Is there any chance that you guys could do more tests and benchmarking on Linux for IT Computing/Servers? I really like your site, but it'd be really nice if there would be more stuff for fans of the Penguin!
#47 - In OLAP, or poorly indexed environments where the amount of data exceeds the 4 MB L3 cache of the Xeons the Opteron is going to shine even more with it's increased memory bandwidth.
Assuming you do not bottleneck on the disk IO the SQL cache/RAM will be utilised much more thus putting more of a burden on the FSB of the Xeons in addition to allowing the Opteron's memory bandwidth to display it's abilities.
Great, thanks. My thoughts: In this type of application you are likely to use more than 4GB memory. Memory bandwidth should matter because you will be doing a lot of full table scans (as opposed to using indexes).
zarjad, I'll get back to you on that question I have some thoughts and amd discussing them with one of the guys that worked with us on the tests (Ross).
Hmm... the site below has some info about Numa (non unified memory architecture), and it looks like the os you're using isn't Numa enabled... Is this correct? Is there any real world benefit from Numa with Opteron?
Could you speculate which way the advantage should be going in a BI benchmark (say TPC-H type of a test)? These are long running queries with gigabytes size tables.
We started playing around with a couple of mysql benchmarks a few weeks ago namely OSDB and some new multithreaded benchmarks from MySQL themselves. We're hoping to get some valid tests that produce real results in the future.
In fact we did some recent testing to start out 64bit linux testing and mysql 4.0.17 on suse 64 had a segmentation fault starting <WINK> known issue for mysql as well... <WINK> <WINK>
Steveoc, it hardly runs like a dog. Let's not turn this into a one sided os war :) The test make sense as they are, but a 64bit article is on the books for later. We've already been playing around with Suse 64bit and some others and whether you agree or not 64bit is still immature, period full stop. Support is there but it has some maturing to do.
All these tests show is that Opteron, running Windows, runs like a Dog. As if we couldnt predict that result already ...
The tests will only make sense once you are running 64bit linux. In fact, Id love to see a test of Dual Xeon + Win2003 + MSSQL vs Dual Opteron + 64bit Gentoo + 64bit MySQL .. that would be very interesting indeed.
For anyone out there claiming that '64bit software has a looong way to go', that is only true for Windows. Unix (and Linux) have been running 64bit for a long time now, and the AMD64 has very good support under Linux.
Seeing the difference whether NUMA us used or not would be *VERY* interesting. Also comparing against other NUMA aware OS's (Linux 2.63 or better kernel, or whatever) would be a good test too.
#25 - Seems that it is not for sale to the general public, not that I could find. If anyone knows where/how to get one, please let me know.
I have an application that is quite expensive and is licensed by the box, no matter how many CPUs it has ;) I'm guessing that building a low-end quad would give me more throughput per $$ than a second license/second box.
An interesting article would be the effect of NUMA on enterprise level applications. GamePC did a bit of a write up on it, but it was limited to desktop and synthetic benchmarks. Would any of you be interested in seeing the effects of NUMA on and off on the sql tests?
Pumpkin not really..my point is that we used a standard shipping opteron system. I'm not questioning that Opterons support DDR400 or that if you wanted to "tweak" out a server (which is rarely done) that you could. My point is that currently quad opterons are shipping with DDR333 (what we tested). I'm sure (as I said) that down the road ddr400 will be a reality for the boxed/packaged systems but obviously right now it is not. All 4 systems that were shipped to us all came with ddr33 not ddr400.
Why do all of the benchmark results page refer to "Potomac" as the 2-way Xeon 3.2GHz processor. This is absolutely not correct (maybe you are refering to Prestonia?).
Ex. The results are split up into two categories: 2-way and 4-way setups. Remember that the 3.2GHz Potomac based Xeon is only available in 2-way configurations and is thus absent from the 4-way graphs.
I believe only the last paragraph on the last page is the only one refering to the correct Potomac processor.
