Bulldozer Server Benchmarks Not Promising

New submitter RobinEggs writes "Some reviews of Bulldozer's server performance have arrived. Ars Technica has the breakdown, and the results are pretty ugly. Apparently Bulldozer fares just as poorly with servers as with desktops. From the article: 'One reason for the underwhelming performance on the desktop is that the Bulldozer architecture emphasizes multithreaded performance over single-threaded performance. For desktop applications, where single-threaded performance is still king, this is a problem. Server workloads, in contrast, typically have to handle multiple users, network connections, and virtual machines concurrently. This makes them a much better fit for processors that support lots of concurrent threads. ... It looks as though the decisions that hurt Bulldozer on the desktop continue to hurt it in the server room. Although the server benchmarks don't show the same regressions as were found on the desktop, they do little to justify the design of the new architecture.' It's probably much too early to start editorializing about the end of AMD, or even to say with certainty that Bulldozer has failed, but my untrained eye can't yet see any possible silver lining in these new processors."

Comments

Ars Troll Articles Are Arse

[raddude99]

The standard of writing at "Ars Technica" have declined far more than AMD's relative performance to Intel.

Re:Ars Troll Articles Are Arse

[hawguy]

So if performance/watt is your first priority, we think the current Xeons are your best option.

Who, other than NASA (et al) has performance/watt a high priority, much less their first priority? And for NASA, the priority for performance/watt's only for space bound vehicles. I doubt they're sending supercomputers into space.

Bogus.

Anyone who pays for their own power?

Power is a significant portion of the operating cost of a server - a server that's 25% more energy efficient with the same performance is a sizable savings. You don't just pay for watts to the server, every watt that goes into the server has to be taken away by cooling, and has to be supplied by an expensive redundant power infrastructure.

I don't get it. It beat the Xeons??

[TheSunborn]

I really don't get the conclusion.

The bulldozer is faster then the Xeon chip on all cpu benchmarks which can generate enough threads to fill all cores.

Each bulldozer core is as fast as a core on a Opteron 6100.

It looks exactly like the cpu I want in my web/db server, and my supercomputer.

Re:I don't get it. It beat the Xeons??

[Chrisq]

I agree. Its a very biased summary. From TFA:

In AnandTech's benchmarks, the 6200 failed to beat Intel's Xeon processors, in spite of Intel's core and thread deficit. In others, 6200 pulled ahead, with a lead topping out at about 30 percent.

That's hardly an unmitigated disaster for a cheaper chi and the first release from a new architecture.

Re:They are a catastrophe ...

[CajunArson]

1. Nobody with a sig advertizing knock-off PHP plugins even has the right to use the word "supercomputer" in a sentence.

2. Supercomputers are NOT built based on processor speed. If you took the SPARC CPUs used in the K computer (the worlds fastest and *not* running opterons) and put them into a regular server or desktop, then you'd have a pretty underwhelming computer. Most of the $$$ going into supercomputers goes to the interconnects, not the CPUs. So sure, use the opterons in the supercomputer where AMD sells them at firesale prices and does not make any money. The rest of us will use Xeons and be very happy with the results.

3. You are a well known AMD fanboi and your repetitive posts are becoming less and less amusing.

Windows is not optimized for Bulldozer

[Anonymous Coward]

TPC-C is performed on Windows 2008 see http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_result_detail.asp?id=111111501
Anantech tested on Windows 7.
It is known that Windows 7 and 2008 are not optimized for Bulldozer, especially at the task scheduling level.
So we do not know the real power of the Bulldozer architecture in the Windows world yet
See http://hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/32394-bulldozer-benchmarks-correct-definitive which unfortunately only has very few benchmarks.
You can also look at the phoronix site, where Bulldozer is tested on Linux.

A much better source for this kind of information.

[Bleek II]

Anandtech.com provides much more knowledgeable and professional reviews. They had this to about AMD's new chip, "Unfortunately, with the current power management in ESXi, we are not satisfied with the Performance/watt ratio of the Opteron 6276. The Xeon needs up to 25% less energy and performs slightly better. So if performance/watt is your first priority, we think the current Xeons are your best option. The Opteron 6276 offers a better performance per dollar ratio. It delivers the performance of $1000 Xeon (X5650) at $800. Add to this that the G34 based servers are typically less expensive than their Intel LGA 1366 counterparts and the price bonus for the new Opteron grows. If performance/dollar is your first priority, we think the Opteron 6276 is an attractive alternative." http://www.anandtech.com/show/5058/amds-opteron-interlagos-6200/14

Re:AMD needs its swagger back

[serviscope_minor]

Sadly AMD simply has not performed over the last year or two,

That's just Simply not true. On the server side, the quad 6100 1U servers are very competitive, supplying as much (sometimes more) power than iuntel boxes for considerably less money. At this point they're a bit of a no-brainer in the server room.

On the desktop, it is different. More of the benchmarks show that the core i5 is faster than the Phenom2 x6 and 8150. But some benchmarks show that the AMD showings can be considerably faster. The choice is really simple. If your workload is dominated by the kind of things that Intel do well, then buy intel, otherwise buy AMD.

The CPUs are simply too close otherwise.