AMD's 12-core "Magny-Cours" Opteron 6174 vs. Intel's 6-core Xeon
by Johan De Gelas on March 29, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
OLTP benchmark Oracle Charbench “Calling Circle”
| Oracle Charbench Calling Circle | |
| Operating System | Windows 2008 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) |
| Software | Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2) for 64-bit Windows |
| Benchmark software | Swingbench/Charbench 2.2 |
| Database Size: | 9GB |
Calling Circle is an Oracle OLTP benchmark. We test with a database size of 9 GB. To reduce the pressure on our storage system, we increased the SGA size (Oracle buffer in RAM) to 10 GB and the PGA size was set at 1.6 GB. A calling circle tests consists of 83% selects, 7% inserts and 10% updates. The “calling circle” test is run for 10 minutes. A run is repeated 6 times and the results of the first run are discarded. The reason is that the disk queue length is sometimes close to 1, while the subsequent runs have a DQL (Disk Queue Length) of 0.2 or lower. In this case it was rather easy to run the CPUs at 99% load. Since DQLs were very similar, we could keep our results from the Nehalem article.
As we noted in our previous article, we work with a relatively small database. The result is that the benchmark doesn't scale well beyond 16 cores. The Opteron 6174 has a 10MB L3 cache for 12 cores, while the Opteron 2435 has 6MB L3 for 6 cores. The amount of cache might explain why the Intel Xeons scale a lot better in this benchmark. For this kind of OLTP workload is the Opteron 6174 not the right choice. To go back to the car analogy earlier: the muscle car is burning rubber while spinning its wheels, but is not making much progress.
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564265425722557 - Monday, March 29, 2010 - link
1. Why is the TDP of the 65W ACP Magny Cours the question mark? And are you sure the TDP of the 80W ACP ones 115W?2. The Intel systems have only 24GB ram against the 32GB ram on the 2S magny cours. That's why the 100GB database test favors the Magny cours by a large margin.
JohanAnandtech - Monday, March 29, 2010 - link
AMD told us the TDP values of the Magny-Cours at 80 and 105W ACP. The TDP values of the Lower power versions were not disclosed yet.And as we disclosed on the benchmark config page, none of the benches uses more than 20 GB. The vAPus mark I uses about 19 GB. The SQL Server uses much less. While the SQL server test has to scan through the complete index, it does access the complete 100 GB data. There absolutely no advantage for the Opterons there. We checked.
The fact that we spec the servers like that is a direct consequence of their memory channels (3 and 4). There is not much we can do about that.
Penti - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
How about about 4P performance? It's cheap now and it's AMD whole selling point. I guess you can get a 4P 48-core 128GB system for not that much. How would that compare to a say 2P Nehalem 12-core 92GB? Wouldn't they cost about the same? Will it still be competitive against 8-core 2P Nehalem-EX? And how about the 4P (like 6-core versions) Nehalem-EX? How about the 8-core versions of 6100 series Opterons?elnexus - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
In answer to cost:Compare our 2P Xeon 5600-series Workstation :http://elnexus.com/products.aspx?line_id=15514
with our 4P Opteron 6100-series Workstation: http://elnexus.com/products.aspx?line_id=15635
(I hope this isn't condemned as advertising, since it is an attempt to answer a question about price vs performance.)
Note how low priced the 6128 chip is (the default chip included in the base price).
AMD, I think are running away from Intel if you factor in the price...
Penti - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Thanks, I don't condemn it as advertising as this is a new platform so it's interesting and hard to get prices for complete systems yet. Basically 4P 8-core 6100-series opterons with 128GB DDR3 ECC REG cost as much as 2P six-core Xeon (Westmere EP) with 96GB DDR3 ECC REG. Mainly because you can use cheaper 4GB sticks and still get 128GB. And partly because there's no longer any markup for above >2P parts. I guess it accounts for something. Yeah, 6128 chip virtually don't cost nothing for being 4P compatible. Guess it helps AMD for a lot of workload scenarios. And since you can get 4P in 1U it's really nothing that speaks against it. Will be interesting to see what the Nehalem-EX can do though.TitanusComp - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 - link
You can really get a good idea by comparing this two products:48 Cores:
http://www.titanuscomputers.com/A400-AMD-Workstati...
24 Cores (Quad SLi Capable)
http://www.titanuscomputers.com/X450-Intel-High-Pe...
Now, things to consider, do you need CPU or GPU power?
duploxxx - Monday, March 29, 2010 - link
To make the whole benchmark complete I think you should ask some AMD Opteron 6136 from AMD to get a full review.duploxxx - Monday, March 29, 2010 - link
and add the 56xx 4core counterpart off courseJohanAnandtech - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
We are working on it. Expect an update with new SKUs this month. I would say next week, but I would like to take some time to do some in depth analysis.Hacp - Monday, March 29, 2010 - link
Anand,I want to ask why are you biased against AMD? You should base your tests based on price. AMD is selling their 12 core for the price of an Intel 6 core. Compare apples to apples! Do a 12 core vs 6 core comparison and see who wins. Otherwise, you are doing a disservice.