Comments on: Don’t Be Fooled (Again)

By: Margaret Lewis

Margaret Lewis — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:58:08 +0000

Thanks for the comments. In my blog I point out major decision factors that customers request that go beyond benchmark numbers – one is power consumption and the other is the cost of the system. Nehalem EP has posted leading virtualization performance numbers on VMmark – but this benchmark does not give you any information on power consumption while the benchmark is running or the price of the system. I suggest that you go on line to HP or Dell and price the system configurations that achieved these numbers. You can then use this system cost to figure out a cost per VM (system cost/total number of VMs). This will help you understand how the “raw” performance score correlates to a price/performance score. In terms of performance/watt – I believe you are referring to SPECpowerjbb? This shows you the power performance in one specific workload and does not necessarily give you info about power consumption for VMware, database, web serving, etc.

The Intel “Harpertown” platform will continue to be sold by Intel – if you look at industry predictions of Nehalem ramp it takes several quarters before it even reaches 50% of the market. Shanghai continues to be strong contender to Harpertown in terms of the “raw performance” and a strong contendor in price/performance against Nehalem.

By: Peter G.

Peter G. — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:50:32 +0000

Margaret, I don’t think too many people will be fooled. Anyone worth their salt will research their purchase and see that the data doesn’t lie. You’re right, over the past four months, AMD’s server processors have done great things. It’s clearly lined out in your blog. But four months is a long time in hardware cycles, and things change.

Four months ago, Shanghai set the world on fire.
Yesterday, Shanghai was shanghaied.

The very sources you cite in this article have shown your competitor’s new product overall offers vastly superior performance/Watt, and in some cases does this while costing less. Instead of focusing on the past four months, lets hear about what the future holds. Honesty, integrity, and transparency are what’s needed now, not a rehash of history.

By: Robert Hallock

Robert Hallock — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:12:39 +0000

How does AMD plan to position its Shanghai or upcoming Istanbul processors against Intel’s offering, given that the Nehalem EP now holds both the Virtualization and performance/watt records?

Anandtech: http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3536&p=12
“There is little doubt that the newest Xeon is also the champion in virtualization.”

Anandtech: http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3536&p=14
“Still, it is clear that when you compare the best Intel and AMD CPUs, the best performance/Watt figures come from Intel by pretty large margin.”

Or does AMD take issue with the conclusions AMD has drawn in these benchmarks?