Proliant DL and blades - Intel or AMD

[wickman]

Can anyone point me to any performance reviews or test results? Which processor is 'best?' We're running Windows 2003 x64 mostly.

Thanks,
Eric

[David Claypool]

I can give you a definitive...it depends. Without getting into a big debate over technologies and features, the biggest it depends is going to be a point in time. For a long time the AMD Opteron had a tremendous performance and power draw advantage. Now Intel dual-core and quad-core processors have an advantage, but the much-talked-about in the press AMD "Barcelona" processors to come out later this year are supposed to erase that advantage again.

You can check out the paper "Characterizing x86 Processors for Industry-standard Servers: AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon" and others from http://www.hp.com/servers/proliant --> Technology Papers --> Processor Technology

[Andrew Young_2]

Hi Eric.

Just to elaborate on what Dave said. Currently the Intel 5100 (Dual core) and 5300 (Quad core) CPU's offer the best performance with a lower power consumption. The older Intel 5000 series dual core are more power hungry although recently there is a low power 5063 processor in that series. There are some frugal AMD HE series processors but again their power consumption is equivalant Intel 5100 and 5300 procs but do not offer the same processing performance of the Intel's.

When translated into server cost, there is a small saving using the BL465c (AMD) vs the BL460c (Intel) but this is merely tens of dollars (US).

However this will change over time so you will need to work out what is best at purchase time.

Regards

Andrew Y

[wickman]

This is good info... thanks.

Do you have any links for specific AMD vs. Intel speeds witht he current HP proliant processor offerings?

My big decision now is whether to go with BL465c blades with the AMD 2218HE (2.6gHZ 68W) processors or the BL460c with the Intel 5150 (2.6gHZ) dual core. I'm running Windows 2003 32 and 64bit on these but mostly 64. Any opinions?

Thanks,
Eric