CFD Online Logo CFD Online URL
www.cfd-online.com
[Sponsors]
Home > Forums > Software User Forums > ANSYS > CFX

XEON or Opteron

Register Blogs Members List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Old   December 16, 2006, 14:50
Default XEON or Opteron
  #1
flex
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Hello,

asking around the following is the (statistical) voice:

XEON (Woodcrest, Clovertown) performs better for serial jobs.

Opteron (say Socket F) performs ahead of XEON for parallel runs esp. on multiple-core systems, say beyond 8x cores.

Any experience in regard, confirmation, objection, perhaps useful hints out there ?
  Reply With Quote

Old   December 16, 2006, 16:51
Default Re: XEON or Opteron
  #2
Joe
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Xeon up to 8 cores (2 clovertowns per motheboard) will beat the Opteron like a red headed step child. It would still beat the Opteron at higher core counts but Xeons max out at 8 per cores per motherboard.

Clusters are generally much cheaper eg. For a cheap cluster go with the quad core Core2Quads e.g. the Q6600 in January 2007.
  Reply With Quote

Old   December 16, 2006, 17:24
Default Re: XEON or Opteron
  #3
flex
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Can you substantiate your findings. As I did hear what I reported, from more then one source (which is no substantiaton by itself).
  Reply With Quote

Old   December 16, 2006, 18:21
Default Re: XEON or Opteron
  #4
Joe
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Google
  Reply With Quote

Old   December 17, 2006, 16:03
Default Re: XEON or Opteron
  #5
Charles
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Have you looked at the SPEC scores? Not that SPEC is the last word on what you can expect in terms of performance in CFD, but it does give you some pointers. Judging by that, it's far from clearcut that the quad core Xeons scale that well.
  Reply With Quote

Old   December 18, 2006, 08:32
Default Re: XEON or Opteron
  #6
flex
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Hello Charles,

a link wrt intended SPEC scores?

thank you, flex
  Reply With Quote

Old   December 18, 2006, 12:28
Default Re: XEON or Opteron
  #7
Charles
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/rfp2000.html

  Reply With Quote

Old   December 21, 2006, 07:45
Default Re: XEON or Opteron
  #8
flex
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Hello Charles,

thanks for the interesting link. Quite some up and down, even for the same processor, depending on system supplier and configuration. Surprising perhaps, that they don't really uttilize parallelized major industrial codes in the benchmark packages.

Seeems as this leaves us to hear-say to some extend, still. What I don't really figure is the 'parallel/auto parallel = no' setting under the 2000 / 2006 cpu floating point benchmarks.

flex

  Reply With Quote

Old   December 21, 2006, 08:46
Default Re: XEON or Opteron
  #9
Charles
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
I think you need to be very careful about making decisions based purely on SpecCPU. It tells you some things, but definitely not the whole story. For example, the Itanium II processor gets very good scores, but when I ran Fluent on Itanium, I was very disappointed, it was a lot slower than on Xeon CPU's! But SpecFPrate tells you something about how the performance scales, and it definitely doesn't like the quad-core Xeon. My guess is that in the real world, where memory access is so important, the quad core will be even worse, but we need somebody with access to the necessary hardware and software to test a real CFD code on these quad-core processors. When I last looked, Fluent hadn't published such results yet. I think at the moment, if you want an 8-way SMP CFD machine, it has to be a quad-socket dual-core Opteron, but if you want 4-way it could be dual-socket dual-core AMD or Intel. A single socket machine needs to to be Intel though.
  Reply With Quote

Old   December 21, 2006, 09:04
Default Re: XEON or Opteron
  #10
flex
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Charles,

thanks again, for leaning out. Perhaps the XEON quad-cores gain ground with [eventually] faster FSB clock speed in '07 ?

regards, flex
  Reply With Quote

Old   December 21, 2006, 09:24
Default Re: XEON or Opteron
  #11
Charles
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Anybody's guess, it needs to be tested ... But I think they need more than a fast FSB for the multi-socket SMP systems.
  Reply With Quote

Old   December 21, 2006, 10:47
Default Re: XEON or Opteron
  #12
flex
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
thanks again

have a good day,

flex
  Reply With Quote

Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Performance of Xeon X56-- 6 core hvem10 Hardware 4 August 3, 2010 11:55
Intel Nehalem (i7core) benchmarks? andy2O Hardware 23 May 3, 2009 18:53
AMD Opteron 2389 vs. Xeon W5580 soni7007 Hardware 1 May 3, 2009 18:42
Xeon and Opteron architecture differences johndeas Main CFD Forum 4 December 10, 2008 09:05
AMD Opteron vs Intel Xeon K. Jagus FLUENT 8 May 20, 2005 04:49


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 07:54.