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8-Core Dual Xeon "V8" Test Rig Performance
MojoKid writes "Back in January at this year's CES show, Intel was giving the press glimpses
of a rig in their booth dubbed the
V8. It was essentially a dual-socket workstation platform outfitted
with a pair of quad-core Xeon processors for a total of eight cores — hence the
"V8". The enterprise platform that this box was built around is based on Intel's
5000X chipset, aka Blackford, and it supports up to 32GB of FBDIMM serial
memory. HotHardware has
a component build-up of a more current Intel V8 machine here, with
preliminary benchmarks, pictures and more details on this 8-core dual Xeon
powerhouse."
Imagine a beowolf clu-
oh, sod it.
Living With a Nerd
This machine is obviously not designed for gaming. 8 Cores sound to me like a big number crunching machine for simulations and the like.
But then, who knows? Maybe the SME market might put some pressure on Dell and HP, pointing at the Mac while doing it. (I know, I know... but seriously - rEFIt for booting, a solid Linux distro like CentOS, and a couple of PCI-X cards, and you've got a full on server for most small/medium biz needs. Chuck in AppleCare for (most) warranty stuff, and a small business can do the same computing horsepower for a whole hell of a lot less than they otherwise could afford, IIRC).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Sounds a lot like a high-end Mac Pro (shipping for months) with a nicer graphics card. Dell Precision 690s are a bit pricier, but they do the same thing (admittedly, I envy the SAS built-in). I assume HP has a similar model, but I didn't check.
How is this news? Intel attached a marketing name to a product that has existed for months and is the logical extension of having dual-socket boards and quad-core chips. I mean, it's basically (2*2)*2 - dual-core processors (2) on MCM (*2) in a two-socket (*2) board. There's exactly no advancement going on here.
Fubar already. Anyone have a coral cache link?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Well, who really takes a "wait for barcelona" quote from a guy who uses the word GamEing"? The idea that he compared it to a gaming machine shows exactly how much he really knows about server processors in general.
This will be a pretty decent step for servers, not just because of speed, but the drop in heat compared to it's predecessors with the same amount of running processors. I'm sure that AMD will have something to throw in soon, but it really doesn't matter considering quite a few companies are bias to what manufacturer they use. Most stick with a brand, regardless of price, when they know it is reliable. It's also not a surprise that this was released. I'm sure that a V16 isn't too far down the line within a year or two.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
One step closer to running Vista! Baby steps.
Except the shared bus the Xeons sit on is a seriously limiting factor, no-one in HPC is using Xeons because of it.
A better bet would be a Sun Fire X4600 type of machine, 8 dual-core Opterons and 128GB of memory in a 4U server chassis.
This is well known, and having played with one, it's a very nice machine. Unlike its 24TB cousin ...
Blackford has two separate FSBs. One for each quad core. Now, the quad core shares the bus among the two converged cores, but I think you meant something else.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
I bet apple could give they systems away for free and you PC Nicks will still find a way to show that macs are more expensive then PCs
It's the TCO, man! The purchase price hardly matter! Everyone knows that....
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Well, Dell will only ship Server 2003 with their server products, and that is a $800 expense.
I think that XP should be able to support an 8 core, dual socket setup, though. XP is limited to two sockets, but should be able to support at least 8 cores, I think.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
*slaps forehead* I could have had a V8!
I don't dispute that... I'm sure now that ATi is owned by AMD we will see nVidia and Intel getting much friendlier than they have been.
Over all it is an exiting time to be a tech head... competition is great.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
There's a huge difference between an A/C whining and someone's personal opinion (or even, in this case, a fact!) Have you even tried Vista yet? I'm right with the parent on this one, it's become a gigantic trade-off between security and functionality, and unfortunately for Microsoft they've leaned a little too close to the former this time.
That's not to say they won't find a balance eventually (or really just go back to XP!), and it's certainly not a flame, just a comment...
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=x53 55&page=3&cookie_test=1 says 450 watts peak power consumption, for a system with two quad-core processors and a crazy nVidia graphics card.
0 ) used 325 watts peak; the nVidia graphics chips do not seem to be as active at shutting down unused parts of the chip as Intel's processors are, and I think that explains most of the difference.
That's with 2.66GHz quad-cores, and it's possible that the 3GHz ones use up to 25 watts more each, but 500 watts is still a pretty pathetic space heater.
A test with 3GHz dual-cores of a server-like machine (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2892&p=1
Someone said that cars would never catch on because they were too noisy and smelly. Someone said that television would never catch on because movies were so much better. Someone even said that nobody needs more than 640K in a personal computer. Just look where we are now.
All you need to do is give someone a fun today to play with and they'll find a way of doing something interesting, perhaps even useful, with it.
Actually it doesn't seem to scale all that well at all. Take a look at the memory bandwidth scores.
Two sockets with Intel Quad core chips looks to be at the saturation point for the FSB. I have heard that the Xeon uses slower memory than the Duo but I think that 8 cores on the Intel FSB is about all your going to get for now.
The Itantium and Opteron both will scale to more CPUs than the current Xeon.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.