"Just recently, the x48 parts were launched, and with them, the Opteron gained support for DDR400 memory. Support for DDR400 has trickled down to all members of the Opteron family, but only certain revisions of the CPUs support DDR400"
I certainly thought they released 4 new DDR400 opterons late last year, covering all configs. At any rate it is the 2way that is in question and you had 2way 533MHz Xeons so, by rights, you should have used opteron 248s as this would be what an customer interested in this configuration would buy. The price of these is half again of the 848 making them even more attractive:
You had two 248s in that last server article but again used DDR333. The photo on Pg 2 showed one of the opterons as an "AM" revision which, you state in the article, qualifies for DDR400 support. Of course, if these cpus, DDR400 Reg. modules or enabled Mobo were not on hand then it cant be helped and as you say the DDR333 setup still shows the Xeon memory structural problem.
Wow... given that the 533 FSB on the 2-way Xeons easily makes up for the difference in cache size, I'm amazed that Intel hasn't actually validated an 800 FSB Xeon solution. Then again, Intel is *SO* cautious with introducing advancements in technology, especially in the server/enterprise markets. Not only would they have to validate the faster CPU, but the motherboard and chipset validation would probably take them a year at least. (Who knows... they might be working on this as we speak.) Too bad the P4EE aren't dual-CPU capable (I think) - that would be interesting to see benchmarks. Not that any real corporation would dare to go that route, but still, interesting.
It will be interesting to see what happens with the Nocoma cores (and later Potomac). The 1 MB L2 cache can help out in desktop applications and more or less overcome the longer pipeline, but on Xeons where you're already running 2 MB L3 cache, I don't know that it will be as useful. Then again, the 800 FSB will probably more than make up for the deeper pipeline.
Needless to say, Intel definitely has some work to do. I'm waiting for them to migrate the Pentium M (P6 core with improvements) back to the desktop. Heheheh....
Grayswan, each proc had 1 gb as that is how it has to be configured.
More thoughts on DDR400. After doing a bit more reading I've confirmed that most all quad opterons ship with ddr333 so our tests conformed to what was available at the time of testing. Testing something that isn't a standard shipping configuration doesn't help people making a buying decision now. Most all quad opterons won't be hand built by an organization, they will be ordered as complete systems. Maybe later on this year we'll see a shift to ddr 400 and we can run some numbers.
What was the memory organization on the opterons? All memory on 1 proc? 2 modules on each proc? Also the 4-way opteron diagrom on P.3 shows each proc only using 2 interconnects. I believe all 3 are used so the diagram should be "crossbar"ish.
Pumpkin, maybe next time there is 4GB of DDR400 ECC laying around we'll give it a run. It wasn't readily available to us when these tests were run. And in all honesty I doubt it would change any numbers by anything more than a percent. The bigger picture would remain the same.
#24 Opterons are now specified for DDR 400. So you should have tested them (and all the cpu's) at their maximum spec.. It might have made the difference in the 2way test where the opterons were close but not quite up to the Xeons.
William, all we had on hand were the Xeons tested... we had requested 1MB parts but they didnt make it.
hirschma Tyan S4880 is one that I know of, and the system we used is a reference amd system ("Quartet"). Appro makes a server based on it I think and a few other companies.
Slow DDR333? It isn't slow, and it was what we had and it remained the same across platforms. These are servers not watercooled tweaked out systems running DDR500 :) This is a CPU test not a memory round up guys.
zomg555 broaden your thinking to an IT director who is about to spend 50K on a server that has to last him X years. Do you spend it on a cpu capable of 32 bit only or a cpu capable of 64 bit that is also faster in 32 bit?. Then, look at the cost of each platform as per our cost graphs.
If you already have 4P Xeon servers, there's no point in switching. But for a new 4P server, the difference isn't just 10%. It's $8800 based on the list price difference between the Xeon MP 4MB 3.2 and the Opteron 848. If it's somebody else's money, what the hell, buy the Xeon. If you have a direct stake in the financial status of the company...
