AMD's Six-Core Opteron 2435

by Johan De Gelas on 6/1/2009 12:00 AM EST
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  • iocedmyself - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - link

    Well something that was failed to be mentioned was that the 2P opteron machine costs about $6700, where as the nehalem 2p machine is very near to $16,000.

    as for power consumption a straight up comparison would be HP380 Xeon and HP 385 Opteron. At idle, both are 140W. With 100% CPU / Ram, 385 is around 300W, 380 (Xeon) is about 450W.

    another thing not discussed here - 4P Istanbul is 70-80% faster than 2P Nehalem, and there is no 4P Nehalem. 8P Istanbul is over 3 times as fast as 2P Nehalem. so until next gen Nehalem, there is no competition in the high end which probably has something to do with istanbul orders being through the roof.

    I also have to wonder if these benchmarks were conducted using one of Intel's little helpful optimized compilers.
  • yasbane - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link

    would be nice to see some unix or linux benchmarks...
  • riskyburden - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link

    I might be naive here but surely the majority of these applications are favouring clock speed and no more than two cores, should there not be a bench for those companies that run multiple apps such as SQL and AD or IPFX etc all from one server and make a comparison there. I don't suggest it to be good network practice but that would interest me more.
  • mino - Friday, June 5, 2009 - link

    For this part of SMB market pretty much any dual core CPU will do.

    Their bottleneck is almost allways on the storage side, sometimes with insufficient memory.
    And most also run default install where basic SW tweaks would make 100's percents in performance.
  • befair - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link

    Johan never proves me wrong. Even an article meant to talk about AMD Opteron starts with a good deal of "Intel is the king!" stuff, as usual.
  • alpha754293 - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link

    What happened to them?

    I would have to loved to have seen what the new 6-core AMDs would be able to do in this arena since it is (presumably) a much more competitive offering than the fastest Xeons all around.
  • lopri - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link

    A Question: Is the 'snoop-filter' a hardware-based? I read that it can be enabled/disabled via BIOS, and since the cores are same as Shanghai cores.. But my question is, whether it's hardware-based or software-based (BIOS), shouldn't this work for inter-core communication as well if AMD decides to implement it?
  • JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link

    I have to check, but I am pretty sure it is both. The "uncore" part has changed somewhat on Istanbul.

    "shouldn't this work for inter-core communication as well if AMD decides to implement it"

    Since the L3-cache keeps copies of shared L2-cachelines, I don't think that will help. There is already a very fast way of communicating with little overhead.
  • tygrus - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    I would like to know the performance difference when using a cell size of 3 not 6 on the 6-core units or of 8 not 4 on Xeon 4Core8Thread ?

    Will have to wait for latter for more raw performance numbers (eg. memory local/system, SPEC CPU, task switching, OS/IO task servicing).

    How long before they update the boards for DDR3 based memory and better IO onboard ?

    It's a pity the ESX 4.0 update hasn't helped AMD .. are the improvements only available for Intel or was it to correct a previous Intel only problem ? What can AMD/partners do to improve performance ?
  • JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link

    "I would like to know the performance difference when using a cell size of 3 not 6 on the 6-core units?"

    A cell size of 3 will not do any good if your VMs are MP. Eventhough ESX features "relaxed co-scheduling", there might quite a few cases where the Scheduler is not able to use all "slots" as some of vCPUs of the VMs might be behind. From the momemt you use more than 2 vCPUs, you will get situations where only one VM with 2 CPUs is scheduled on a cell of 3 CPUs. 8-cell: I have to try it.

    "How long before they update the boards for DDR3 based memory and better IO onboard ? "

    The AMD's Fiorano platform that will be available in a few weeks should have better I/O (PCIe gen 2) but will still be DDR-2 based.

    DDR-3 CPUs are scheduled for 2010.

    "It's a pity the ESX 4.0 update hasn't helped AMD .. are the improvements only available for Intel or was it to correct a previous Intel only problem ? "

    VMware's docs tell us they that CPU locking goes more quickly and that the scheduler is "cache aware", but most of the biggest improvements are EPT and better support for Hyperthreading.

