAT* ...

[FidelCatsro]

Apple will most likely be using Pentium M's, as they are currently planning on phasing in the Intel chips from the ground up, whilst leaving the Power Macs to run on the G5's for the moment IIRC.
So there is a good chance they already know that Intel has something far better in store for them to use in 2007/2008

This new xeon Chip is sucking down more juice than the three macs I have In my house , It is 100W less than my server and PC

Note to self

[ChrisMroz]

Rules of successful businesses. 1.) Listen to consumer 2.) Don't lie to consumer 3.) Make decisions based on companies largest comodity, not companies largest stock holders 4.) Don't ignore competition

Re:Not terrible...

[strider44]

So you're saing having a chip that uses 50% more power than its direct competitor and doesn't even beat it in a single benchmark isn't terrible? The Opterons beat the Paxvilles in every single test. Are you reading the same articles I am?

Prescott?

[Dogtanian]

(Disclaimer: I haven't read the entire article in depth yet, and I don't know **** about chip design)

I assume that this chip is basically derived from the Prescott P4, which (in spite of all the hype) has been considered by some commentators to be a dead-end in chip design and a mistake on the part of Intel.

There are rumours that Intel are now using the Pentium M (ironically, a chip which supposedly owes at least as much to the Pentium III design as to the Pentium 4(*)) as their "reference" design instead of Prescott. Bearing in mind that the Pentium M has been praised for providing performance approaching that of the P4s with *much* smaller power requirements and minimal cooling needed, this wouldn't surprise me. In fact, I've read several articles (including one via /.) promoting the Pentium M as a desktop chip (IIRC passive cooling was possible with a reasonably-sized desktop heatsink).

(*) And I don't know if that was the previous-gen P4; it's been said by some that Prescott was different enough to warrant the "Pentium 5" name. At any rate, the Pentium M isn't simply a power-efficient Pentium 4.

Re:And Apple wants to replace PPCs with *THAT* ...

[hector_uk]

you could run 20 mac mini's and consume about the same amount of power, now if it were utilised what would be faster 20x 1.42GHz G4's or four 2.8GHz xeons?

Intel catching up with 65 nm?

[miffo.swe]

I cant see how Intel is going to catch up without a redraw of the whole CPU structure and mem controller. Simply going for smaller die wont solve the performance problem. I really think Michael Dell was wrong in thinking that 65 nm is going to get Intel in par with AMD. This is really and interesting moment, will dell stick to Intel and deliver less performance than HP/Intel/Sun etc? At some stage they will have to start selling AMD and i suspect it will be a horrific moment for Dell. To date they always state that they use Intel because they are better but really how long can they put that charade up?

Re:Intel catching up with 65 nm?

[Bishop]

I suspect the opposite: AMD won't be bullied by Dell. In the past AMD may have been willing to cut a deal, but Dell would have been correct that the volume and performance weren't there. HP is Intel's Itanium partner and the biggest (only?) supplier of Itanic systems and they don't seem to have a problem with selling AMD systems. Given HP's recently deposed CEO, if Intel was offering killer deals I would expect HP to be Intel only. It could also be that Michael Dell is a stubborn bastard. He wouldn't be the first CEO to say something stupid and not admit to being wrong.

Re:Not terrible...

[masklinn]

Yup, power consumption figures are for the whole system.

But using roughtly equivalent systems (same power supply, an Antec TruePower so you're looking at an "at or above" 75% efficiency power supply when drawing 200+W from it, a single Raptor 74Gb and a Plextor DVD-RW drive), AMD's Opteron system top at 235W idle (for the 2.8GHz Opteron box) without using PowerNow's power management system (GamePC reports that the total power consumption @idle fell to around 170W using PowerNow) while Intel's 2.8GHz Xeon system chews through 390W idle...

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right thta they didn't measure the power of just the CPU, but they also didn't benchmark just the CPU, because you can't run the benchmarks with out memory, buses, IO etc. Duh. Besides, CPU power is not an apples to apples comparison - one CPU integrates memory controllers and high-speed CPU-CPU connections, the CPUs require different types of RAM...

The power the system draws is the more relevant to the system owner than the CPU power is. They used comparible systems.

400 Watts idling?

[Bueller_007]

I realize that 400 W while idling isn't typical of Intel processors, but still, didn't Apple choose Intel because of their supposedly low power consumption?

Re:400 Watts idling?

[Bloater]

> Isn't the 400W while idling for TWO Xeons (4 cores) and the rest of the system?

"while idling"

> ... which isn't bad for a modern CPU under load.

"under load"

What kinda crack you smokin'? I want some!

BTW, when you look at what an Opteron can do, yeah, that's bad for a modern CPU. For a ten year old computer with that processing capability it is very very good indeed but this is 2k5 here and we expect a little better. I know I do, but I've got used to AMD64.

Becoming a consumer issue?

[cliffski]

How long till CPU power requirements become a buying factor? Like many people I leave my main PC on most of the day, and also use a laptop which a distressingly short battery life (sony vaio). These days, apart from the old game of battlefield 2, I rarely find any need tor a maxxed out CPU. I'd be much more interested in a PC that would consume noticeably less power. 400W is like having 4 brightly lit rooms all day long, its just wasteful.
For laptops its already a big issue, as anyting that can stretch out the meager battery lfie is good, but even for desktop PCs now, we should be hitting the point where people start asking how much it costs to run a new PC all day.

Re:Becoming a consumer issue?

[WuphonsReach]

Yeah, it's already started. I'd say about 2 years ago.

The first wave of it was folks starting to harp about the amount of noise that most PCs make. While the Mini-ITX folks were already using fanless systems to reduce noise in specialized application, I think the fanless iMac gave momentum to the movement. At least, that little acryllic cube was cool enough to generate lots of press about being nearly silent.

