AMD Opteron 248 vs. Intel Xeon 2.8: 2-way Web Servers go Head to Head
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Jason Clark on December 17, 2003 9:15 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Final Words
What gave the Athlon MP its performance advantage was AMD’s short-pipeline, high IPC (Instructions Per Clock) architecture. What we saw at the beginning of the Athlon MP vs. Xeon matches back in 2001 was that AMD was trouncing Intel without even breaking a sweat. However, as the Xeon ramped up in clock speed, the performance gap and later the advantage began to shift towards Intel.With the Opteron, we are seeing an even more devastating advantage for AMD because, this time around, AMD isn’t only relying on a higher IPC core to gain the upper hand. The Opteron’s on-die memory controller is one of the biggest assets that the CPU has in the server environment, and as you can see by the performance results we’ve shown here today, it is an asset that is more valuable than the Xeon’s Hyper-Threading.
The choice today is clear. In 2-way configurations, the Opteron is a much more powerful and capable web server than Intel’s Xeon. But the performance tests are nowhere near over. We’ve been playing around with AMD’s 4-way Opteron 848 machines for months now and are not far away from bringing you the first head-to-head comparison between the Opteron 848 and a 4-way Intel Xeon MP system. AMD has been praising their Opteron architecture for MP scalability, and soon, we’ll be putting their claims to the test.
The true test that remains, however, is a test comparing AMD’s Opteron to Intel’s Itanium 2. Intel was not very receptive to the idea of doing a head-to-head; not out of a fear of losing, but out of a desire not to lend AMD any credibility by showing that the Opteron is indeed a competitor to the Itanium 2. While we do believe that the Itanium 2 in its 128-way configurations is definitely out of the Opteron’s league, in the 2-way and 4-way configurations that we are interested in comparing, the two are absolutely competitors.
Whether Intel is looking to supply us with an Itanium 2 system or not, we will make that comparison. It seems that if these web server results are any early indication, AMD has more than enough credibility with the Opteron to at least step up to bat with the Itanium 2 pitching.
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Superbike - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
CRAMITPAL right as always!Jeff7181 - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
You'd think some people here have a huge investment in AMD the way they touch their balls every time AMD comes out ahead in a benchmark.Anyway, it's nice to see some benchmarks that clearly show what AMD processors are capable of... only other thing I'd like to see is the cost of the configurations used. That would even extend AMD's "lead."
morcegovermelho - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
Ooops...The last sentence should be read as:
try in calculator 141 + 82.3%. The result is 257,043.
morcegovermelho - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
quote:"The Opteron 248 setup managed to outperform Intel’s fastest, largest cache Xeon MP by a whopping 45%"
I think the number should be 82,3%.
If the Opteron was twice as fast (100% faster) as the Xeon the Average Request Time would be half of 257ms (128.5ms). The Opteron Average Request Time is 141ms (82% faster than Xeon).
Try in calculator: 141 + 82%. The result is 257,043.
Shinei - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
The message is clear: Opteron wins, flawless victory. Now if only I could AFFORD a 248 setup... ;)RZaakir - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
"it would of been nice to have taken out a singnal(sic) opteron also so(sic) see 1x proformance."Knowing how well Opteron chips scale, this was probably a decision made out of mercy for Intel.
Nehemoth - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
Awesomedvinnen - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
it would of been nice to have taken out a singnal opteron also so see 1x proformance.jerkweed - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
Quote: Intel was not very receptive to the idea of doing a head-to-head; not out of a fear of losing, but out of a desire not to lend AMD any credibility by showing that the Opteron is indeed a competitor to the Itanium 2.That might be what Intel told AT, but honestly, Intel is terrified of seeing a head-to-head benchmark for an application like this. Itanium/Itanium 2 (known by most HPC/64-bit gearheads as 'Itanic') will show numbers much slower than even their Xeons for a web benchmark. The vast majority of all web-server cpu usage is INT specific... look at the numbers for spec INT yourself:
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q4/
Falco. - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
all i can say is damn...can't wait for that 4 way shootout and the opteron vs itanium test ...