Intel Lindenhurst Xeon DP Platform Discussion

Steve from Hexus writes "Hexus.net has a article looking at Intel's latest Xeon platform: Lindenhurst, discussing the Paxville dual-core processor, E7520 core-logic, where it could go right for Intel, and where it could all go wrong." From the article: "If you're I/O bound by your threads in any way, you can hit problems (all threads touch the MCH, then there's a 266MiB/sec bus link to the I/O processors to cross, then the data hits disks or network hardware). If you're memory subsystem bound in any way, especially on a majority of compute threads, performance is likely gone. There's just too much resource sharing for it to all conceivably work well, especially compared to Opteron. I can forsee many a scenario where dual-core Opteron will give Paxville Xeon DP a beating."

Comments

gooooo Intel!

[tomstdenis]

cost 3 times as much as the 820D ... it's a copy of the 820D ... see where I'm going with this?

The dual-core intels may cost half as much as the dual core Athlon64s but they still suck twice as bad. What you save in initial purchase cost you lose in electricity bills and time doing work.

The fact they're STILL making Netburst based processors just sickens me. Give it up already and go P6 or something new. I mean if they put half the money they put into the netburst into the P6 designs of late they'd already have a 2.5Ghz P6 core that would give AMD a run for their money.

I think the cats out of the bag for the most part. And not like you're gonna sell a lot of dual-core based Dells to grandma so she can write emails.

Times like this make me feel proud I'm an AMD whore :-)

Tom

Re:Lindenhurst? They ARE running out of names...

[mooingyak]

I used to live on Lindenhurst in NY (on LI). I was once told that it had the most bars per square mile in all of the US.

Regarding the electricity consumption...

[hirschma]

I just put together a Xeon based server. It was a rare case where a Xeon solution met my needs better than an Opteron based solution.

My company is _very_ sensitive to power consumption. So, I picked a very new motherboard from Tyan, and a Xeon that supported Enhanced Speed Step. I figured that I'd install cpudyn, like I did with all of our AMD boxes, and save a few bucks on electricity.

So, cpudyn doesn't work... because Speedstep isn't supported by Tyan's BIOS. I email Tyan, and I find out two things:

* Tyan wasn't aware that Speedstep was an option on the Xeon platform,

* That none of their BIOS suppliers are supporting Speedstep at this time.

Amazing! Intel put this in the CPU as a way to compete with this great feature from AMD, but you CANNOT USE IT.

Most certainly my last Intel purchase, ever.

jh

Re:Regarding the electricity consumption...

[tomstdenis]

Better though is that the D series can only clock down to 2.8Ghz whereas the AMD64s can go down to around 1Ghz [depending on your part]. Clocking from 3.2Ghz to 2.8Ghz doesn't save you that much power [maybe 10W at most ...].

My AMDX2 is sitting here running Linux and is clocked when idle to 1Ghz ... at 32C with a copper heatsink. The processor draws around 20-30W when idle compared to the Intel processors which draw nearly double that at idle.

In no way is a Netburst based processor a wise decision over the offerings of AMD.

Tom

Why, thanks for bring it up!

[ratboy666]

The article gets the point of Hyperthreading... backwards.

Yes, the memory interface gets congested, so the processor takes a stall. But, instead of just leaving the ALU idle, it has another thread in reserve to schedule on it. Thus improving the utilization of the ALU subsystem.

And THAT'S the point of this "Hyperthreading" thang...

The rest? Well, if the local L1/L2 cache isn't big enough, you are going to suffer. Yes, a bigger pipe to memory would help, but you are STILL several times slower than you could be. That's why you have the cache.

Anyway, its a balancing act.