Testing the latest x86 rack servers and low power server CPUs

Price Premiums for Low power CPUs

We know low power comes with a price premium, but how much? We compared the low power versions with a "normal power" model that should offer more or less the same performance. In the last column, we list which CPU you can get at the same price.

The HE parts are affordable; the price premium will be hard to notice in a fully configured server system. While we were writing this article, AMD introduced the new HE six-core Opteron parts. We'll update this article when we get the chance to test the low power hex-core CPUs.

On the other hand, the best power saving parts, the Extreme Efficiency parts, are quite expensive. For the price you have to pay for the best EE part (2.3GHz), you can get a six-core at 2.4GHz. In other words, for 35W less you have to sacrifice two cores and 100MHz clock speed. You can also trade in those 35W for about 26% more clock speed: the 2389 at 2.9GHz also costs $698. The Opteron EE is not a good deal for those looking for the best performance/watt per dollar. The reason for this high price is of course the fact that Intel does not have a comparable part:

Our measurements made it very clear that from a performance/watt point of view that the Xeon L5520 beats the Opteron EE. The point of the Opteron EE is of course the fact that the maximum power consumed is 16W lower. In the non-virtualized world, the Opteron EE may be an alternative to those on a quest for a very low power server who feel that Supermicro's Atom and Dell's VIA Nano based servers are too slow. It will probably also find a home in some custom made ultra dense server systems.

Personally, we would like to see these Opteron EEs become affordable for SMEs. Think of all the small business servers that hardly ever go beyond 10% load or the MySQL databases that are hit by lightly loaded websites and always hover between 10 and 50% load. Of course we are not blind to the business reasons why these parts are expensive: the typical "hyper scale" customer orders (ten) thousands of CPUs and are a very attractive market to cater for. The power obsessed SME market on the other hand is quite small.