I was a little surprised by how close this test was. 10% more performance isn't enough to get most shops to switch from Intel Xeon to a new platform. It would have been interesting to see some tests with more than 4GB of memory, though. In these tests, the Xeons weren't paying a PAE bounce penalty, which would be sapping a lot of performance in servers with more physical memory.
Can you run these tests on the "crippled" Xeons with no L3 and 1MB L3? That would give a good picture for those who currently have Xeons and are exploring upgrades to their servers. (I.e., popin replacement for $$$ versus wholesale replacement.)
Ouch. At first it doesn't look like Intel is pwnd (sure, they lose in the four-way benchmarks, but as Opteron vs. Xeon benches go this one's still pretty close)... then the cost of the Xeon is factored in, especially relative to the Opteron 24x (which is even cheaper and equally suitable for 2-way systems).
Things might change with the FSB800 Xeons, though. The Opteron will still offer a lot more bang for the buck, but the Xeon might offer more bang then. It all depends on how well the 90nm Opterons scale, I guess.
Numa was turned on.... 64Bit is just waiting on software. Although 64bit is a reality hardware wise, software still has a loooong way to go yet. We may do some 64 Bit .NET stuff at some point in the future as well.
I can't wait to see what happens when they do these again with NUMA turned on and a 64 bit OS. GamePC just released a set of astounding memory benchmarks,
To the people that said there is no DDR400 w ECC -that is pure BS! ECC/Reg DDR400 IS available for more than an year and the latest official Opteron SPEC submission of AMD is done with such memory!
Hey Anand have you thought about moving to Server 2003 instead of running 2000? And any chance of seeing 64-bit results anytime soon? (does a 64-bit version of your app even exist?)
No surprises here... Anyone with a clue has known for a year that Opteron/A64 is a far superior architecture to anything Intel bulds, sells, or plans to produce in the next two years.
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58 Comments
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Rand - Friday, May 20, 2005 - link
perlgreen - Tuesday, June 1, 2004 - link
Is there any chance that you guys could do more tests and benchmarking on Linux for IT Computing/Servers? I really like your site, but it'd be really nice if there would be more stuff for fans of the Penguin!cheers,
Campbell
ragusauce - Friday, March 5, 2004 - link
#54We have been building from source and trying different options / debug versions...
DBBoy - Friday, March 5, 2004 - link
#47 - In OLAP, or poorly indexed environments where the amount of data exceeds the 4 MB L3 cache of the Xeons the Opteron is going to shine even more with it's increased memory bandwidth.Assuming you do not bottleneck on the disk IO the SQL cache/RAM will be utilised much more thus putting more of a burden on the FSB of the Xeons in addition to allowing the Opteron's memory bandwidth to display it's abilities.
Jason Clark - Friday, March 5, 2004 - link
ragusauce, using binaries or building from source?Cheers
ragusauce - Friday, March 5, 2004 - link
We have been doing extensive testing of MySQL64 on Opteron and have had problems with seg faults as well.zarjad - Thursday, March 4, 2004 - link
Great, thanks.My thoughts:
In this type of application you are likely to use more than 4GB memory.
Memory bandwidth should matter because you will be doing a lot of full table scans (as opposed to using indexes).
Jason Clark - Thursday, March 4, 2004 - link
zarjad, I'll get back to you on that question I have some thoughts and amd discussing them with one of the guys that worked with us on the tests (Ross).zarjad - Thursday, March 4, 2004 - link
Jason, any comments on #47?Jason Clark - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
The os used was windows 2003 enterprise which does indeed support NUMA. So NUMA was enabled.. this was covered in an earlier response.Blackbrrd - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
Hmm... the site below has some info about Numa (non unified memory architecture), and it looks like the os you're using isn't Numa enabled... Is this correct? Is there any real world benefit from Numa with Opteron?http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=opt...
zarjad - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
Could you speculate which way the advantage should be going in a BI benchmark (say TPC-H type of a test)? These are long running queries with gigabytes size tables.Jason Clark - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
We started playing around with a couple of mysql benchmarks a few weeks ago namely OSDB and some new multithreaded benchmarks from MySQL themselves. We're hoping to get some valid tests that produce real results in the future.Cheers.
