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
| OLTP: Oracle Charbench "Calling Circle" | |
| Operating System | Windows 2008 Enterprise RTM (64-bit) |
| Software | Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2) for 64-bit Windows |
| Benchmark software | Swingbench/Charbench 2.2 |
| Database Size | 9 GB |
| Typical error margin | 2-2.5% |
In our last review, we included our first Oracle benchmark. In this review, we are happy to announce that we finally tamed the Oracle beast … somewhat. The first benchmark we tried (see our AMD Opteron 8384 2.7GHz review) was "Order Entry", but this benchmark is designed for Oracle Real Application Clusters and right now we could not make it scale above eight cores. Even the gains from four to eight cores were pretty small, despite many experiments (increasing the number of users and so on). With Calling Circle, we increased the database size to 9.5GB to make sure that once again locking contention was not completely killing off multi-core performance. To reduce the pressure on our humble storage system, we increased the SGA size (Oracle buffer in RAM) to 10GB and the PGA size was set at 1.6GB. A calling circle test consists of 83% selects, 7% inserts, and 10% updates.
The "calling circle" test runs for 10 minutes. The test is repeated six times and the results of the first run are discarded. The reason for discarding the first run is that the disk queue length is sometimes close to 1, while the second run and later have a DQL of 0.2 or lower. In this case it was rather easy to run the CPUs at 99% load. All configurations below are dual CPUs.
We have seen this picture before: the latest Opteron has no problem with leaving the older generations of Xeons behind. However, the newest Xeon is simply running circles around the rest of the pack. It is a mind blowing 95% faster than the Xeon 5472 and 85% than the Opteron 8384 2.7GHz. SMT is formidable weapon, as Oracle makes good use of the extra threads, and it provides a 35% performance increase.
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gwolfman - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Why was this article pulled yesterday after it first posted?JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Because the NDA date was noon in the pacific zone and not CET. We were slightly too early...yasbane - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Hi Johan,Any chance of some more comprehensive Linux benchmarks? Haven't seen any on IT Anandtech for a while.
cheers
JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Yes, we are working on that. Our first Oracle testing is finished on the AMD's platform, but still working on the rest.Mind you, all our articles so far have included Linux benchmarking. All mysql testing for example, Stream, Specjbb and Linpack.
Exar3342 - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Thanks for the extremely informative and interesting review Johan. I am definitely looking forward to more server reviews; are the 4-way CPUs out later this year? That will be interesting as well.Exar3342 - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Forgot to mention that I was suprised HT has such an impact that it did in some of the benches. It made some huge differences in certain applications, and slightly hindered it in others. Overall, I can see why Intel wanted to bring back SMT for the Nehalem architecture.duploxxx - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
awesome performance, but would like to see how the intel 5510-20-30 fare against the amd 2378-80-82 after all that is the same price range.It was the same with woodcrest and conroe launch, everybody saw huge performance lead but then only bought the very slow versions.... then the question is what is still the best value performance/price/power.
Istanbul better come faster for amd, how it looks now with decent 45nm power consumption it will be able to bring some battle to high-end 55xx versions.
eryco - Tuesday, April 14, 2009 - link
Very informative article... I would also be interested in seeing how any of the midrange 5520/30 Xeons compare to the 2382/84 Opterons. Especially now that some vendors are giving discounts on the AMD-based servers, the premium for a server with X5550/60/70s is even bigger. It would be interesting to see how the performance scales for the Nehalem Xeons, and how it compares to Shanghai Opterons in the same price range. We're looking to acquire some new servers and we can afford 2P systems with 2384s, but on the Intel side we can only go as far as E5530s. Unfortunately there's no performance data for Xeons in the midrange anywhere online so we can make a comparison.haplo602 - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
I only skimmed the graphs, but how about some consistency ? some of the graphs feature only dual core opterons, some have a mix of dual and quad core ... pricing chart also features only dual core opterons ...looking just at the graphs, I cannot make any conclusion ...
TA152H - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Part of the problem with the 54xx CPUs is not the CPUs themselves, but the FB-DIMMS. Part of the big improvement for the Nehalem in the server world is because Intel sodomized their 54xx platform, for reasons that escape most people, with the FB-DIMMs. But, it's really not mentioned except with regards to power. If the IMC (which is not an AMD innovation by the way, it's been done many times before they did it, even on the x86 by NexGen, a company they later bought) is so important, then surely the FB-DIMMs are. They both are related to the same issue - memory latency.It's not really important though, since that's what you'd get if you bought the Intel 54xx; it's more of an academic complaint. But, I'd like to see the Nehalem tested with dual channel memory, which is a real issue. The reason being, it has lower latency while only using two channels, and for some benchmarks, certainly not all or even the majority, you might see better performance by using two (or maybe it never happens). If you're running a specific application that runs better using dual channel, it would be good to know.
Overall, though, a very good article. The first thing I mention is a nitpick, the second may not even matter if three channel performance is always better.