  • duploxxx - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link

    ESX 4 should add IOMMU to the AMD istanbul platform, not sure how far this is implemented in the beta esx4 builds.

    Are you using the paravirtualization scsi driver in the new esx4 platform, I would expect bigegr differences between 3.5 and 4 and not just because EPT is included in esx4 together with enhanced HT.

    for the rest very good thorough review.

    The only thing I always miss in reviews is that although it is good to test the fastest out there, it is now where near the most deployed platform, you rather should look at the 5520-5530 against 2387 - 2431 as the mid range platform that will be deployed in a wide range of systems, this will have a much healthier performance/price/power platform then the top bin. Even the 5570 is not supported in all OEM platforms for the TDP range.
  • Adul - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    I do not see oracle running on top of windows all that often. It is normally running on some *nix OS. How about running the same benchmark on say RHEL instead?
  • InternetGeek - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    There's actually an odd bug on Oracle's DB that makes it run faster on Windows than on Linux. Search on the internet and you'll find info about it.

    In the other hand, in my now 9 years in the IT industry I've only come across one Oracle DB running on HP-UX. Everything else (Sybase, MySQL, etc) runs on Windows.
  • LizVD - Friday, June 5, 2009 - link

    Could you provide us with a link for that? I'd like to see if this "bug" corresponds with the behaviour we're seeing on our tests.
  • Nighteye2 - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    You give a good description of how it works and how it has so much benefit, but then you benchmark only dual-socket servers?

    It would be fairer to also test and compare octo-socket servers - to see the real impact of that HT assist feature.
  • phoenix79 - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    Completely agreed (I was typing up a comment about this too when yours popped up)

    I'd love to see some 4-way VMWare scores
  • ltcommanderdata - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    Yes. Nehalem is in a great position in the DP market, but isn't yet available in MP. It'd be great to see six-core Dunnington and six-core Istanbul go head to head. Conveniently their highest models have similar clock speeds at 2.66GHz and 2.6GHz respectively although Dunnington would be a lot more power hungry and although I don't remember their prices, probably more expensive too.
  • JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link

    Dunnington vs Istanbul coming up ... But we are going to take some time to address the shortcomings of this "deadline" article such as better power consumption readings.
  • solori - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    "Notice that HT-assist is a performance killer in 2P configurations: you remove two times 1 MB of L3-cache, which is a bad idea with 8 VM’s hitting your two CPUs."

    BIOS guidance suggests that HT Assist be disabled by default on 2P systems, and enabled only for specialized workloads. So that begs the question: Were vAPUS tests performed with or without HT Assist in the 2P configuration? It was not clear.

    I assume AMD-V and RVI were enabled for ALL workloads in ESX 3.5 and 4.0 (forced for 32-bit workloads.) Is this accurate? Based on the number of ESX 3.5 installations out there, this probably should be clearly stated...

    I do want to take issue with your memory sizing and estimates on vCPU loading. Let me put it this way: while Nehalem-EP has better memory bandwidth and SMT threads, Opteron has access to abundant memory. Therefore, it does not make sense - for example - to be OK with enabling SMT but then constrain the benchmark to 24GB due to a Xeon memory limitation.

    I would urge you to look at 48GB configurations on Xeon and Istanbul for your comparison systems. By the way, in consolidation numbers, this makes a significant reduction in $/VM with only a minor increase in per-system CAPEX.

    Another interesting issue you touched on is tuning and load balance. Great job here. These are "black magic" issues that - as you noted - can have serious effects on virtualization performance (ok, scheduling efficiency.) Knowing your platform's balance point(s) is critical to performance sensitive apps but not so critical for light-load virtualization (i.e. not performance sensitive.)

    It sounds like your learning - through experimentation with vAPUS - that virtualization testing does not predict similar results from "similarly configured machines" where performance testing is concerned. In fact, the "right balance" of VM's, memory and vCPU/CPU loading for one system may be on the wrong side of the inflection point for another.

