Intel Releases Sandy Bridge-based Xeon E5 Series 96
crookedvulture writes "Desktop and notebook users have been enjoying chips based on Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture for more than a year. Now, workstations and servers can get in on the action with the Xeon E5-2600 series. These Sandy Bridge-EP Xeons offer up to eight cores, 20MB of cache, and a truly staggering amount of I/O bandwidth. Unlike their consumer-grade counterparts, the new chips feature more advanced power management and the ability to deposit incoming data packets directly into the CPU's cache rather than going through main memory. They also plug into LGA2011 sockets, requiring an upgrade to the new Romley-EP platform. No fewer than 17 models are available, with prices falling between $200 and $2000 and TDPs ranging from 60-150W."
The summary is slightly incorrect -- the Xeon E3 series has been out for the workstation market for quite a while (sporting graphics cores on the models ending in -XXX5 too).
Re:Are there any benchmarks posted yet? (Score:5, Informative)
Anandtech's review is up, only single threaded benchmark I saw though was the Cinebench [anandtech.com] one where the 2.2 GHz is only a slight improvement. The 2.9 GHz top model is running away from everything else though, if you got $2000 to spare...
Re:Sandy Bridge on Linux? (Score:4, Informative)
Intel seems to finally have fixed the power management bug and from the comments on the bug report on Launchpad (LP#818830) it seems very likely that Ubuntu 12.04 will ship with rc6 enabled by default.
I don't know that the sibiling AC is on about, I have used Unity on a Sandybridge laptop with integrated graphics and found no reason to complain about graphics performance, including HD video. YMMV
Re:Sandy Bridge on Linux? (Score:3, Informative)
On the graphics front, the on-board graphics on both my Sandy Bridge laptop and desktop work fine enough for desktop workloads, including 1080p over HDMI. This is both with Ubuntu 11.10-based distributions, which ships with a 3.0 kernel by default, but I typically run the latest stable kernel from kernel.org; I haven't tried running distros with older kernels (such as RedHat/CentOS or Debian) on this hardware.
Re:Mac Pro (Score:5, Informative)
I run a scientific computing group at a national laboratory... we have over 30 people developing massively parallel, multiphysics, simulation tools.... all with Mac Pro workstations and Mac laptops.
Macs are UNIX workstations with a good GUI and they don't break every time you do an OS update (like the one Ubuntu box we keep just for testing did just this morning).
We can do all of our development in a great environment and still be able to throw our code out on our supercomputers when the problems get large.
You sir, are wrong.
And for everyone saying Mac Pros are expensive... they are not. They are priced similarly to their competition (which is, gasp!, other workstations!) like these: http://www.boxxtech.com/products/3DBOXX/8920.asp?prodid=8920 [boxxtech.com]
Re:Where's the 10GbE? (Score:2, Informative)
You'll see most of the server vendors offering alternative mezz cards so that you can order with 1GbE or 10GbE on the card, so 10GbE is available without consuming a PCIe slot, For example, Dell is offering 10GbE this way on all their next gen servers and blades
Re:Where's the "Funny/Insightful" mod love? (Score:3, Informative)
As for the price, Mac Pros tend to be surprisingly competitive, sometimes even better-priced than the competition, but only for a while after their introduction.
Actually, building your own Mac Pro, with roughly the same parts, costs around $2k less than the Mac Pro. For example, with the baseline dual-socket Mac Pro 5,1 you get two 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5620 processors, 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM, a 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA HDD, an ATI Radeon HD 5770, an 18x SuperDrive, and a Magic Mouse/Trackpad and keyboard for $3949. For $2022 you get virtually same components:
Intel Xeon E5620 Westmere 2.4GHz 12MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 80W Quad-Core Server Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117234
Price: $390 * 2 = $780
SUPERMICRO MBD-X8DTi-LN4F-O Dual LGA 1366 Intel 5520 Extended ATX Dual Intel Xeon 5500 and 5600 Series Server Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182219
Price: $429
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 1333 Server Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139575
Price: $79
PLEXTOR Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 12X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM 8MB Cache SATA 12X Blu-ray Writer
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827249079
Price: $147
MSI R5770 Hawk Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127490
Price: $114
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533
Price: $139
Thermaltake Toughpower W0132RU 1000W ATX12V / EPS12V
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153053
Price: $334
(Note that I splurged a bit some areas and you can bring that total down by $200 or so.) Now, taking out the above quad core Xeons and replacing them with:
Intel Xeon X5670 Westmere 2.93GHz 12MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 95W Six-Core Server Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117229
Price: $1442 * 2 = $2,884
you could have a $6649 Mac Pro for only $4126. If you wanted to put all of that into a Mac Pro case, you'd need to spend another $170 (http://www.macpartsonline.com/mac-pro-parts/922-9631-enclosure-without-power-supply-mac-pro-mid-2010-a1289.html), around $300 for the remaining case components (like the drive covers, fans, etc.), and some money for various power tools, provided you didn't own them already.
Of course, there are a few ways you can bring down the price of the Mac Pro. For instance, you can grab the baseline, single socket version, sell the processor for $150 and motherboard for around $400, and then buy the dual socket motherboard for $500, a second heat sink for about $150, and the dual 6 core Xeons for $2884. At that point, you'll be looking at $5483 instead of $6649.