Intel Xeon 3.6 2MB vs AMD Opteron 252 Database Test
by Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on February 14, 2005 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Data Warehouse Test Explained
We are always looking to improve the quality of our reviews and as a result, we have added a new Stress Test to our suite.
This "Data Warehouse" test is focused on large record sets with plenty of aggregation. This test is based on a system that we developed to track and manage Request statistics for www.AnandTech.com and Forums.AnandTech.com. It tracks statistics like Requests/Hour, Requests/Hour/IP Address, Unique IP Addresses/Hour, Unique Users/Hour, Daily Browser stats, etc. These stats are further summarized by site, i.e.: www or Forums.
As with the other Stress Tests, each test was repeated three times and the average between the three tests was used. For this Data Warehouse Stress Test, we defined a quantity of work to complete and measured how long each platform required to process the workload.
So, to ensure that IO was not the bottleneck, each test was started with a database, including tempdb, which had already been expanded so that autogrow activity did not occur during the test. During the execution of the tests, there were no applications running on the server or monitoring software. Task Manager, Profiler, and Performance Monitor where used when establishing the baseline for the test, but never during execution of the tests.
At the beginning of each platform, the server was rebooted to ensure a clean and consistent environment. The database was always copied to the 8 disk RAID 0 array with no other files present to ensure that file placement and fragmentation was consistent between runs. In between each of the three tests, the database was deleted, the original database was copied again to the array, and SQL Server was restarted.
There is no "client" required for this test. The workload is initiated by a stored procedure call from Query Analyzer.
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Jason Clark - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
bthomas, read page 1 please. We focus on the window side of the house and there is no released 64bit OS or SQL server yet.Quanticles, the only measure we has was ntune which reported the HT bus running at 1GHz. Dual configuration for all tests.
Quanticles - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Did you check to make sure the HT bus was actually running at 1 GHz with an o-scope?Where you running these systems as 1P or 2P? I got the impression that you were running the tests as 1P systems and then was making recommendations on 2P systems.
bthomas - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Geez. Nobody is mentioning the fact that the Opteron is running on a 32-bit OS in these tests.Yeah, its basically a wash under these conditions, but so what..the real test would be under 64 bit. DB applications/servers are supposed to really thrive in the 64-bit realm. Why didnt you test under a 64 bit OS/DB software like Linux/Postgres|MySQL/etc ?!?
=b.t.
rivieracadman - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
I forgot to ask; Does the 152 offer SSOI or is it still SOI. From the power ratings I can guess it's still SOI. Just curious ...chucky2 - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
I like how vendors cripple the AMD offerings...sometimes ever so slightly, other times largely. Take a look at the two HP offerings listed out at the end of the article and tell me which one you'd like to buy? For $900 extra, I'll give up whatever performance benefit I'd see for the managability any day.Not AMD's fault...it's the vendors... :(
Chuck
Fluff - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Was NUMA enabled on 2003 Enterprise Edition for the 252?Did it make any difference?
This was not made clear in the article.
Unless /PAE is the equivalent.
mlittl3 - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
For those of you who are interested in what opterons will be made using 90 nm and 1 GHz hypertransport, here is the link on amd's website.http://www2.amd.com/us-en/OPN_Printer/1,,,00.html?...
Sorry it is so long but there is a lot of scripting for filtering results on the page.
To summarize, Opterons 242 (1.6 GHz) to 852 (2.6 GHz) are being updated to the new die process and HT bus.
I would like to recommend to the author of the article to include a reference section at the end of every review to relevant websites for more information. This would be similar to the reference section in the article from Johan. The above link should go there as well as any links to more indepth architecture info on both AMD's and Intel's websites. Just a thought.
skiboysteve - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
that extra period at the end of post #28 made what would have been a normal statement entirely creepy as hell...snorre - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
It would be more interesting with an update to these articles:http://anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=1982
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.html?i=1935
"The true test that remains, however, is a test comparing AMD’s Opteron to Intel’s Itanium 2. Intel was not very receptive to the idea of doing a head-to-head; not out of a fear of losing, but out of a desire not to lend AMD any credibility by showing that the Opteron is indeed a competitor to the Itanium 2. While we do believe that the Itanium 2 in its 128-way configurations is definitely out of the Opteron’s league, in the 2-way and 4-way configurations that we are interested in comparing, the two are absolutely competitors.
Whether Intel is looking to supply us with an Itanium 2 system or not, we will make that comparison."
We're still waiting...
SpaceRanger - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
I'd love to see it Jason..