Intel Clovertown: Quad Core for the Masses
by Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on March 30, 2007 12:15 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Clovertown/Woodcrest System
The Clovertown system was supplied by Intel, a standard white box Starlake based platform. We outfitted the system with 8x2GB FB-DIMM 667MHz modules from Micron (MT18HTF25672FDY-667). A single SATA drive was used for the OS, and the system was powered by the OEM supply it came with. We would have liked to use the same power supply for both systems; however, the Clovertown board requires a special 4-pin cable that the Enermax supply doesn't have. Note also that we were not able to get samples of the fastest currently shipping Clovertown processors, and as such the Intel quad core configuration is not the best performing Intel CPU available. (2.66 and now 3.00 GHz versions are available.)
Quad Socket Opteron System
Our contacts over at Tyan provided us with their Thunder n4250QE, which can support up to eight sockets with the M4985 add on module. We outfitted the Thunder with 16x1GB Kingston KVR667D2D8P5/1G 667MHz DDR2 modules. A single SATA drive was used for the OS, and we powered the board with an Enermax Galaxy 1000W.
RAID Storage for both systems
LSI Logic 8480E MegaRaid Controller
Promise VTRAK J300s SAS Chassis
12 x 146GB Fujitsu 15,000 RPM SAS Drives configured in RAID 0
Operating System/Software
Windows 2003 Enterprise SP1 x64
SQL 2005 Enterprise x64 SP1
Benchmark Software
Quest Benchmark Factory v5.0 Build 296
Test Clients
Client 1
Dual Opteron 2220 using a Tyan S3992 motherboard with 8GB of memory
Client 2
Dual Woodcrest 3.0GHz using a Tyan S2696 motherboard with 8GB of memory
Client 3
Dual Clovertown 1.86 using a SuperMicro X7DBE+ motherboard with 2GB of memory
Thanks
We'd like to thank Claudia Martinez over at Kingston, Kelly Sasson over at Micron, Randy Saucedo over at Quest Software, and a big thanks to Frank Chang and our friends over at Tyan for supplying the motherboard for the quad socket Opteron and for helping us out with an additional test client motherboard.
The Clovertown system was supplied by Intel, a standard white box Starlake based platform. We outfitted the system with 8x2GB FB-DIMM 667MHz modules from Micron (MT18HTF25672FDY-667). A single SATA drive was used for the OS, and the system was powered by the OEM supply it came with. We would have liked to use the same power supply for both systems; however, the Clovertown board requires a special 4-pin cable that the Enermax supply doesn't have. Note also that we were not able to get samples of the fastest currently shipping Clovertown processors, and as such the Intel quad core configuration is not the best performing Intel CPU available. (2.66 and now 3.00 GHz versions are available.)
Quad Socket Opteron System
Our contacts over at Tyan provided us with their Thunder n4250QE, which can support up to eight sockets with the M4985 add on module. We outfitted the Thunder with 16x1GB Kingston KVR667D2D8P5/1G 667MHz DDR2 modules. A single SATA drive was used for the OS, and we powered the board with an Enermax Galaxy 1000W.
RAID Storage for both systems
LSI Logic 8480E MegaRaid Controller
Promise VTRAK J300s SAS Chassis
12 x 146GB Fujitsu 15,000 RPM SAS Drives configured in RAID 0
Operating System/Software
Windows 2003 Enterprise SP1 x64
SQL 2005 Enterprise x64 SP1
Benchmark Software
Quest Benchmark Factory v5.0 Build 296
Test Clients
Client 1
Dual Opteron 2220 using a Tyan S3992 motherboard with 8GB of memory
Client 2
Dual Woodcrest 3.0GHz using a Tyan S2696 motherboard with 8GB of memory
Client 3
Dual Clovertown 1.86 using a SuperMicro X7DBE+ motherboard with 2GB of memory
Thanks
We'd like to thank Claudia Martinez over at Kingston, Kelly Sasson over at Micron, Randy Saucedo over at Quest Software, and a big thanks to Frank Chang and our friends over at Tyan for supplying the motherboard for the quad socket Opteron and for helping us out with an additional test client motherboard.
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yyrkoon - Monday, April 2, 2007 - link
You can not read, and understand what I am writting, and I am the dolt or moron . . .Interresting that . . . interresting indeed. I think what I will do, is just ignore whatever else you have to say, just like the majority of other readers seemingly have done.
archcommus - Friday, March 30, 2007 - link
However if Barcelona comes out and then Penryn smashes it just a few months later, yeah, then I'm gonna be worried about them. :(Griswold - Saturday, March 31, 2007 - link
Say no to drugs.anony - Friday, March 30, 2007 - link
This is for the authors. Sorry if I missed it, but do the power measurementsinclude chipset power? AMD processors include the memory controller as well,
right? Do the performance/watt take this into account?
Ross Whitehead - Friday, March 30, 2007 - link
We measured power at the wall, but we do not include the power for the disk chassis.Thus, performance/watt takes all of your mentioned items into account.
blckgrffn - Friday, March 30, 2007 - link
I am guessing Pernyn will be different enough from Clovertown to make using vmotion (and many other enterprise features) impossible. It sucks enough that we already have two processor families in our Dell 2950's, and here comes one more.I am all for progress, it just looks like this might be something VMware has to address at some point.
Nat
Beenthere - Friday, March 30, 2007 - link
...the industry. As usual Intel's "glueblob" is another rushed-out-the-door, knee-jerk reaction to AMD supplying superior CPU products. AMD is really gonna hurt Intel with Barcelona and friends.johnsonx - Friday, March 30, 2007 - link
Beenthere + Cornfedone = CramitpalGriswold - Saturday, March 31, 2007 - link
You forgot to add some "fine-ass".Phynaz - Friday, March 30, 2007 - link
Wow, you really are a moron.