The Best Server CPUs part 2: the Intel "Nehalem" Xeon X5570
by Johan De Gelas on March 30, 2009 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
| Collaboration and infrastructure software: MS Exchange 2007 | |
| Operating System | Windows 2008 Enterprise RTM (64-bit) |
| Software | MS Exchange 2007 SP1 (64-bit) |
| Benchmark software | LoadGen 08.02.004 |
| Typical error margin | 1-2% |
Collaborative and infrastructure servers are good for about 50% of the server market. Even if we subtract the fileservers and print servers (which rarely demand a lot of processing power), it is still the most important market for servers. Today we're introducing MS Exchange 2007 in our server CPU benchmark suite.
For our Exchange 2007 test we used Microsoft LoadGen in stress mode. This means instead of actually simulating a business day, LoadGen will fire as many actions at the server as it can handle for the specified duration of the test, which in our case is slightly more than 1 hour. We limited the mailbox for each of the 2000 users to 30MB instead of the default 750MB to reduce the load on our storage system. All users are logged on before the actual test started.
The LoadGen test results tend to vary wildly when you use the default settings. Even when we tested for 8 hours, the results were not within an acceptable margin of error. To remedy this, we limited the different actions to just SendMail, ReadAndProcessMessages, BrowseContacts, and BrowseCalendar. It is not perfect, but at least we get very repeatable results. As we are relative newbies when it comes to benchmarking the Exchange groupware, expect some improvements to this benchmark in the future.
Our testing shows that the Opteron 2384 achieves the same initial throughput as the Xeon 5472, but for some reason the testing breaks off or slows down to an incredibly slow pace. That is why we cannot give you the final results right now; we'll update the results when we solve this problem. Nevertheless, there is little doubt in our minds that the newest Xeon X5570 is running circles around everyone else: it is capable of performing twice as many operations as its older brother.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
44 Comments
View All Comments
Veteran - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
I didn't mean to offend you, because i can imagine how much time it takes to test hardware properly. And i personally think that OLTP/OLAP testing is very innovative and needed. Because otherwise people would have no idea what to buy for servers. You cannot let you server purchase be influenced with meaningless (for servers) simple benchmarks like 3D 2006/Vantage/FPS test etc.You guys always are doing a great a job at testing any piece of hardware, but it is just feeling to much biased towards Intel. For example, at the last page of this review you get a link to Intel resource Center (in the same place as the next button). If you have things like that, you are not (trying to be) objective IMO.
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
Thank you for clarifying in a very constructive way."the last page of this review you get a link to Intel resource Center"
I can't say I am happy with that link as it creates the wrong impression. But the deal is: editors don't involve in ad management, ad sales people don't get involved when it comes to content.
So all I can say is to judge our content, not our ads. And like I said, it didn't stop us from claiming that Shanghai was by far the best server CPU a few months ago. And that conclusion was not on many sites.
Veteran - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
Thanks for clarrifying this matter.But ad sales people should know this creates the wrong impression. A review site (for me at least) is all about objectivity and credibility. When you place a link to Intel's Resource Center at the end of every review, it feels weird. People on forums already call Anandtech, Inteltech. And i don't think this is what you guys want.
I always liked Anandtech since when I was a kid, and I still do. You guys always have one of the most in-depth reviews (especially on the very technical side) and I like that. But you guys are gaining some very negative publicity on the net.
BaronMatrix - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Unfortunately, I don't buy from or recommend criminals.carniver - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
AMDZone is the biggest joke on the internet. I just went there to see how the zealots like abinstein are still doing their damage control; just like before he went on rambling how the Penryn is still weak against Shanghai, and the old and tired excuses like how if people all bought AMD they can drop in upgrades etc etc. ZootyGray...he's the biggest joke on AMDZone. None of them had the mental capacity to accept AMD has been DEFEATED, which is disappointing but funny to say the leastduploxxx - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
It's not just AMDZone, you are just the opposite. Its like in Woodcrest and conroe times, it's not because the high-end cpu is the best of all that the rest of the available cpu's in the line is by default better. It's all about price performance ratio. Like many who were buying the low-end and think they had bought the better system, well wrong bet.As mentioned before, why not test the mid range that is where the sales will be. Time to test 5520-5530 against 2380-82 after all those have the same price.
carniver - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
Your argument is valid, however, it just so happens that for low end 1S systems the Penryns are doing just fine against the Shanghais, for higher end 2S systems they used to be limited by memory bandwidth and AMD pulls ahead. No more is this the case, Intel now beats AMD in their own territory.CHADBOGA - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
You probably also can't afford to buy a computer, so I doubt that Intel will be too concerned with your AMDZone insanity. LOL!!!!smilingcrow - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Those grapes you are chewing on sure sound sour to me. Try listening to a few tracks by The Fun Loving Criminals to help take away the bad taste.cjcoats - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
There's more to HPC applications than you indicate: environmental modeling apps, particularly, tend to be dominated by memory access patterns rather than by I/O or pure computation. Give me a ring if you'd like some help with that -- I'm local for you, in fact...