Intel's newest Quad Xeon MP versus HP's DL585 Quad Opteron
by Johan De Gelas on November 10, 2006 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Analyses: the Xeon MP and Opteron Server
A CPU is only one aspect of choosing a server; at the end of the day it is the server that you can afford that makes you decide for one platform or another. The 4U Intel SR4850HW4 isn't very different from the SR6850HW4, so we can compare our Xeon MP test machine to the HP Opteron server.
The Xeon MP offers much more in the way of RAS features than the Opteron machine. The HP DL585 also has a few shortcomings: it does not offer any PCIe expansion slots, the SCSI controller is an old SCSI 160 model, and there are no USB ports on the front of the machine. Being able to quickly load some network drivers from a USB stick is very convenient compared to tinkering in the back of your rack.
However, the HP is the winner for memory intensive HPC applications: it can use DDR1-400 DIMMs which are quite a bit faster than the DDR2-400 FB DIMMs Intel uses. We were disappointed that both 4U designs do not offer more than 4-5 disk bays. If you are a medium sized enterprise and you have only one or a few heavy duty database applications, you can save a lot of money if you don't have to buy an external storage rack. With a RAID-1 setup for the operating system and programs, you only have two disks left to install your database on a second RAID-1 partition. Both the HP DL585 and the Intel SR4850HW4 basically force you to invest in an external storage rack in this case. Some 3U solutions like Supermicro's offer 16(!) disk bays and might be a better fit for a compute intensive transactional database. The HP and Intel machine are more suited for a HPC machine or as the host of a SAN storage rack to house a massive database/ERP system.
To make a fair comparison between the Xeon MP and AMD Opteron 8xx platforms, we decided to compare the costs of similar HP Xeon MP and HP Opteron machines, configuring them as similarly as possible.
The price disadvantage of the Xeon MP is more than $2000, which is not huge but still tangible. It is the result of the fact that you have to pay an extra $400 per Xeon CPU and $1000 for two extra memory boards. It is possible to save $1000 if you only get two memory boards, but that is not advisable. As 4GB DIMMs are extremely expensive, this means that you limit your server to 16GB (8x2GB) and that you cannot use the more advanced RAS features such as memory mirroring.
Power
How much power can we save by choosing the 95W TDP Opteron over the 150W TDP Xeon MP? We tested all machines with only one power supply running. DBS and PowerNow! were not enabled.
Both machines use huge fast turning fans which consume a lot of energy. To give you an idea of what this means, while idling the power consumption of the Xeon MP machine fluctuated between 460W and 620W. The 620W figure was generated when all the fans where turned on, while the 460W result was measured when the fans were silent. The HP DL585 did not use this on/off fan system, and consumed 520W while running idle. Once running at 100% load, the Xeon MP consumed 200W more than the Opteron machine while running SPECjbb2005. For your information, our Supermicro system consumed 310 W with 4 GB and about 360 W with 12 GB of RAM
Conclusion so far
Yes, our testing is not done. We still have to test other databases, and we are running benchmarks with Bea's JVM while you are reading this. Those benchmarks will be presented in our Clovertown - Intel's new quad core server CPU - review. In this review we focused a little more on the actual servers. So what can we conclude so far?
The Xeon 7140MP "Tulsa" is nothing less than a massive improvement over the previous Xeon 7041: it consumes less, performs a lot better (see the SPEC int/fp numbers) and is much less expensive. The new Xeon MP needs fewer optimizations than the Opteron to perform well in Java applications. Or if we look at our preliminary Bea Webrockit numbers, it performs better than the quad Opteron with a highly optimized JVM in applications with a big memory footprint (like SPECjbb2005) thanks to its massive L3 cache. In applications where the large L3 cache doesn't play a big role, the relatively poor server performance of the "NetBurst" architecture becomes visible again: our MySQL benchmark runs a lot better on the AMD Opteron and Intel's newest Core architecture Xeons. Power consumption is still rather high though, and the HP Opteron server consumed over 230W less.
In a nutshell, the new Xeon MP will have a hard time convincing people who are leaning towards an Opteron server or want the best performance/watt. But on the other hand, the decent performance and superior RAS features will keep the customers who desire high availability in the Intel camp, while the previous Xeon MP was such a poor performer that many people had no other choice than the AMD Opteron in the quad socket market.