Then there were the folks that started buying laptops instead of desktops due to the noise / form-factor / lifestyle choices. Laptops are easier to hide away, can be setup anywhere in the house on a whim, and laptops used to be pretty quiet.

Hard drive manufacturers switched over to fluid bearing drives a few years ago. At first, it was a marketing thing that allowed them to differentiate themselves from the pack. Now, I don't think you can find too many drive makers who are still making noisy ball bearing drives.

Energy costs have also gone up in the past few years. My electricty bill has gone from ~$40/mo up to ~$120/mo and I'm starting to consider whether I really want 4 servers, 3 desktops and a laptop running all the time. (And whether I can pack more storage into fewer watts.) Plus the heat issues that all of those systems cause.

PCs are also continuing to move further and further out of the office. As you moving into the living room / kitchen, folks start paying closer attention to noise / power / heat issues. And PCs have gotten powerful enough over the years, that they are "fast enough" for a lot of tasks. They're starting to compete against things like VCRs / DVD players / DVR & PVR (devices which are typically dead-quiet, low-power, and low-heat).

Dell even started selling "quiet" PCs a few years ago (most quiet PCs are also lower energy and lower temperature). Those are nice in an office setting for lowering the ambient noise level (which leads to a less-stressful environment).

Bring on the winter!

[WidescreenFreak]

I don't understand what all of the fuss is about. With systems that generate this much heat, I want to buy one just because it will probably be cheaper to heat my house with a dual Xeon system than with heating oil, considering current fuel prices! I can simultaneously have the benefit of running one hell of a Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2, or SETI@Home system! Then when summer arrives I can switch back to my cooler AMD X2 system, thus saving money on cooling bills as well!

AND after playing BF2 for an hour or so the top of the case will be ready to cook up some chicken and steak tips! Introducting the new Intel, dual-Zeon, charcoal-less hibachi system!

Come on! You guys need to look at the positives of having such hot CPUs!

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

As a small-time, low power switch-mode power-supply designer, I would like to object that it is very difficult to accurately measure the power draw of a modern desktop CPU, unless you design a whole motherboard specially dedicated to power measurements.

These beasts have peak current draws in the range of 100A @ 1.5V.

If you were to allow for a maximum of 1% voltage loss (15mV) across a measuring shunt resistor, this would mean 0,00015 Ohm Resistance - the equivalent of a piece of copper Wire with a cross-section of 1.0mm^2 and a length of 7mm. Good luck attaching a 1% accurate kelvin sense connection to this. You will also have to design a high performance multiplier circuit to make accurate RMS power measurements in the MHz Range.

But even then, and not considering mechanical difficulties like buried traces/planes, you cannot place this shunt betwwen the cpu and the Power supply (i.e. 1.5V switcher and bulk 1.5V capacitors), because the added inductance and skin effects would probably cause the CPU to malfunction.

So your best bet is to place shunts between the multiple switching coils and 1.5V Caps, which would probably work. But then you are only measuring the sum of the CPU current draw + the dissipation losses in the traces and the capacitors - which arent neglible, as a lot of people learned recently, as the overheated low-quality organic caps died on their motherboards.

But what is it worth ?

As a computer user, I care only for four things :

- The reliability
- The noise coming out of the box
- The cost of the power going into the box
- The cost for extra air-conditioning, or the savings on heating -
    depending on the season and where you live ;-)

For all of these, the amount of power drawn from the wall plug is a very suitable indicator.

hypertransport bus

[246o1]

I used to take the hypertransport bus to school, it's not all it's cracked up to be. Especially when you have two(!) hypertransfers.

Re:Ok so this version of the Xeon is a power whore

[the eric conspiracy]

future plans

Ahh - vaporware. We all know how stuff always gets delivered on time and lives up to all the marketing hype. And of course after issuance of the preannouncement the competitors are not allowed to improve their products.

Feh.

65nm won't help much

[complexmath]

Read this article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20051007/a_sneak_p eak_at_intels_65nm_pentium_4-11.html#power_consump tion

In short, decreasing the die size has allowed Intel to reduce power consumption a bit, but it's also increased thermal density to such a degree that they can't clock them as fast as even the current crop of 90nm processors. Why upgrade to these chips?

recheck the links

[stuartkahler]

It's time to drop the gamepc link. Apparently they don't like the extra page views that /. is sending them.

Re:But AMDs are unreliable

[Mashiki]

Anyone using Rioworks or Tyan boards should have their fingers broken in multiple places in order to stop them from making foolish purchaces again the future. Those boards could be replaced by a flavor of Gigabyte, Asus or ASRock 939Dual boards.

Re:Laughing At The Apple Loonies

[xouumalperxe]

Ok, since you seem to hace a serious case of clue deficit disorder, I'll feed it to you in small bite-sized chunks.

The Pentium M is actually a pretty decent chip.
Centrino is a pretty decent platform.
IBM hasn't done much regarding laptop processors in a while, intel has a vested interest in keeping that area going.
Laptops are now the majority of computer sales, unlike laptops
AMD does NOT have a decent platform to fight Centrino/Pentium M with. Their desktop CPUs are great (typing from an Athlon 64 3500+), but their Turion line sucks too much power.

So yeah, you have the big, studly, 4-core PowerMac. It's essentially a workstation machine. that, truth be told, doesn't add up to that big a part of Mac sales. iBooks and Powerbooks, however, are a different matter. Those, despite the increasingly apparent weakness of the G4, still sell like hot cakes. Simple logics would indicate that a stronger processor under the hood would sell even better. So yeah, the intel roadmap might actually look pretty decent for apple.