    All and all, a very good article.
  • JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link

    "this probably should be clearly stated... "

    Good suggestion. I adapted the article. RVI and EPT are always on if possible (so also 32 bit). HT-assist is of always on "Auto" (so off) unless we indicate otherwise.

    "Therefore, it does not make sense - for example - to be OK with enabling SMT but then constrain the benchmark to 24GB due to a Xeon memory limitation. "

    1) You must know that vApus Mark I uses too much memory for the webportals. They can run without any performance loss in 2 GB, even 1 GB. So as we move up on the number of tiles we run, it is best to reclaim the wasted memory.

    2) I agree that a price comparison should include copious amount of memory (48 GB or so).

    3) We don't have more than 24 GB DDR-3 available right now. It would be unfair to force the system to swap in a performance comparison.

    "Opteron has access to abundant memory". What do you mean by this? Typical 2P Opterons have 64 GB, 2P Nehalems 72 GB as upper limit?

    "In fact, the "right balance" of VM's, memory and vCPU/CPU loading for one system may be on the wrong side of the inflection point for another"

    Great comment. Yes, that makes it even more complex to compare two systems. That is why we decided to show 2 datapoints for the 2 tile systems.

    Collin, thanks for the excellent comments. It is very rewarding to notice that people take the time to dissect our hard work. Even if that means that you find wrinkles that we have to iron out. Great feedback.




  • solori - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link

    I should have said "abundant (cheap) memory."
  • mkruer - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    I am disappointed that you did not bench X5550 vs 2435. This is the chip that the Opteron 2435 was designed to go up against, not the X5570 which is clocked 300MHz higher and 40% more expensive. Heaven forbid that you try to include chips at the same price point. That being said other sites that did compare based upon price, and not top of the line, show that the Opteron 2435 is indeed comparable to the X5550 at the same price point and speed. Now if AMD can up the speed of the hex core, then it will be a more direct comparison to the X5570. The X5570 is 50% faster but it is also >50% more in cost.
  • mino - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link

    Right.

    Actually, I have no qualms with comparing the best with the best, but the commentary is mostly out-of-place.
    I guess this was written after 3 days without sleep, but anyway.

    After an excelent vAPUS Mark 1 article I would expect better that old-school style:
    "1000 $ Pentium 4 3.2 EE is clearly (15%) better than $400 Athlon 3200+ so Athlon is clearly a piece of junk. Well maybe for games not so much but generally it is a piece of junk."

    Thank god the numbers tell their own story.
  • JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link

    It seems that some people like to create the impression that we did not take into account that both CPUs were not at the same pricing.

    However:

    http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...">http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...
    [quote]"However, as the Opteron 2435 competes with 2.66 GHz Xeon and not the Xeon 2.93 GHz, this is the first benchmark where “Istanbul” is competitive."[/quote]

    http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...">http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...
    [quote]"The Nehalem-based Xeon moves forward, but does not make a huge jump. Performance of the six-core Opteron was decreased by 2%, which is inside the error margin of this benchmark. It is still an excellent result for the latest Opteron: this results means it will have no trouble competing with the 2.66 Ghz Xeon X5550. "
    [/quote]

    http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...">http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&...
    [quote]"The new Opteron 2435 at 2.6 GHz was a pleasant surprise on vApus Mark I: it keeps up with more expensive Xeons on ESX 3.5 update 4 while consuming less, and offers a competitive performance/watt and performance/price ratio on vSphere 4. The six-core Opteron is about 11 to 30% slower on vSphere 4 than the 2.93 GHz Xeon X5570 but the overall cost of the Istanbul platform is significantly lower (DDR-2 versus DDR-3) and the 2.6 GHz 2435 consumes less power in a virtualized environment "
    [/quote]

    And I have confidence that the vast majority of my readers are intelligent people who can decrease the benchmarks with 8 to 10% to see what a Xeon x5550 would do
  • mino - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link

    No, I do not like that, nor like to create such an impression.

    The article presents the numbers reasonably well for me. It is just that your (justified) love for Nehalem is glowing through and many, many comments were out of place.
    I believe this was not intentional but cause by your love for the Nehalem platform which is otherwise great.

