Opteron vs Xeon

I've recently been attempting to put into production some Itanium based
servers. I'm running (amongst other things) Remedy, which means highly
serialised transactions (thus limiting the effect of the Itanium) and has
lead me to discover that the low clock speed on the Itanium is causing the
application to run slower (the biggest test of this was a basic bulk insert
into a table with no indexes that would run 50% slower on a 4x1.6GHZ
Itanium vs a 2x2.4GHZ Xeon).
I'm now looking into going to back to a 32bit system, folks are touting the
benefits of the Opteron processor as opposed to the Xeon, stating that the
performance difference is pretty large.
My question is, does the slower clock speed on the Opteron translate into
the same problems that I was experiencing on the Itanium, or am I actually
going to find better i/o performance through the AMD processor?
Thanks
Nic
On Thu, 01 Sep 2005 04:20:11 -0700, Nicholas Cain
<nicholas.cain@.nospam.t-mobile.com> wrote:
>I've recently been attempting to put into production some Itanium based
>servers. I'm running (amongst other things) Remedy, which means highly
>serialised transactions (thus limiting the effect of the Itanium) and has
>lead me to discover that the low clock speed on the Itanium is causing the
>application to run slower (the biggest test of this was a basic bulk insert
>into a table with no indexes that would run 50% slower on a 4x1.6GHZ
>Itanium vs a 2x2.4GHZ Xeon).
>I'm now looking into going to back to a 32bit system, folks are touting the
>benefits of the Opteron processor as opposed to the Xeon, stating that the
>performance difference is pretty large.
>My question is, does the slower clock speed on the Opteron translate into
>the same problems that I was experiencing on the Itanium, or am I actually
>going to find better i/o performance through the AMD processor?
Seems unlikely that CPU speed is really the limiting factor on a bulk
load.
J.
|||JXStern <JXSternChangeX2R@.gte.net> wrote in
news:i7rdh114n67mjuc7uor55clv95k5f8a3uq@.4ax.com:

> Seems unlikely that CPU speed is really the limiting factor on a bulk
> load.
> J.
>
I've had the gurus at HP look and tell me that this is the limiting factor
(after a lot of consideration and followup with MS).
I didn't believe it myself, however all indications point to that problem.
|||I've also seen high CPU utilization with bulk inserts, at least the
fully-logged variety.
Hope this helps.
Dan Guzman
SQL Server MVP
"Nicholas Cain" <nicholas.cain@.nospam.t-mobile.com> wrote in message
news:Xns96C45AE8629B4nicholascainnospamtm@.207.46.2 48.16...
> JXStern <JXSternChangeX2R@.gte.net> wrote in
> news:i7rdh114n67mjuc7uor55clv95k5f8a3uq@.4ax.com:
>
> I've had the gurus at HP look and tell me that this is the limiting factor
> (after a lot of consideration and followup with MS).
> I didn't believe it myself, however all indications point to that problem.
|||"Dan Guzman" <guzmanda@.nospam-online.sbcglobal.net> wrote in
news:ulSIjWvrFHA.1168@.TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl:

> I've also seen high CPU utilization with bulk inserts, at least the
> fully-logged variety.
>
The cpu utilisation was extremely high on the Itanium, the majority of that
was kernel usage.
Changing the max degree of parallelism made no difference, nor did setting
offsets on the disk, nor sp4, adding numa options, setting affinity masks
or anything.
The bulk insert itself was a single 1.5GB file into a table with no
indexes. The db itself was in simple recovery mode, db and logs on seperate
luns on a Hitachi XP1024 SAN with a 40GB cache.
Performance speeds for the bulk insert were idnetical on both a Dell and HP
Itanium based system with the same specs.
|||I was acutally looking at the dual core.
I guess my best course of action would be to throw a Xeon and a Opteron in
a head to head and see what comes out as the leader.
"Coldman" <nomorespam@.mail.com> wrote in
news:#AAvQowrFHA.528@.TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl:

> hehe - me again
> and u can get double core opterons - and have 2 cpu while paying
> licence for 1,
> and there r IMHO no double core Xeons
>
|||good idea
y dont u post the results here after the test
"Nicholas Cain" <nicholas.cain@.nospam.t-mobile.com> wrote in message
news:Xns96C477204FE4Bnicholascainnospamtm@.207.46.2 48.16...
>I was acutally looking at the dual core.
> I guess my best course of action would be to throw a Xeon and a Opteron in
> a head to head and see what comes out as the leader.
>
> "Coldman" <nomorespam@.mail.com> wrote in
> news:#AAvQowrFHA.528@.TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl:
>
|||If you are going to do that you should test a dual core Pentium against the
dual core Opteron. I have several clients with single core Opterons and
they are very happy with them but I think Dual Core processors will rule the
earth very soon<g>.
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"Nicholas Cain" <nicholas.cain@.nospam.t-mobile.com> wrote in message
news:Xns96C477204FE4Bnicholascainnospamtm@.207.46.2 48.16...
>I was acutally looking at the dual core.
> I guess my best course of action would be to throw a Xeon and a Opteron in
> a head to head and see what comes out as the leader.
>
> "Coldman" <nomorespam@.mail.com> wrote in
> news:#AAvQowrFHA.528@.TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl:
>
|||but there r no dual core Xeons yet i think, and Pentium 4 lacks server class
motherboards(w/ a lot of 64bit slots and dual power connectors)
"Andrew J. Kelly" <sqlmvpnooospam@.shadhawk.com> wrote in message
news:e9qbrgxrFHA.2272@.TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
> If you are going to do that you should test a dual core Pentium against
> the dual core Opteron. I have several clients with single core Opterons
> and they are very happy with them but I think Dual Core processors will
> rule the earth very soon<g>.
> --
> Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
>
> "Nicholas Cain" <nicholas.cain@.nospam.t-mobile.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns96C477204FE4Bnicholascainnospamtm@.207.46.2 48.16...
>