AMD Opteron vs. Intel Xeon: Database Performance Shootout
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on March 2, 2004 2:11 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Hyper Threading
Intel's Hyper Threading technology has been widely accepted in the enterprise and desktop markets, to the point where the vast majority of systems ship with Hyper Threading enabled and leave it that way.
Our tests have shown that Hyper Threading improved performance 3 - 5% on average and thus we left it enabled for all of our tests here.
The Tests
We ran two sets of tests for this comparison: an updated version of our own home-grown tests on the AnandTech Forums Database, as well as another more strenuous test representative of enterprise-class transactional database serving applications. We will discuss the two tests in greater detail in the coming pages, but first the basic hardware configuration for our tests:
AMD Opteron 848/248 and Intel Xeon/Xeon MP (Prestonia/Gallatin)
4GB DDR333 (NUMA was enabled for the opteron)
8 x 36GB 15,000RPM Ultra320 SCSI drives in RAID-0
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server
Days, and then weeks went by as we researched and regression-tested various benchmark methodologies in order to come up with fair, repeatable and, most of all, real world database benchmarks. In the past, we've used a trace playback methodology to stress the database. While it served its purpose for the hardware that was tested, it was time for a change. This time around, we wanted to have two different tests: one that represented an average database load, like the AnandTech Forums; and, the other that represented an enterprise level workload.
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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.