Server Benchmarking Lone Wolf Bites Intel Again 90
Ian Lamont writes "Neal Nelson, the engineer who conducts independent server benchmarking, has nipped Intel again by reporting that AMD's Opteron chips 'delivered better power efficiency' than Xeon processors. Intel has discounted the findings, claiming that Nelson's methodology 'ignores performance,' but the company may not be able to ignore Nelson for much longer: the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp., a nonprofit company that develops computing benchmarks, is expected to publish a new test suite for comparing server efficiency that Nelson believes will be similar to his own benchmarks that measure server power usage directly from the wall plug."
Re:There's something i just don't understand... (Score:5, Interesting)
Digital Equipment Corp's Alpha engineers.
Sorry to beat a dead horse to a pulp but those that know still know.
Re:She Cannot Be Fooled (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that there is a very small performance difference in the 32bit world and a non-existent performance difference in the 64bit world. The Opteron actually outperforms quite commonly in the 64bit world much like the Athlons do against Core 2 Duo on the desktop side. Intel has an edge on 32bit optimization right now which is why the Core 2 Duo looks so good right now.
Add 4 and 8 sockets and you've got to be joking considering Intel's shared bus. They cores are chocked for memory throughput at that point while the Opterons just perform better and better as they scale. In a 2 socket system they compete very well. In a 4 socket system the Opteron is by far the superior choice both with power consumption and performance especially with 64bit database,email, and web servers.
Re:Why all the hate for Intel? (Score:2, Interesting)
My question is - is it a true fact.
"Commander Taco is really an onion wearing a Fedora doing that dance doing a jig on the top of the Vadicant" Is a fact, but certainly not a true fact.
Interestingly, AMD chips, to my experience, have been just as good as Intel. The problem has been motherboard chipsets. These are very rarely produced by AMD, and until nVidia came along and made them, did suck. As of nVidia producing them, AMD has been just as stable/reliable of a platform as Intel. Actually if you knew where to look in the VIA chipsets, you could find a few gems pre-nVidia-chipset as well. I have an old Tyan Trinity MVP3 with a K6-III on it that is rock solid.
YAY! (Score:3, Interesting)
London, the world financial centre has real problems with datacentre power supplies. Any new ones pretty much have to be built outside the M25. There's pressure on the ones inside to use less power.