Xeons, Opterons Compared in Power Efficiency

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. "

Comments

AMD needs to get back in the game, quick

[Salvance]

AMD needs to deliver some real quad core chips (or 8 core chips) that will beat Intel's performance. If they don't soon, AMD will quickly get kicked back to the 2nd rate Intel cloner that everyone knew them prior to their groundbreaking AMD 64s and dual core chips briefly took the performance lead from Intel. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that AMD will deliver, I've always liked (and bought) their chips as long as the performance is similar to Intel.

AMD's path

[homey of my owney]

AMD needs to do what they have been doing - thinking independently and coming up with original solutions.

This just in!

[gentimjs]

Apples compared to Oranges: Our findings on the page after the banner adds!
.. nothing to see here, move along...

Re:Hmm, so which better reflects real-world usage?

[archen]

Although some people will pipe in with their number crunching sever stories, are there any normal usage servers that really come in at 100% CPU usage? For the 20 odd servers I run few ever run at that rate for more than 30 minutes a day or so - and usually doing backups for that matter. Other system components often keep you from reaching that target, and most 24-7 servers I've seen do most of their work during a certain period then spend the rest of their time twiddling their thumbs.

Best Practices

[killmenow]

It has always been my understanding that best practices dictate a server running at a constant 100% CPU utilization is underpowered and needs upgraded. Normal, every day, steady CPU utilization should hover no higher than around 50% (closer to 75%, if you like living on the edge) leaving enough CPU to handle peak loads. Very few functions require a system that maintains a constant CPU utilization and never peaks over it.

Business needs to pay attention

[msobkow]

I know of and have worked with too many organizations that figure it's just a matter of slapping all the computers in an air-conditioned room. Every watt of waste heat adds to the A/C bill.

Old fashioned water-cooled mainframes and big iron (for it's time) often recirculated the wasted heat into the heating systems of the surrounding buildings. We've known all along how to be more energy efficient, if companies and management would only place the emphasis on the environment in their budgets.

Re:Hmm, so which better reflects real-world usage?

[rbanffy]

Well... If you have a couple servers that idle most of the time, I suggest that, instead of AMD, you buy VMWare.

Or go Xen, OpenVz or whatever does the trick.

But, most important, get rid of the idling boxes.