    All the numbers tell one thing - Istanbull is generally on par with Nehalem clock for clock +- 10% depending on the workload.

    About that glowiong love for Nehalem:
    >>>MCS eFMS 9.2
    "A single 8-thread Xeon X55xx is by far the best choice here."

    Why ? There is no 1*2435 number.
    Based on the numbers published single 2435 will get about 55-58rps which for all practical needs is identical performance to _flagship_ Nehalem.

    >>>3ds Max 2008 32b
    "We are sure that there are probably more efficient render engines out there, but it is simply not a market the AMD six-core should cater to. Nehalem-based Xeons are simply way too powerful for this kind of application. Render engines scale almost perfectly with clockspeed. So if cost is your main concern, consider the Xeon E5520 at 2.26 GHz, the cheapest CPU that still supports HT. We will test this one soon, but we expect it to deliver 67 frames per hour, which is still more than 20% better than any Opteron."

    OK, so first bash(rightfully) the application fo it rigid resource use pattern, than say that for Nehalem is "way too powerfull for this KIND of application" for Opteron to compete with.
    You managed to contradict your own reasoning to promote Nehalem for rendering while the numbers speak about single improperly optimized app.
    Which it is pretty certain SW vendor will take care of in due time. These numbers are just a result of no (affordable) 6-core presence on the market up to now.

    By these 2 comments you took the article balance from "Instanbul is generally about 5% slower per_clock than Nehalem, in certain apps it is on par or better while in other loses about 15%" - which is what the numbers tell - to "Instanbul is good for VMware, forget about it elsewhere".

    Which is about as much bad publicity you could give to the second fastest CPU on the market by_large_margin.

    Fact is, at a given price, Nehalem box is ALMOST IDENTICAL performance-wise to Istanbul box. While both crush everything else on the market by 30+ %.
  • lopri - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    Page 2, "..The most recent data is however in CPU’s L2-cache" I think you meant CPU #2?
  • JohanAnandtech - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    Yes, good catch. Fixed the issue.
  • classy - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    I skipped right to the virtualization portions. It is by far becoming the most dominate criteria for most of the IT world. The 6 core opty looks solid there, so it will come down to price. Now with the quickly developing virtual desktop infrastructures, how well a platform does virtualization makes it just two fold more important. Many folks have already virtualized mission critical apps. I know we're doing exchange in the near future. The days of seperate physical servers and desktops are going the way of the dodo bird. Its becoming all about virtualization.
  • genkk - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link

    why power consumption not shown here....the bench mark guys in anandtech lost the papers...or they don't want you to see

    any way go to techreport.com where istanbul wins
  • JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link

    More detailed power consumption numbers will be available in the next review.
  • befair - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link

    yeah, yeah, its always "more details review coming soon"
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  • genkk - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link

    ohhh I see, johan is only doing what his boss (anand) has told him so...
  • aguilpa1 - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    As an AMD fanboy I skipped to the one metric that AMD shows competitive performance and focused on that ignoring all other.
  • classy - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    That is laughable. Lets see I have only purchased all Intel servers in the last 7 years. But in the last 2 years anyone who does any system administration knows virtualization has just leaped to the forefront. Its that important. Even email is being virtualized. Databases are still physical and will probably be for some time to come. But make no mistake about it, how well it does at virtualizing is at the top of the list. Especially considering the recent recession. Virtualizing allows more to be done with less of everything. Next time maybe have some experience in something else besides reading the internet and maybe you might understand a thing or two.
  • Natfly - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    Virtualization isn't the be-all end-all of computing. It definitely can be a way to make more efficient use of your hardware, but the "virtualize everything" mentality isn't going to help you in the long run.
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    I don't think thats really what he/she was saying, they were saying that in terms of the IT world, Virtualization is now one of the (if not the) most important features. Right now, there are major pushes in the industry to make more efficient use of hardware, virtualization is one major part of doing that. I agree that a "virtualize everything" mentality is not good, but the OP makes a great point about the importance of virtualization in todays IT world.
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