Jason Clark - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
In fact we did some recent testing to start out 64bit linux testing and mysql 4.0.17 on suse 64 had a segmentation fault starting <WINK> known issue for mysql as well... <WINK> <WINK>Jason Clark - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
Steveoc, it hardly runs like a dog. Let's not turn this into a one sided os war :) The test make sense as they are, but a 64bit article is on the books for later. We've already been playing around with Suse 64bit and some others and whether you agree or not 64bit is still immature, period full stop. Support is there but it has some maturing to do.steveoc - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
All these tests show is that Opteron, running Windows, runs like a Dog. As if we couldnt predict that result already ...The tests will only make sense once you are running 64bit linux. In fact, Id love to see a test of Dual Xeon + Win2003 + MSSQL vs Dual Opteron + 64bit Gentoo + 64bit MySQL .. that would be very interesting indeed.
For anyone out there claiming that '64bit software has a looong way to go', that is only true for Windows. Unix (and Linux) have been running 64bit for a long time now, and the AMD64 has very good support under Linux.
dweigert - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
Seeing the difference whether NUMA us used or not would be *VERY* interesting. Also comparing against other NUMA aware OS's (Linux 2.63 or better kernel, or whatever) would be a good test too.hirschma - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
#25 - Seems that it is not for sale to the general public, not that I could find. If anyone knows where/how to get one, please let me know.I have an application that is quite expensive and is licensed by the box, no matter how many CPUs it has ;) I'm guessing that building a low-end quad would give me more throughput per $$ than a second license/second box.
Jonathan
Jason Clark - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
We're also looking at some 64bit .NET benchmarks as we're real close to having a real-world application that we can hammer.Jason Clark - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
An interesting article would be the effect of NUMA on enterprise level applications. GamePC did a bit of a write up on it, but it was limited to desktop and synthetic benchmarks. Would any of you be interested in seeing the effects of NUMA on and off on the sql tests?Jason Clark - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
Pumpkin not really..my point is that we used a standard shipping opteron system. I'm not questioning that Opterons support DDR400 or that if you wanted to "tweak" out a server (which is rarely done) that you could. My point is that currently quad opterons are shipping with DDR333 (what we tested). I'm sure (as I said) that down the road ddr400 will be a reality for the boxed/packaged systems but obviously right now it is not. All 4 systems that were shipped to us all came with ddr33 not ddr400.L8r
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
I'm surprised nobody has speculated about who the corporation was that helped do the testing.I'll speculate that it was newegg.com =)
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
I 2nd #15 motion for pics =)DBBoy - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
Taken from an artilce on the new 4MB L3 products.The new 3-GHz Xeon MP with 4 Mbytes of cache is listed by Intel as available for $3,692 each in quantities of 1,000.
Tessel8 - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
Why do all of the benchmark results page refer to "Potomac" as the 2-way Xeon 3.2GHz processor. This is absolutely not correct (maybe you are refering to Prestonia?).Ex. The results are split up into two categories: 2-way and 4-way setups. Remember that the 3.2GHz Potomac based Xeon is only available in 2-way configurations and is thus absent from the 4-way graphs.
I believe only the last paragraph on the last page is the only one refering to the correct Potomac processor.
Pumpkinierre - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - link
#30 Jason, Your statement would be in conflict with your previous server comparison article(http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.html?i=1935&am..."Just recently, the x48 parts were launched, and with them, the Opteron gained support for DDR400 memory. Support for DDR400 has trickled down to all members of the Opteron family, but only certain revisions of the CPUs support DDR400"
I certainly thought they released 4 new DDR400 opterons late last year, covering all configs. At any rate it is the 2way that is in question and you had 2way 533MHz Xeons so, by rights, you should have used opteron 248s as this would be what an customer interested in this configuration would buy. The price of these is half again of the 848 making them even more attractive:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoo...
