Intel Woodcrest, AMD's Opteron and Sun's UltraSparc T1: Server CPU Shoot-out

Database Performance Analysis

To make sense out of all these numbers, we summarized our findings below.

Database Performance (Linux)
	MSI K2-102A2M Opteron 275	MSI K2-102A2M Opteron 280	Opteron 280 vs. Opteron 275	Extrapolated Opteron 3 GHz	Xeon 5160 3 GHz
MySQL - Dual-core	749	805	7%	946	996
MySQL - Quad-core	590	622	5%	703	904
PostgreSQL	490	524	7%	616	673

As the Xeon 5160 is not yet released, and it is unclear what AMD will do in response, we were curious how a 3 GHz Opteron would compare to our 3 GHz Woodcrest. Both architectures have similar pipeline lengths and will probably attain more or less the same clockspeeds under the same process technology, though of course Intel is ahead when it comes to process technology. It is interesting to see how the Opteron compares clock for clock with the new Xeon.

Database Scaling (Extrapolated)
	Xeon 5160 vs. Opteron 280	Xeon 5160 vs. Extrapolated Opteron 3 GHz
MySQL - Dual-core	24%	5%
MySQL - Quad-core	45%	29%
PostgreSQL	28%	9%

The Xeon's advantage in Open source databases is significant but not as spectacular as the Spec 2000 Integer numbers. The fact that Woodcrest scales better, or should we say "less bad", is most likely a result of the massive 4 MB L2 cache. As said before, increasing the cache of the previous Xeon generation from 1 to 2 MB results in about 7-8% higher performance. While we cannot be sure that those number are also applicable to Opteron or Woodcrest, it is pretty clear that the 4 MB cache does give the newest Xeon a performance boost.

Despite the fact that Woodcrest is a behemoth when it comes to integer performance, it does not outperform the Opteron by a large margin in MySQL on clock for clock basis. The problem seems to be the FB-DIMM latency. A quick test with higher latency RAM on the Opteron showed that increasing the latency of the RAM subsystem by 20% resulted in a 20 to 25% decrease of MySQL performance. Although this doesn't allow us to get a precise idea of how memory latency influences Woodcrest's MySQL performance, it shows us clearly that memory latency has a big impact on MySQL's performance in our tests.

Web Server Performance Analysis

Below is our summary of web server performance. While we averaged the database numbers, we took the peak numbers of our web server tests. The reason is that at lower request rates, all systems perform the same. "Jsp" gives you the Java Server Page performance, AMP stands for Apache/MySQL/PHP.

Webserver Performance
	MSI K2-102A2M Opteron 275	MSI K2-102A2M Opteron 280	Opteron 280 vs. Opteron 275	Extrapolated Opteron 3 GHz	Xeon 5160 3 GHz
Jsp - Peak	144	154	7%	182	230
AMP - Peak	984	1042	6%	1178	1828

Extrapolating the performance of our 2.4 GHz Opteron 280 to 3 GHz again makes it for an interesting comparison.

Webserver Scaling (Extrapolated)
	Xeon 5160 vs. Opteron 280	Xeon 5160 vs. Extrapolated Opteron 3 GHz
Jsp - Peak	49%	26%
AMP - Peak	75%	55%

When it comes to web server performance, the newest Xeon is unbeatable and crushes the competition. A 3 GHz Opteron is not going to help.

Power

As our Woodcrest test system did not have DBS enabled, we decided to test only under full load. Again, take the results with a grain salt, as it is impossible to make everything equal. We tested all machines with only one power supply powered on, and we also tried to have a similar amount and type of fans (excluding the CPU fan, where the T1 doesn't have one). There are still differences between the motherboards, and the Sun uses 2.5 inch disks.

Max Power usage (100% CPU load - Watts)
	Configuration	Power
Sun T2000	1CPU / 8 Cores - 8 GB RAM	188
Dual Opteron 275 HE	2CPU's (275HE) - 4 GB RAM	192
Dual Opteron 275	2CPU's - 4 GB RAM	239
Dual Xeon 5160 3 GHz	2 CPU's - 4 GB RAM	245
Dual Xeon "Irwindale" 3.6 GHz	2CPU's - 8 GB RAM	374

Simply looking at the power numbers, the T2000 server beats the rest. We were informed that the current T2000 Servers now ship with high efficiency 450W Power supplies (our T2000 uses a 550 Watt one), which will further reduce power consumption 10 Watts or more. From a performance/Watt point of view, the new Woodcrest CPU is the winner in most workloads.