New stuff
Cliff Notes:
If I were building (or, implausibly perhaps, buying) my ultimate workstation right now, I'd want a pair of Opteron 250s beating at the heart of it. The benchmarks speak volumes. For single-processor systems, the Opteron 150 looks like the fastest x86 CPU on the planet. In a multiprocessor configuration, the Opteron 250 scales up very well, even without the benefit of an optimal memory configuration, a NUMA-aware OS, or 64-bit extensions.
By contrast, Intel's dual Xeons are a little bit disappointing. They perform relatively well in CPU-bound apps like 3D rendering programs, which are also largely well optimized for SSE2. But in memory-bound applications where dual Xeons ought to do well, like video encoding, the Xeons' slow bus and RAM hold them back. One has to wonder what Intel is hoping to accomplish by saddling its workstation-class processors with older, slower technology. Even a single Pentium 4 benefits greatly from additional bus and memory bandwidth. Surely a pair of Xeons on shared bus ought to have this same advantage. Intel's apparent willingness to forego such enhancements in favor of adding ever-larger on-chip caches to the Xeon is puzzling.
Cliff Notes:
If I were building (or, implausibly perhaps, buying) my ultimate workstation right now, I'd want a pair of Opteron 250s beating at the heart of it. The benchmarks speak volumes. For single-processor systems, the Opteron 150 looks like the fastest x86 CPU on the planet. In a multiprocessor configuration, the Opteron 250 scales up very well, even without the benefit of an optimal memory configuration, a NUMA-aware OS, or 64-bit extensions.
By contrast, Intel's dual Xeons are a little bit disappointing. They perform relatively well in CPU-bound apps like 3D rendering programs, which are also largely well optimized for SSE2. But in memory-bound applications where dual Xeons ought to do well, like video encoding, the Xeons' slow bus and RAM hold them back. One has to wonder what Intel is hoping to accomplish by saddling its workstation-class processors with older, slower technology. Even a single Pentium 4 benefits greatly from additional bus and memory bandwidth. Surely a pair of Xeons on shared bus ought to have this same advantage. Intel's apparent willingness to forego such enhancements in favor of adding ever-larger on-chip caches to the Xeon is puzzling.