You had two 248s in that last server article but again used DDR333. The photo on Pg 2 showed one of the opterons as an "AM" revision which, you state in the article, qualifies for DDR400 support. Of course, if these cpus, DDR400 Reg. modules or enabled Mobo were not on hand then it cant be helped and as you say the DDR333 setup still shows the Xeon memory structural problem.
Sante
TrogdorJW - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Wow... given that the 533 FSB on the 2-way Xeons easily makes up for the difference in cache size, I'm amazed that Intel hasn't actually validated an 800 FSB Xeon solution. Then again, Intel is *SO* cautious with introducing advancements in technology, especially in the server/enterprise markets. Not only would they have to validate the faster CPU, but the motherboard and chipset validation would probably take them a year at least. (Who knows... they might be working on this as we speak.) Too bad the P4EE aren't dual-CPU capable (I think) - that would be interesting to see benchmarks. Not that any real corporation would dare to go that route, but still, interesting.It will be interesting to see what happens with the Nocoma cores (and later Potomac). The 1 MB L2 cache can help out in desktop applications and more or less overcome the longer pipeline, but on Xeons where you're already running 2 MB L3 cache, I don't know that it will be as useful. Then again, the 800 FSB will probably more than make up for the deeper pipeline.
Needless to say, Intel definitely has some work to do. I'm waiting for them to migrate the Pentium M (P6 core with improvements) back to the desktop. Heheheh....
lneves - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Can you guys share the "SQL Loader" benchmark tool and the scripts used?Thanks.
Jason Clark - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Grayswan, each proc had 1 gb as that is how it has to be configured.More thoughts on DDR400. After doing a bit more reading I've confirmed that most all quad opterons ship with ddr333 so our tests conformed to what was available at the time of testing. Testing something that isn't a standard shipping configuration doesn't help people making a buying decision now. Most all quad opterons won't be hand built by an organization, they will be ordered as complete systems. Maybe later on this year we'll see a shift to ddr 400 and we can run some numbers.
Examples:
http://www.swt.com/qo.html
http://www.appro.com/product/server_4144h_2.asp
Grayswan - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
What was the memory organization on the opterons? All memory on 1 proc? 2 modules on each proc? Also the 4-way opteron diagrom on P.3 shows each proc only using 2 interconnects. I believe all 3 are used so the diagram should be "crossbar"ish.Jason Clark - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Pumpkin, maybe next time there is 4GB of DDR400 ECC laying around we'll give it a run. It wasn't readily available to us when these tests were run. And in all honesty I doubt it would change any numbers by anything more than a percent. The bigger picture would remain the same.Cheers.
Blackbrrd - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
It would have been real interesting to see a comparison with the Athlon MP processor platform...Pumpkinierre - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
#24 Opterons are now specified for DDR 400. So you should have tested them (and all the cpu's) at their maximum spec.. It might have made the difference in the 2way test where the opterons were close but not quite up to the Xeons.Jason Clark - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
William, all we had on hand were the Xeons tested... we had requested 1MB parts but they didnt make it.hirschma
Tyan S4880 is one that I know of, and the system we used is a reference amd system ("Quartet"). Appro makes a server based on it I think and a few other companies.
Jason Clark - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Ski.Slow DDR333? It isn't slow, and it was what we had and it remained the same across platforms. These are servers not watercooled tweaked out systems running DDR500 :) This is a CPU test not a memory round up guys.
