AMD's HD7970 is ready for action! The most effiency and fastest card on earth.

[Kano]

@Qaridarium

The speed is exactly the same as it is the same silicon, just with different features enabled. So the benchmarks are absolutely correct. I had only ssh access to that Opterons (running Kanotix live) but i dont know anybody with the newer ones, do you? The gfx part is maybe different but thats not tested in that benchmark. You mainly need the Xeon flavour when you want to use ECC together with a workstation chipset like C206, the cpu itself would run in any desktop s1155 board as well, you just can not use ECC.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/52214,52213,52277

All i can say is: too many cores hurt performance as there is much more work to synchronize. A smaller source code like mplayer2 and the performance of quad with higher single core performance beats 24 cores by 100% difference! All compile tests resulted in debian packages, so the time where configure was done and creating deb packages was included as well, i did the tests with cached depends in pbuilder for the kernel, so dl speed differences are not tested. It does not help much when you try artificial workloads, a kernel so minimal that you can compile (but not package) within 60s is just useless when it has to run on lots of systems.

[Qaridarium]

It's my understanding that Xeon E5-1620 would outperform Opteron 6204 in most single threaded uses, even when considering the slight overhead introduced by EFI. My personal concern regarding EFI is primarily regarding security and protecting company property. With EFI we might see the first real OS independent viruses, and with all this "surveillance" features embedded into EFI I fear this would become a target for economical criminality. So for servers I would consider this security very important, and maybe a little less important for the workstations, but that's just my opinion. One of the reasons for the requirement of high single threaded performance is graphical development. With Kepler's increased programmability the CPU might become less of a bottleneck tough...

are there any benchmarks for your claim: "It's my understanding that Xeon E5-1620 would outperform Opteron 6204 in most single threaded uses" ????

and you ask for Coreboot support and the Opteron 6204 boards do have coreboot support!

i just give you an alternative viewpoint why not buy a single Opteron 6204 workstation and test it and benchmark it?

or pay michael/phoronix to do this.

in my point of view an opteron solution is cheaper than a Xeon Solution.

[Qaridarium]

@Qaridarium

The speed is exactly the same as it is the same silicon, just with different features enabled. So the benchmarks are absolutely correct. I had only ssh access to that Opterons (running Kanotix live) but i dont know anybody with the newer ones, do you? The gfx part is maybe different but thats not tested in that benchmark. You mainly need the Xeon flavour when you want to use ECC together with a workstation chipset like C206, the cpu itself would run in any desktop s1155 board as well, you just can not use ECC.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/52214,52213,52277

All i can say is: too many cores hurt performance as there is much more work to synchronize. A smaller source code like mplayer2 and the performance of quad with higher single core performance beats 24 cores by 100% difference! All compile tests resulted in debian packages, so the time where configure was done and creating deb packages was included as well, i did the tests with cached depends in pbuilder for the kernel, so dl speed differences are not tested. It does not help much when you try artificial workloads, a kernel so minimal that you can compile (but not package) within 60s is just useless when it has to run on lots of systems.

o man you don't get it! the Opteron 6204 fit in your claim because its only a quatcore and not a 16core. AND the question was a Workstation CPU with support for Coreboot!

your only problem is you don't have a system do make your benchmarks,

[efikkan]

It's based on bechmarks of Sandy Bridge vs Bulldozer (consumer models), I know there are differences between the consumer models and the enterprise models.

I've failed to find any motherboards from Tyan or Supermicro with coreboot, can you please show me one? I don't think anything will be ordered for another six months, in case anything show up.

[Qaridarium]

It's based on bechmarks of Sandy Bridge vs Bulldozer (consumer models)

the AMD FX8150 is the consumer model and the Opteron 6204 is 91% faster in singlet-treated tasks.

you claim that the xenon is faster based on the benchmarks with the 91% slower consumer version.

in fact you are wrong here!

, I know there are differences between the consumer models and the enterprise models.

yes BIG differences... FX8150=8mb L3 cache for 8 cores and the Opteron 6204=16mb L3 cache for 4 cores.

but you prefer to claim based on the "consumer version"

I've failed to find any motherboards from Tyan or Supermicro with coreboot, can you please show me one?

you can watch the core-boot compatibly list all chip-sets for the Opterons are supported.
this means you can just buy a motherboard and flash your coreboot version on it.

there are no known pre installed mainboards.

I don't think anything will be ordered for another six months, in case anything show up.

if you buy stuff from Intel without a competitor without a alternative then you pay the highest price but this is clueless.

professionals always check alternatives.

[efikkan]

I don't think you got my point. First of all, I'm not set on buying Intel, but selecting the best overall solution, in fact I'll be willing to sacrifice a little performance if needed to get a solution with coreboot, that's why I want to discuss it. Secondly, I did not claim Xeon X5 was faster than Opteron. If you have a link showing the performance of Opteron 6204 vs the alternatives I'll be more than happy to consider it.

[Qaridarium]

I don't think you got my point. First of all, I'm not set on buying Intel, but selecting the best overall solution, in fact I'll be willing to sacrifice a little performance if needed to get a solution with coreboot, that's why I want to discuss it. Secondly, I did not claim Xeon X5 was faster than Opteron. If you have a link showing the performance of Opteron 6204 vs the alternatives I'll be more than happy to consider it.

ok!... this is the only benchmark link i found: http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2011q4/

sorry there are no other benchmarks in the web.

AMD should send a Opteron 6204 system to michael to bring more benchmarks to the WEB.

[efikkan]

As far as I can see, the Xeon X5680 scores at 241/12=20. I'm curious how this compares to general x86 performance.

[Qaridarium]

As far as I can see, the Xeon X5680 scores at 241/12=20. I'm curious how this compares to general x86 performance.

i don't know. sorry. but 18,87 compared to 20 is not so bad for amd !

and the Xeon X5680 is much more expensive 1.739 € LOL!!!

you really compare a 470€ cpu to an 1739€ cpu LOL!!!..

the amd cpu is 6% slower (single-threated) but you save 1269€ LOL!

(Ironic)ALL HAIL to Intel!

[efikkan]

You know I was thinking about Xeon E5-1620 ($294 4 cores, 3.6 GHz (3.9 GHz turbo), 4x256 kB L2, 10 MB L3 (2.5 MB per core)), suggesting this might perform well against Opteron 6204, since X5680 (3.33 GHz, 6x256 kB L2, 12 MB L3 (2 MB per core)) does. Correct me if my reasoning is wrong here.