Dell to start selling AMD Opteron Servers

[Eberhard Moenkeberg]

Hi,

On Thu, 18 May 2006, David Hubbard wrote:
> From: Eberhard Moenkeberg
>> On Thu, 18 May 2006, Adam Williams wrote:

>>> http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060518/20060518005798.html?.v=1
>>
>> Wait - it is a statement from AMD, and it states "Dell
>> intends...", not more currently.
>>
>> So maybe we should fire 'em (Dell): DOIT, DOIT, DOIT!
>
> True, for all we know Dell could have put that in their
> quarterly report just to press Intel for some lower pricing. :-(
>
>> I prefer Newisys 4300-E currently against PE6850.
>> It has 4 "true" Dualcore CPUs and a 50% better memory
>> throughput, and it needs less power (produces less heat).
>> Oh boy, I really am dreaming of a Dell machine like that!
>
> Yep, I'm saving nearly an amp of 110v and gaining 35%
> in performance with dual 2.8 GHz single-core Opterons
> vs dual 3.8 GHz Xeon's.  A 6850 with four 2.6 GHz dual-core
> Opterons would be absolutely kick ass.

Yes. Should get named PE6851, to avoid confusion and show the top. ;-))

> Eberhard, have you run any testing on the scalability
> of the dual-core Opteron versus two single cores?  I'm
> curious to see what others are seeing percentage-wise
> for how much the second core really gives you versus two
> cpu's.

Not really, but only the memory bandwidth could be a limit below of 
"double", and that bandwith has all the times been better than the Intel 
"front side bus".

With "hdparm -tT /dev/sda" on a Dell PE6850 with 4 CPUs 3.6 GHz and on a 
Newisys 4300-E with 4 dualcore Opterons 2.0 GHz (guess which one is 
cheaper and needs less power!) the Opteron has 50% better memory 
throughput.
The Newisys has DDR1 RAM, the Dell has DDR2. ;-))

Anyways, a dual core opteron CPU does cost equal to a "one step higher" 
single core CPU, with almost equal power consumption, but almost double 
(at least 160% or more) performance.

Cheers -e
-- 
Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke at gwdg.de, em at kki.org)