Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Colocation and Data Centers : Intel 5060 vs. 5130, which would you choose?

[devonblzx]

Give me your thoughts on the comparison of the two processors...which would you choose?

The 5060 is about $50 cheaper but the new Woodcrest seem worth it but let me know your opinions...What makes the Woodcrest so much better?

Intel Xeon 5060 Dempsey
2x 2MB Cache
3.2ghz Dual Core

or the...

Intel Xeon 5130 Woodcrest
4MB Shared Cache
2.0ghz Dual Core


Thanks in advance

[KarlZimmer]

5130, easy. There is a hug difference between the two, assuming you're giving it enough RAM and disk IO capacity, etc. to make the extra processing power worthwhile.

[bilalk]

What makes Woodcrest so much better?

- Lower power usage (noticably lower)
- Runs cooler
- Shared cache... less stress on FSB
- "Woodcrest, will simply be the most powerful server CPU this year" ~ AnandTech

[devonblzx]

How come 2ghz woodcrest is so much faster than the 3.2ghz demspey, what makes the processing different?

I understand AMD's 2.2ghz being equal to about 3.2-3.4ghz because of the 64-bit processing but why is Woodcrest's so powerful running at such a low frequency?

[KDAWebServices]

Originally Posted by devonblzx

I understand AMD's 2.2ghz being equal to about 3.2-3.4ghz because of the 64-bit processing but why is Woodcrest's so powerful running at such a low frequency?

Nothing to do with the 64bit processing, as most people run them in 32bit mode. It's down to how efficient the processor pipeline is and thus how many instructions can execute per clock cycle. Anandtech covers it pretty well.

[VertexBilly]

I have just ordered a dual 5050 box and a dual 5110 box.

The 5050's are Dempsey 3.0ghz and the 5110 are the Woodcrest 1.6ghz.

Both boxes will be dual proc, have 4 gigs of ram and run Raid1 with Sata hdd's.

From what I have been told and the articles I have read they should perform very similarly even though the Woodcrest clock speed is only half that of the dempsey. However the Woodcrest should eat up a lot less power.

The Woodcrest has twice as much cache and a higher FSB on top of a different archeticture (sp).

I will be getting both of these boxes this upcoming week. I will be installing CentOs on both and running them with both resellers and shared hosting customers. They should be in use in another week or so.

My plan is to monitor them closely and based on the performance I see out of them I will decide what platform I will launch my future boxes on.

If anyone is interested I will post again in a few weeks and let you know how it goes.

[devonblzx]

Sounds good, let me know how your testing goes and thanks for the input.

[VertexBilly]

I will do.

I appologize I noticed that I said both boxes will have 4 gigs of RAM, they will each have 2 gigs of RAM I don't know why I typed 4.

[devonblzx]

So your putting Dual 5110's with only 2GB of RAM, would that be enough RAM for your hosting?

Or do you mean Dual as in a single dual core?

[VertexBilly]

Each unit will have dual processors.

2GB of RAM should be fine. I can't see why it wouldn't be. I don't overload my boxes with so many customers that they break at the seams.

Worse case scenario is that I can alwasy upgrade. I mean I hate downtime, but I can upgrade RAM in less then 5 minutes if needed.

[cwl@apaqdigital]

AMD Opterons crushed the "myth of high clock speed" long time ago! a lower-clocked Operon beats higher-clocked Xeon Nocona/Irwindale consistently.

now, Intel has followed suite that using lower-clocked Woodcrest beating the hell out of their own Dempsey:
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2793&p=3
the benchmarks show that on the indentical platform, woodcrest 3G performs almost twice better than Dempsey 3.73G and uses half of the amp in doing so. it's a complete reverse of performance/watt ratio!

despite it can be a toss-up between Woodcrest 2G and Dempsey 3.2G, but at least 2x woodcrest server will save you at least 1amp per server over 2x Dempsey setup.

be aware that none of the CentOS4.x (not sure about the 4.4) stock kernels have built-in driver for the new Intel 82563EB GB NICs found on all dual socket 771 server boards. you will have to download Intel's source codes to "make install" the "e1000.ko" driver yourself.

Woodcrest truly runs very cool! with proper passive cooling, they idle at 30c~32c, and barely top 40c under full load! fruly 1U friendly!

[VertexBilly]

Originally Posted by cwl@apaqdigital

be aware that none of the CentOS4.x (not sure about the 4.4) stock kernel has driver for the new Intel 82563EB GB NICs found on all dual socket 771 server boards. you will have to download Intel's source code to "make install" the "e1000.ko" driver yourself.

Thanks for the heads up I was not aware of that.

[HiDef-Laws]

If you buy "identical" machines on the regular, just keep the .ko file that you create the first time and re-use it. It was a real pain working up my first 5130 machine since you couldn't yum any of the files. A few rpms of source devel w/ gcc and you should be good to go on the make install.

cwl@apaqdigital: No linux distro that I attempted had the drivers for the Intel 10/100/1000 Express (Fedora 5 and others). It seems the compile is required on most, if not all, distributions. :/

[devonblzx]

Thanks for the great advice Lee,

I'll probably be getting into the woodcrest phase soon here...

[cwl@apaqdigital]

Originally Posted by HiDef-Laws

If you buy "identical" machines on the regular, just keep the .ko file that you create the first time and re-use it. It was a real pain working up my first 5130 machine since you couldn't yum any of the files. A few rpms of source devel w/ gcc and you should be good to go on the make install.

cwl@apaqdigital: No linux distro that I attempted had the drivers for the Intel 10/100/1000 Express (Fedora 5 and others). It seems the compile is required on most, if not all, distributions. :/

yup, you must install kernel source files/compilers during the initial setup by just check-box the "developement tools" packages. these files are required to "make install" the e1000.ko file.

I surely hope the soon-to-be released CentOS 4.4 includes 82563EB driver in stock kernel.