TheInquirer has just released an article comparing the results of a HP 4 dual core AMD Opteron CPU (eight core) server and a 16 way 3 gig 4MB L3 Cache Xeon server from Unisys. The conclusion drawn is that the 4 CPU dual core AMD Opteron is 20% faster then the 16 core Xeon server. They are also much cheaper as the Xeon CPU’s go for nearly 4000 dollars each.
TheInq was also nice enough to direct our attention to an Anantech review which shows the 2.2 gig dual Opteron is 18% faster then the fastest (3.3 gig) quad Xeon solution. The Inq article can be found here.
These are all very preliminary results and the results might vary once the products become more widely available, but the indicators are good that AMD wasn’t exagerating about their dual core performance and that Dell will have to really drop their pants price wise to be able to offer similar price/performance solutions based on Intel CPU’s until 2006 when Intel unveil their dual core server CPU’s as I intimated 4 days ago. The saying that nobody ever got fired for buying Intel may not be true for the next 8 months or so if these results are true indications of the dual core Opterons worth. The fact that the Opterons are lower clocked, use less power and generate less heat probably won’t hurt AMD either. So there you have it, early tests show that AMD has it all over Intel in price, performance and heat/power production. Lets see what Dell has to say after a few months of trying to explain to customers why they should buy a lesser Intel based solution. For myself, I’m planning to find out how well a 64bit Athlon X2 dual core 4600+ handles running a web server. Even people that bluntly refuse to buy AMD should be happy about this because it means Intel is going to really have to drop it’s prices to stay in the game for the rest of the year.
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For a second opinion, see tech-report.
