Dual CPU Database Server Comparison
by Johan De Gelas on December 2, 2004 12:11 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Benchmarks MySQL 3.23.52: Intel versus AMD
A Linux database server report would not be complete without the open source database MySQL. It must be said that MySQL results had a large margin of error, especially at high levels of concurrency. At 100 concurrent threads, MySQL started to lose performance pretty quickly, and the margin of error grew fast. When we limit ourselves to a concurrency of 50, we get a decent margin of error (2% - 4%).
| conc lev | Dual Xeon 3,6 GHz | Dual Xeon 3,2 2 MB L3 | Dual Xeon 3.2 | Dual Xeon 3.06 1 MB L3 | Dual Xeon 3.06 | Opteron 250 DDR400 32 bit | Dual Opteron 250 DDR 400 64 bit | Dual Opteron 848 DDR400 - 64 bit |
| 1 | 127 | 105 | 107 | 110 | 104 | 156 | 201 | 190 |
| 2 | 191 | 166 | 161 | 175 | 158 | 249 | 317 | 287 |
| 5 | 239 | 206 | 194 | 206 | 189 | 303 | 368 | 337 |
| 10 | 249 | 221 | 203 | 218 | 194 | 289 | 381 | 353 |
| 20 | 251 | 226 | 195 | 218 | 190 | 309 | 403 | 377 |
| 35 | 259 | 226 | 190 | 223 | 189 | 315 | 405 | 375 |
| 50 | 251 | 225 | 186 | 222 | 185 | 300 | 388 | 363 |
Those were the raw numbers. Let us now analyze this:
| conc lev | Xeon 3.6 vs 3.2 | 2 MB L3-cache vs none | 1 MB L3-cache vs none | Xeon 3.2 vs 3.06 | Xeon 3.2 vs 3.06. both with L3 | Xeon 3.6 vs Opteron 250 | Opteron 64 bit vs 32 bit |
| 1 | 20% | -2% | 7% | -5% | -5% | -19% | 29% |
| 2 | 15% | 3% | 10% | -5% | -5% | -23% | 27% |
| 5 | 16% | 6% | 9% | 0% | 0% | -21% | 22% |
| 10 | 13% | 9% | 12% | 1% | 1% | -14% | 32% |
| 20 | 11% | 15% | 15% | 3% | 3% | -19% | 30% |
| 35 | 15% | 19% | 18% | 1% | 1% | -18% | 29% |
| 50 | 11% | 21% | 20% | 1% | 1% | -16% | 29% |
MySQL paints a totally different picture. Again, don't pay too much attention to the results of the lower concurrency levels.
This time, the Nocona Xeon is about 11% to 15% faster, more or less equal to the clock speed advantage of 13% that it has over the other Xeon brothers. Investing in large L3-caches pays off a lot more than it did in DB2. It seems that a 1 MB L3-cache is exactly what our application needs because that much delivers almost no boost at all (the margin of error may blur the results a bit).
And last, but not least, the Opteron makes a clean sweep of the Xeons. The 3.6 Nocona is up to 30% slower. When the Opteron moves to 64 bit, it can crunch through 30% more SQL statements.
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JohanAnandtech - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
About SLES9 and NUMA: NUMA is also supported by Linux kernel 2.4.21 and it boosts performance only a tiny bit. The reason are the very speedy HT links which keep latency at a minimum.It is still possible that kernel 2.6 NUMA support is far better of course, but I doubt it makes a difference for quad or dual systems as there is only hop in quad systems. With two hops (8 CPUs) from CPU 1 to 8 for example, this will become important.
AtaStrumf - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
A TYPO:So for now, the Opteron has an advantage still, but it ***can*** /can't/ knock out the Xeon, as it could have a few months ago, before the Xeon Nocona arrived.
HardwareD00d - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
There have been enough benchmarks on the web for a long time which show that Opteron generally wipes Xeon's a$$ hands down, and scales far better in multi processor configurations. The latest Xeon is nothing special compared to prior versions and will no doubt preform better mostly due to its increased clock speed. Xeon will never be better than Opteron no matter how much cache and tweaks Intel adds.Maybe Intel's next server architecture will be something to woo, but that's a ways off.
jshaped - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
as a long-time reader of aceshardware, i'll be the first to welcome Johan here, great first article. keep them coming!!!!HardwareD00d - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
I don't think there are enough variations of the way requests are handled to make a realistic conclusion for either chip. I'm sure you could create a situation where Intel bests AMD in My Sql, and vice versa. This article really needs more benchmarks and more in-depth analysis. Still, it provides enough information to conclude that both Xeon and Opteron have their strengths and weaknesses.mczak - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
Nice read. I really think though you should have used SLES 9. Not only does it use kernel 2.6, but it's also NUMA-aware (and DB2 should specifically support it, though it might not have been released yet). SLES 9 also ought to be faster especially on x86_64 due to newer compiler (not that it would matter much with precompiled databases, but every bit counts...). Though for 2-cpu boxes, NUMA might not be that important - but it's safe to predict a landslide victory for a 4-cpu opteron with NUMA support vs. a 4-cpu xeon box. Xeons simply don't scale to 4 cpus, intel might sell them but they are useless (especially since the Xeon MPs are still limited to 400 (or was that 533?) Mhz FSB.A pity though the quad opterons don't support ddr-400. I guess manufacturers decided it's more important to have a boatload of ram slots than fewer slots (with shorter traces) with higher speeds...
And btw, where are the 90nm Opterons? AMD's latest roadmap shows them as available in 2004, which doesn't leave too much time...
bthomas - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
Bogus conclusions about IBM tests IMO. From the
article:
> If we had published a similar report back in
> August, the Opteron would enjoyed a landslide
> victory. Luckily for Intel, Nocona is very
> competitive and is about 5% faster than the Opteron 250.
and later in the "conclusion":
> Nevertheless, AMD cannot sit on its laurels.
> Intel made a very good comeback with Nocona, as > this 3.6 GHz CPU is just a tiny bit faster in >
DB2.
It has not.
You fail to specify that this is comparing the _32 bit_ mode for the Opteron. IF you compare the Nocoma performance to the Opteron 64 bit capability...it sweeps the the Nocona in all tests.
The true conclusion is that based on the results in the article, for neither of the databases tested do *any* of the Intel processors compete with the Opteron.
fitten - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
Randomized benchmarks are hard to verify as well. You could get a "good" distribution that really takes advantage of cache locality while another randomization may be very cache unfriendly. I agree with #5 to a degree. A database that fits entirely inside of RAM isn't very interesting, ultimately.Still, I am happy that AnandTech is going down these paths of benchmarking instead of just being about Doom3, HL2, and FarCry like most other sites. I eagerly await further database benchmark articles.
PrinceXizor - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
#5 - Since when do top tier e-commerce cites compare to mid-level company database users as the beginning of the article mentioned?My company is an engineering firm that does custom electronics. Our database server handles all the transactions for our Inventory/MRP system which is mostly reads. These benchmarks are very appropriate. I wish I could have convinced my boss to go Opteron. Its funny, they had Athlon MP's before and then switched to Xeons when Opteron was out. Go figure.
Anyway, great article. I'm not IT guy by any stretch, but I enjoyed the article.
P-X
Jason Clark - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
#6, done ages ago..http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2205
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=1982