When "High-end RAS" is less important, the excellent performance of the Xeon 5160 based Supermicro 6015 server shows how much potential the Xeon DP "Clovertown" has. Clovertown is nothing more than two Xeon DP 51xx on one chip, but it could give our quad monsters a hard time. You will find out more very soon....
A CPU is only one aspect of choosing a server; at the end of the day it is the server that you can afford that makes you decide for one platform or another. The 4U Intel SR4850HW4 isn't very different from the SR6850HW4, so we can compare our Xeon MP test machine to the HP Opteron server.
| Server Feature Comparison | ||
| SR6850HW4 (Intel SR4850HW4) | HP DL585 Model 2006 | |
| Hardware | ||
| CPU | 4x Intel Xeon 70xx and 71xx | Opteron 8xx |
| Fastest CPU | Xeon MP 3.4 GHz /16MB L3 | Opteron 885 2.6 GHz |
| Max Mem Capacity | 64 GB DDR2 400 FB Dimms (16 x 4 GB) | 128 GB DDR266 32 GB DDR400 |
| Mem Type | ECC DDR2 400 | DDR400/333/266 |
| Chipset | E8501 | AMD 8000 chipset |
| RAS | ||
| ECC Memory | Yes | Yes |
| Memory RAID | Yes | No |
| Hot plug memory | Yes | No |
| Memory Sparing | Yes | No |
| Memory Mirroring | Yes | No |
| Hotswappable PCI | Yes on PCI-X 133 and PCIe | No |
| Hotswappable Fans | 6 (4) | 8 |
| Hotswappable PSU | Yes, 1+1 | Yes,1+1 |
| Integrated Onboard | ||
| Video Chip | ATI RADEON 7000 VGA PCI | ATI Rage XL |
| Video RAM | 16 MB SDRAM | 8 MB SDRAM |
| Max. Resolution | 1600x1200 | 1280x1024 |
| PCIe x16/x8 | 0/1 | 0/0 |
| PCIe x4/x1 | 4/0 | 0/0 |
| PCI-X (133/100) | 1/2 | 2/6 |
| PCI | 0 | 0 |
| USB Front | 3 | 0 |
| USB Rear | 2 | 2 |
| LAN | Intel Dual Gigabit | NC7782 Dual PCI-X Gigabit |
| Server management | Intel Server management | HP Ilo |
| Serial Ports | 1 | 1 |
| Storage | ||
| Controller | LSI Logic LSI53C1030 | HP Smart Array 5i Plus Ultra 3 |
| Cache | Optional | 64 MB BBU |
| Interface | Dual-Channel Ultra320 SCSI SCA | Dual-Channel Ultra320 SCSI SCA |
| Disks | 10 (5) | 4 |
| RAID | 0,1,1E | 0,1,1+0,5 |
| 5.25 bays | 2 | 1 |
| Dimensions & Power | ||
| Form Factor | 6U (4U) | 4U |
| Weight (kg) | 60 (40) | 30 |
| PowerSupply | 2x1570W | 2x 870W |
| . | ||
| URL | SR6850HW4 | HP DL585 2006 |
The Xeon MP offers much more in the way of RAS features than the Opteron machine. The HP DL585 also has a few shortcomings: it does not offer any PCIe expansion slots, the SCSI controller is an old SCSI 160 model, and there are no USB ports on the front of the machine. Being able to quickly load some network drivers from a USB stick is very convenient compared to tinkering in the back of your rack.
However, the HP is the winner for memory intensive HPC applications: it can use DDR1-400 DIMMs which are quite a bit faster than the DDR2-400 FB DIMMs Intel uses. We were disappointed that both 4U designs do not offer more than 4-5 disk bays. If you are a medium sized enterprise and you have only one or a few heavy duty database applications, you can save a lot of money if you don't have to buy an external storage rack. With a RAID-1 setup for the operating system and programs, you only have two disks left to install your database on a second RAID-1 partition. Both the HP DL585 and the Intel SR4850HW4 basically force you to invest in an external storage rack in this case. Some 3U solutions like Supermicro's offer 16(!) disk bays and might be a better fit for a compute intensive transactional database. The HP and Intel machine are more suited for a HPC machine or as the host of a SAN storage rack to house a massive database/ERP system.
