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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smn198 - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
Would love to see how MS SQL performs in similar tests.mrVW - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
This test seems foolish to me. A 1GB database? All of that fits in ram.A database server is all about being the most reliable form of STORAGE, not some worthless repeat queries that you should cache anyway.
Transactions, logging... I mean how realistic is it to have a 1GB of database on a system with 4GB of RAM and expensive DB2 software.
A real e-commerce site likeMWave, NewEgg, Crucial could have 20GB per year! Names, addresses, order detail, customer support history, etc.
Once you get over a certain size, a database is all about disk (putting logging on one disk indepdent of the daata, etc.). The indexes do the main searching work.
This whole test seems geared to be CPU focused, but only a hardware hacker would apply software in such a crazy way.
mrdudesir - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
man i would love to have one of those systems. Great job on the review you guys, its good to know that there are places where you can still get great independent analysis.Zac42 - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
mmmmmmm Quad Opterons......Snoop - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
Great readksherman - Thursday, December 2, 2004 - link
is that pic from the 'lab'? (the one on pg 1)