Server platforms Toolkit

AMD's Barcelona: benchmarks

Kai Schmerer ZDNet Germany

Published: 08 Oct 2007

Performance
No AMD-sanctioned Barcelona systems were available for testing before the 10 September launch, although a few Tyan machines with beta BIOSes, early versions of the processors and prototype motherboards were circulating.

As a result, the benchmark results for the new quad-core Opterons reported here are from tests undertaken by AMD and IBM. The performance data for Intel's Xeon processors are taken from various manufacturers' figures reported on the SPEC benchmark site.

Benchmarks for integer (SPECint) and floating-point (SPECfp) operations show that AMD's new quad-core Opteron trails the Intel Xeons when running single-threaded applications (SPECint2006). Only if several applications are running at the same time (SPECint_rate2006) can the quad-core Opteron keep up with Intel's chips.

The Xeon's single-thread advantage is mainly due to the Intel Core microarchitecture's more effective command processing. Intel's Core processors can implement four instructions per clock, to the Opteron's three. When it comes to running multiple threads, the Opteron's more effective inter-processor connections over HyperTransport and the integrated memory controller allows it to regain parity.

This is why the 1.9GHz Opteron 2347 matches the 2.0GHz Xeon E5335 under the SPECint_rate2006 benchmark. The AMD advantage is greatest when multiple floating-point computations are processed (SPECfp_rate2006). Under this test, the 1.9GHz Opteron 2347 beats the Xeon E5365 clocked at 3GHz.

2-way server performance

Model	AMD Opteron 2347	Intel Xeon E5335	Intel Xeon E5345	Intel Xeon E5355	Intel Xeon E5365
Frequency	1.9GHz	2GHz	2.33GHz	2.66GHz	3GHz
SPECint2006	11.3	15.5	16.9	18.6	20.8
SPECint_rate2006	83.2	82.8	89.6	96.0	103
SPECfp2006	11.2	n/a	15.2	16.6	n/a
SPECfp_rate2006	73.0	56.8	60.8	63.3	66.9
Price (in 1,000-unit qualitites)	$316	$316	$455	$744	$1172

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