To make a fair comparison between the Xeon MP and AMD Opteron 8xx platforms, we decided to compare the costs of similar HP Xeon MP and HP Opteron machines, configuring them as similarly as possible.
| Price Comparison | ||
| Server | HP ProLiant DL580 G4 3.20GHz | HP ProLiant DL585 G2 2.4GHz - Rack Server |
| CPUs | 4x Intel Xeon MP 7130 M | 4x AMD Opteron 8216 DC |
| Memory | 4 Memory boards x 2 x 1 GB DDR2-400 | 8x 1 GB DDR2-667 |
| Storage | HP Smart Array P400/256 PCIe Controller | HP Smart Array P400/512 Controller with battery |
| NIC | HP Dual embedded NC371i Gigabit | HP Dual embedded NC371i Gigabit |
| PSU | Dual 910/1300W power supplies | Dual 910/1300W hot plug power supplies |
| DVD | SlimLine DVD-ROM Drive (8x/24x) Option Kit | SlimLine DVD-ROM Drive (8x/24x) Option Kit |
| Price | $15,343 | $13,184 |
The price disadvantage of the Xeon MP is more than $2000, which is not huge but still tangible. It is the result of the fact that you have to pay an extra $400 per Xeon CPU and $1000 for two extra memory boards. It is possible to save $1000 if you only get two memory boards, but that is not advisable. As 4GB DIMMs are extremely expensive, this means that you limit your server to 16GB (8x2GB) and that you cannot use the more advanced RAS features such as memory mirroring.
Power
How much power can we save by choosing the 95W TDP Opteron over the 150W TDP Xeon MP? We tested all machines with only one power supply running. DBS and PowerNow! were not enabled.
| Power Requirements | ||
| System | Configuration | Max / Idle Power Usage (100% / <1% CPU load, W) |
| HP DL585 | 4 CPUs - 16 GB RAM | 657 / 520 |
| Intel Xeon MP 7130M | 4 CPUs - 16 GB RAM | 885 / 460 (620) |
Both machines use huge fast turning fans which consume a lot of energy. To give you an idea of what this means, while idling the power consumption of the Xeon MP machine fluctuated between 460W and 620W. The 620W figure was generated when all the fans where turned on, while the 460W result was measured when the fans were silent. The HP DL585 did not use this on/off fan system, and consumed 520W while running idle. Once running at 100% load, the Xeon MP consumed 200W more than the Opteron machine while running SPECjbb2005. For your information, our Supermicro system consumed 310 W with 4 GB and about 360 W with 12 GB of RAM
Conclusion so far
Yes, our testing is not done. We still have to test other databases, and we are running benchmarks with Bea's JVM while you are reading this. Those benchmarks will be presented in our Clovertown - Intel's new quad core server CPU - review. In this review we focused a little more on the actual servers. So what can we conclude so far?
The Xeon 7140MP "Tulsa" is nothing less than a massive improvement over the previous Xeon 7041: it consumes less, performs a lot better (see the SPEC int/fp numbers) and is much less expensive. The new Xeon MP needs fewer optimizations than the Opteron to perform well in Java applications. Or if we look at our preliminary Bea Webrockit numbers, it performs better than the quad Opteron with a highly optimized JVM in applications with a big memory footprint (like SPECjbb2005) thanks to its massive L3 cache. In applications where the large L3 cache doesn't play a big role, the relatively poor server performance of the "NetBurst" architecture becomes visible again: our MySQL benchmark runs a lot better on the AMD Opteron and Intel's newest Core architecture Xeons. Power consumption is still rather high though, and the HP Opteron server consumed over 230W less.
In a nutshell, the new Xeon MP will have a hard time convincing people who are leaning towards an Opteron server or want the best performance/watt. But on the other hand, the decent performance and superior RAS features will keep the customers who desire high availability in the Intel camp, while the previous Xeon MP was such a poor performer that many people had no other choice than the AMD Opteron in the quad socket market.
When "High-end RAS" is less important, the excellent performance of the Xeon 5160 based Supermicro 6015 server shows how much potential the Xeon DP "Clovertown" has. Clovertown is nothing more than two Xeon DP 51xx on one chip, but it could give our quad monsters a hard time. You will find out more very soon....
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