Jason Clark - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
zomg555 broaden your thinking to an IT director who is about to spend 50K on a server that has to last him X years. Do you spend it on a cpu capable of 32 bit only or a cpu capable of 64 bit that is also faster in 32 bit?. Then, look at the cost of each platform as per our cost graphs.William Yu - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
If you already have 4P Xeon servers, there's no point in switching. But for a new 4P server, the difference isn't just 10%. It's $8800 based on the list price difference between the Xeon MP 4MB 3.2 and the Opteron 848. If it's somebody else's money, what the hell, buy the Xeon. If you have a direct stake in the financial status of the company...zomg555 - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
I was a little surprised by how close this test was. 10% more performance isn't enough to get most shops to switch from Intel Xeon to a new platform.It would have been interesting to see some tests with more than 4GB of memory, though. In these tests, the Xeons weren't paying a PAE bounce penalty, which would be sapping a lot of performance in servers with more physical memory.
hirschma - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
What hardware was used on these tests, just out of curiousity? Where can one get 4-way boards for Operton? I'd sure love to build a monster like that.William Yu - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Can you run these tests on the "crippled" Xeons with no L3 and 1MB L3? That would give a good picture for those who currently have Xeons and are exploring upgrades to their servers. (I.e., popin replacement for $$$ versus wholesale replacement.)skiboysteve - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
whats the deal with the slow ddr333 memoryJason Clark - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Cygni, if you have a peek at the 2 way web test we took shots of the monsters in that article..Cheers
SDA - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Ouch. At first it doesn't look like Intel is pwnd (sure, they lose in the four-way benchmarks, but as Opteron vs. Xeon benches go this one's still pretty close)... then the cost of the Xeon is factored in, especially relative to the Opteron 24x (which is even cheaper and equally suitable for 2-way systems).Things might change with the FSB800 Xeons, though. The Opteron will still offer a lot more bang for the buck, but the Xeon might offer more bang then. It all depends on how well the 90nm Opterons scale, I guess.
Cygni - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Very cool. So if your going 2 way for a DB, Xeon's look pretty good. I wouldnt have expected that.And can you guys snap some pics of the 4 way Xeon and Opteron boxes for us techno geeks that need a new wallpaper? ;)
Jason Clark - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Numa was turned on.... 64Bit is just waiting on software. Although 64bit is a reality hardware wise, software still has a loooong way to go yet. We may do some 64 Bit .NET stuff at some point in the future as well.SUOrangeman - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Looks like DDR400 ECC+Reg is readily available to me as well ...http://www.crucial.com/store/listmodule.asp?module...
-SUO
Boonesmi - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
christophergorge - ddr400 reg/ecc (ie pc3200) is very much available, i just put 2gb in a cad/cam opteron workstation a couple weeks agodweigert - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
I can't wait to see what happens when they do these again with NUMA turned on and a 64 bit OS. GamePC just released a set of astounding memory benchmarks,http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=opt...
This ought to be some food for thought.
menads - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
To the people that said there is no DDR400 w ECC -that is pure BS! ECC/Reg DDR400 IS available for more than an year and the latest official Opteron SPEC submission of AMD is done with such memory!ViRGE - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Just a quick question for whoever knows the answer: what's the die size on the 4MB Xeon?Fraggster - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
intel=pwnd again :)Jason Clark - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
64Bit tests are next on our agenda, once there is an Extended 64bit version of SQL Server.... :) We're looking into other avenues as well.Andreas, windows 2003 enterprise is what we used.
fukka - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Would the Opterons gain any advantage using a 64bit OS (aka Linux) and a database that is much bigger than 4GB in size?That would be interesting to see, but I suppose the IA32e will address that advantage...
andreasl - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Hey Anand have you thought about moving to Server 2003 instead of running 2000? And any chance of seeing 64-bit results anytime soon? (does a 64-bit version of your app even exist?)christophergorge - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Opteron only works with ECC registered memory. They only come up to DDR333.raptor666 - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Maybe because 4 way boards might not support it.Just a guess but honestly i'm not sure.
Peter
tolgae - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
Stupid question probably but why didn't you use DDR400 on the Opteron?CRAMITPAL - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link
No surprises here... Anyone with a clue has known for a year that Opteron/A64 is a far superior architecture to anything Intel bulds, sells, or plans to produce in the next two years.