AMD Shanghai Launch - Database Testing
by Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on November 13, 2008 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Conclusion
As you've seen, AMD is still competitive with Intel's 3.0 GHz Harpertown in the database workloads that we've shown here. We were quite surprised that Shanghai was able to meet and, in some cases, pass Harpertown at various workload levels in some of the benchmarks. Obviously, when it comes to power, AMD is still leading this space by a significant margin. FB-DIMMs obliterate any power efficiency in Intel's processors, especially when you have eight (or more in some cases) of them present in a server.
What about how Shanghai fairs against its older brother Barcelona? Well, in some cases, the gain is clearly just the increased clock speed. However, in others Shanghai achieves an increase of anywhere from 10-15% over and above the clock speed difference. It's obvious that Shanghai is what Intel would call a "Tock" of the clock for the Barcelona architecture, and it is a nice little bump for turning a few knobs and a die shrink. 2009 will be a very interesting year for AMD and Intel. Whether or not Shanghai can hold down the fort until Istanbul comes out remains to be seen.
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piesquared - Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - link
I mean really, how many times AT? You didn't seem to have a problem with i7 results, what's the hold up? Or is this going to be another dfi790, 790fx, 790gx, 780g etc, etc, etc, type of review. You know, the kind where you pay lip service to it, and then go back to cuddling up with Intel.... FraudsLTG - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
Another power variable I didn't see in the review - The harpertown that matches AMD's price listed is the lower TDP model.The E5450 is 80w TDP
The X5450 is 120w TDP
LTG - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
Sorry just found it on the benchmark graphs - looks to be the "E" version.LTG - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
It would be very helpful to know this because almost all new Intel systems support the lower voltage FB-DIMMs.segerstein - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
Yes, the future will be Muslim. AMD is going to get bought by rich UAEs. The next architecture will be called Istanbul.Why not Byzantium or Constantinople?
Tormeh - Saturday, November 15, 2008 - link
Maybe because Istanbul is an actual place, and not just a historic name?alpha754293 - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
You mentioned in this brief review that the FB-DIMMS remove any power efficiency advantage that the Intels othewise might have had.Does the AMD systems also use the FB-DIMMS?
Also, how are you measuring the power consumption because a lot of the charts/graphs look nearly exactly identical, which would seem odd unless it was using the CPU (i.e. all of the application profiles) were EXACTLY identical.
JarredWalton - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
AMD does *not* use FB-DIMMs, and very likely never will. The power penalty appears to be something like 7W per FB-DIMM, possibly even a bit more, and the performance advantage... well, it doesn't exist. FB-DIMM was an idea to add more memory on a single channel at the cost of increasing latency. I just don't think it really made enough of a difference to affect the vast majority of server users.Johnniewalker - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
Now that would be cool!acejj26 - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
Memory frequency is now 800 MHz. Bandwidth is a function of the frequency, but they are not the same.