Hello,
I'd want to get an Opteron possibly the 1212, I want to know if it's
better than an Intel E6400 and E6600.
Does anybody know that, I didn't find benchmark yet.
Thank you !
The Opteron is a server processor, the E6xxx (Conroe) is a desktop
processor. The Intel Woodcrest is the part to compare an Opteron against.
The Athlon 64 X2 is AMD's dual core desktop part.
For system's with two or fewer CPU chips the Intel parts are faster. On
the desktop you want the Intel part, it's faster and in that
configuration AMD doesn't have any advantages. For two CPU chip servers,
i.e. 2 Opteron 2xx or 2 Woodcrests, it's a closer call. Woodcrest is
faster but it also uses a new type of memory called Fully Buffered RAM
which has horrible latency and is much harder to find (I don't see any
listed on Newegg or Pricewatch). For large servers, i.e. more that two
chips, the Opteron 8xx is the part of choice. AMD parts have on chip
memory controllers and a very efficient processor to processor
interconnect which Intel processors lack. In a single CPU chip system this
doesn't matter at all. The Intel chips suffer from longer memory latency
because of the external memory controller but they more than make up for
it with bigger caches. The lack of hypertransport doesn't matter at all in
single CPU chip systems because there is nothing to talk to. In dual chip
systems the supporting Intel bridge chips have dual frontside buses so the
lack of on chip memory controllers doesn't hurt them their either. The
bandwidth is pretty much the same as the Opterons and there is an
advantage to having equal access to the same memory from both CPU chips.
In an Opteron system a processor has faster access to it's own memory
and degraded (but not terrible) access to the memory on the other chip.
Operating systems are aware of this, so they are smart about how the
allocate physical memory, as a result the Opteron systems don't suffer
much because of the Non Uniform Memory Access (NUMA), however it's still
better to have uniform memory access if you can. Beyond two chips AMD's on
chip memory controllers and hypertransport give them a big advantage.
AMD's memory bandwidth scales because to the on chip memory controllers,
and the hypertransport gives them a glueless interconnect between the
processors. Intel systems at that level are starved for memory bandwidth
and they also have to use the same scarce resource of the FSB to do the
interprocessor communication.