More for your Money
Yesterday I blogged about how AMD is delivering 89 percent more performance than Intel at roughly the same CPU price. What if you aren’t concerned about getting more performance, what if you only want to get the most for your money? Well, we have a solution for you.
Today, we are going to compare two different systems; an Intel-based server outfitted with Intel Xeon E5640 processors and another server outfitted with AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6220.
We configured these servers online and chose the same options for both in order for them to have an “apples to apples” configuration. The problem was that the AMD system was considerably less expensive when we configured both to be the exact same. For most customers, knowing there is more money in the budget means that they can use the extra savings to get a little more out of their server.
Because there was such a large savings difference with the AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6220, we decided to do what most customers would do: super-size their configuration choices. AMD was already 25 percent faster in performance, so adding faster processors might not make sense. But what about doubling the memory and adding more drives? We wanted to also make sure that this server was reliable so we added a RAID controller. Now, if customers are putting a RAID controller in their server, they will want more than one hard drive, so let’s make it three hard drivers so that you can do RAID 5?
| Intel | AMD | AMD Advantage | |
| Processor | 2 x Intel Xeon E5640 | 2 x AMD Opteron 6220 | 25% faster CPU performance [1] |
| Memory | 16GB | 32GB | Twice the memory |
| RAID Controller | None | RAID 5 Controller | High availability |
| Hard Drives | 1 x 146GB | 3 x 146GB | Triple the storage |
| Price | $4,736 | $4,576 | 3% lower price |
What you end up with is pretty close in price. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the prices to match, but being 3 percent under is probably close enough.
So when comparing servers based on the Intel Xeon E5640 processors and the AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6220, you can clearly see that for about the same price, you are getting processors with 25 percent better performance, twice the memory, three times the storage and high availability. How do you beat that?
For companies trying to maximize their IT budgets and get the most out of their servers, this is a great time to be buying the new AMD Opteron processor-based servers.
John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing for Server and Embedded products at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.
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1 Pricing and specifications from www.hp.com as of 10/26/11. As of 10/26/11, pricing for the HP DL385 with AMD Opteron processor Model 6220 (1ku pricing $523) is not yet available. The price of an HP DL385 with AMD Opteron processors Model 6134 (1ku pricing $523) was used as a proxy because pricing for AMD Opteron 6100 and 6200 Series processor-based servers is expected to be very similar. Server configurations are identical except on the specifications listed above and include standard warranty, power supply and no OS. Difference in processor speeds is based on the top SPECint®_rate2006 results published by, or submitted by AMD to, SPEC as of 10/26/2011 for 2P servers with the above identified processors and may differ from the performance of the servers priced and described above. For the latest results, visit www.spec.org. See backup slide for configuration details.
POSTED IN: AMD Opteron
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COMMENTS: 6
Please update the TPC.org scores. They are so stale I can smell them.
Both TPC-C and TPC-E benchmarkes have been posted on their site. We do not control their site, the OEMs submit data to them, we are not involved.
Has AMD considered to make their own brand in computers? I´m tired to live in Mexico just to find that the more that I can get is an APU A6 3400 for around 370 euros with only 2gb in ram, while just before I bought a very nice dv6 6110sg laptop equiped with an A6 3410MX with 6gb in ram for just 600 euros… I think amd should take an opportunity like this to grow in rising markets like the one I describe.
We rely on our OEM partners to deliver products to market. Our expertise is in silicon design, we will leave the computer production to the experts.
Hi
I think your PR people should check this out:
(link removed)
It was in response to the following blog entry:
http://blogs.amd.com/work/2011/11/13/putting-performance-in-perspective-%E2%80%93-amd-opteron%E2%84%A2-6200-series-processors/
Basically the results are being twisted to make the latest Opterons look very poor. Loads of sites are reproducing the article ad-verbatim.
This is despite many people pointing out to the author in the comments that the AMD system has more storage. Even the author knows that one system is using MLC drive and the other SLC drives if you look at the comments.
These cost much more than the Intel system. On top of this the pricing of the SSDs in the Intel system is not final.
However,he does not mention this in the article.
Yes, I have seen that. I won’t comment on that article directly.
However, if you compare benchmarks you will find that there are those that are audited, such as SPEC, TPC and SAP. In those cases, our OEM partners (and AMD) have performance labs, we tune and optimize systems, we release benchmarks, and a third party can audit those benchmarks to ensure that they are accurate. In these benchmarks, we easily surpass Intel in performance.
Then there are other benchmarks which are not audited and do not reflect actual performance. I can’t speak to their validity, but if you had to choose (as most customers do) between those that are coming directly from vendors like HP and Dell or those that are coming from some web site, which would you choose?