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Xeons, Opterons Compared in Power Efficiency

Posted by Zonk on from the nothing-like-some-friday-morning-power-analysis dept.

Bender writes "The Tech Report has put Intel's 'Woodcrest' and quad-core 'Clovertown' Xeons up against AMD's Socket F Opterons in a range of applications, including widely multithreaded tests from academic fields like computational fluid dynamics and proteomics. They've also attempted to quantify power efficiency in terms of energy use over over time and energy use per task, with some surprising results." From the article: "On the power efficiency front, we found both Xeons and Opterons to be very good in specific ways. The Opteron 2218 is excellent overall in power efficiency, and I can see why AMD issued its challenge. Yes, we were testing the top speed grade of the Xeon 5100 and 5300 series against the Opteron 2218, but the Opteron ended up drawing much less power at idle than the Xeons ... We've learned that multithreaded execution is another recipe for power-efficient performance, and on that front, the Xeons excel. The eight-core Xeon 5355 system managed to render our multithreaded POV-Ray test scene using the least total energy, even though its peak power consumption was rather high, because it finished the job in about half the time that the four-way systems did. Similarly, the Xeon 5160 used the least energy in completing our multithreaded MyriMatch search, in part because it completed the task so quickly. "

4 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Re:God, I'm sick of this architecture by gentimjs · · Score: 2, Funny

    /me hugs his ultrasparc system
    Couldnt agree more. Oh wait, something's sending an Int. Req. , cant type have; to see what it wants.....

  2. Re:God, I'm sick of this architecture by operagost · · Score: 1, Funny

    bizzaro CISC instruction set
    1994 called, they want their architecture debate back.
    --

    Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
  3. Re:Way to put the conclusion in the article summar by daybot · · Score: 2, Funny

    >I know this is slashdot, but maybe I wanted to RTFA?

    You must be new here...

  4. What About Efficiency as a Space Heater by darkonc · · Score: 2, Funny

    Up here in The Great White North, there is a second important feature (mostly for desktop and deskside systems) -- and that's efficiency as a space heater. When these boxes are running at full bore, how many BTUs do they generate, and how many BTUs/watt do they generate. How many Zeons or K7s would it take to heat the average house?
    More importantly, how does that compare to a dedicated space-heater?

    --
    Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.