AMD Beats Intel in Power-Efficiency Study

Ted Samson writes "AMD Opteron servers proved up to 15.2 percent more energy-efficient than those running Intel Xeon in a server-power-efficiency test performed by Neal Nelson and Associates, InfoWorld reports. That translates to annual electricity savings between $20.29 per server and $36.04 per server, depending on the workload, the study concluded. The benchmark tests were conducted on similarly configured 3GHz systems running Novell SUSE Linux, Apache2, and MySQL."

Comments

Different Power Supplies

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the PDF, you'll see that the AMD system was tested with a 500W power supply while the Intel one was tested with a 600W one. I wonder how much of the different can be associated with that.

Re:Different Power Supplies

[cecil_turtle]

The reason why is because the Woodcrest Xeon is the only 3GHz Xeon that Intel made, and for some reason they decided to standardize this test on "3.0 GHz". Since everybody knows that AMD outperforms Intel on a per-GHz basis, it does lead one to wonder why they chose that particular metric, but honestly no matter what metric they chose people would complain.

For one, AMD and Intel don't release their new chips on the same date, so one side can always complain "that's not our newest stuff" or "yeah, but just wait until our next generation". If you wait for same generation, same CPU frequency chips from both manufacturers before you do a benchmark, you're going to be waiting a while - it'll never happen. And if you pick a "performance class" to set your benchmark on, somebody will complain "yeah but XXXX's chip is .5GHz slower/faster than XXXX's". It's a lose-lose situation for the tester.

Also above there is a discussion about chipsets / power supplies / etc. Again nearly impossible to standardize on this stuff as well. Obviously there is no motherboard that is identical in every regard except the processor that it accepts. Another thread talks about the memory controller for Intel being off-chip vs. on-chip for AMD - so right there you have to go beyond the CPU and include more platform to make a "fair" comparison. Even if they standardized on a power supply, people can argue that the system that pulls less power doesn't need the larger power supply and could save more power (less loss to inefficiencies) on a smaller unit. So do you run the recommended unit for the server or run the same, possibly wrong power supply for both?

My overall point being that in for somebody to do any kind of test like this, they need to setup some base rules. I don't know why people complain so much - they provide all the criteria they chose and did a comparison based on that. If that doesn't answer a question you had, do it yourself or go to another benchmark. Don't complain that the test is invalid because your chip of choice didn't win. For this benchmark, power consumption for 3.0 GHz servers under "real world" conditions (not idle, not pinned, running various applications from databases to web servers), AMD won. Get over it.

3.0Ghz May Not Meen Equal Performance

[robbieduncan]

Both systems had 3.0Ghz CPUs and similar amounts of RAM. But did they offer the same performance? If both servers were being pushed 100% would one be able to server more users than the other? If the servers were never pushed to 100% then the test is not really a like-with-like comparison. I imagine that one CPU performs better than the other (and I'd expect right now that's the Intel one). Perhaps a 2.66Ghz vs 3.0Ghz test is closer to the same performance?

Re:3.0Ghz May Not Meen Equal Performance

[florescent_beige]

If you read page 6 of the test description, under Test Design, they say this:

This test is not intended to measure the maximum throughput that a server can deliver

The test simulates credit card transactions coming in at a controlled rate. So this test would let someone get an idea of their operating costs. The fixed capital costs determined by required throughput and how much hardware needed to handle it is a separated issue this test doesn't tell you anything about.

Re:3.0Ghz May Not Meen Equal Performance

[locketine]

The opteron is actually faster, noticeably faster in fact. Or atleast it's slower equivalent was faster so I can only imagine the 3ghz model is even more powerful. http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/04/22/duel_of_the _titans/page18.html#database_test_mysql_32352__32_ bit_suse_enterprise_8. You're still 100% correct that the test isn't really good with using two proc's from different companies at the same clock speed. They should have first figured out a good matchup in performance before testing engergy usage.

Re:3.0Ghz May Not Meen Equal Performance

[timeOday]

The savings from consolidating a number of server workloads on a smaller number of machines using something like Xen...

The problem with that is you often don't have a steady load 24/7. At 3am, you need 1 server; at 8:30am, you need 40. Since virtualization has overhead, the total amount of hardware required to support your max load using virtualization is actually more.

Agreed virtualization could be good for pooling services that each consistently takes less than 1 server though.

energy $$$ savings yea right

[gnudutch]

AMD 8222 cpu = $2149
Intel 5160 cpu = $851

The AMD system will be obsolete before you realize any "cost savings".

Also you don't buy these top dog chips if you're going to let them sit idle all day.

Yeah, 'cos render farms are sooo common these days

[Joce640k]

Render farms, HPC, etc. are a tiny percentage of all the "servers" out there.

I don't think we should throw away the test results because of a few render farms.

Re:Intel CPU is only 1 part that uses a lot of pow

[jbengt]

Your idea is right, but your math is a little off.

You should be able to get down below 1.5 kW per Ton of A/C. (efficient systems can get down below 1.0 kW/T, even including all the pumps and fans)
That works out to close to 0.4 kW of A/C power used per 1.0 kW of heat cooled. But first add about 0.15 kW UPS per 1.0 kW power delivered, so you might as much as 0.5 kW per 1.0 kW of server power.

The maximum rated power supply does not correlate to power consumed, but an over-sized or under-sized power supply will be less efficient.

Also, is that 80W power differential the average over 24hrs/7days a week, or is it closer to a peak use difference?