Intel or AMD?

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OffTopic1

Golden Member
Feb 12, 2004
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My company is about to purchase a few dual & quad servers, and I?m allow input.

I personally want G4 & G5 computers because of the low power draw (I?m looking at reliability over speed), however we are MS centric therefore we have to go with x86 processors.

What are the pro & con of having Xeon vs Athlon32/64?

Please provide URLs.

Thanks
 
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InlineFive

Diamond Member
Sep 20, 2003
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Fifth vote for Opteron. You should add a poll. HP has some servers in 2 and 8 way configurations out now if you care to look.

-Por
 
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blodhi74

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2003
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I vote Opteron also. I am glad that UR comapny is considering other options and not making a decision based on " intel is computers" option.
 
Cerb

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
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Don't know if you can get them yet, or if they fi in your bduget, but the low power Opterons are getting out there.
Overall, for database, web and file stuff, Opterons rule. Xeons aren' pitiful by any means, but the Operons are currenty priced very well compared to the Xeons, and perform very well.
As for reliability, any server platform wil get you by. Get a SCSI HD and redundant PSU, and you're in the ara of being reliable.
 
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OffTopic1

Golden Member
Feb 12, 2004
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Originally posted by: Cerb
Don't know if you can get them yet, or if they fi in your bduget, but the low power Opterons are getting out there.
Overall, for database, web and file stuff, Opterons rule. Xeons aren' pitiful by any means, but the Operons are currenty priced very well compared to the Xeons, and perform very well.
As for reliability, any server platform wil get you by. Get a SCSI HD and redundant PSU, and you're in the ara of being reliable.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the suggestion on lowpower Opterons....I'll see if holding out for the lowpower would fit our time table.

As for HDDs, all of our servers are running SCSI reversed raid 10 (0+1 instead of 1+0), with each server at at least 8 HDDs or more.
 
Cerb

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
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Now that I've had a couple spare minuts to look, nobody carries the low power ones. I read they were starting ti work their way into retail channls like a week or two ago, so for a sever part, it still could be a month or so.
OTOH, they do pull less power than a comparable Xeon, if not by too much :).

As others have said, the cost effectivenes is definitely there, and while they are so-so for workstation stuff (much of which is P4-optomized), server apps, where little optomization goes on, tend to favor the Opterons in most cases, and while you can find server benches they lose in, the don't fare badly. AMD played their cards right, except for not forcing an AMD-specific trademark name on x86-64, I guess--but that' something for a few years own the road, anyway.
 
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justly

Banned
Jul 25, 2003
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While the Opteron is the obvious choice so far, the platform should be as much (if not more) of a concern as the processor.
I don't know your companies specific needs but in the past Intel platforms have had more support for things like PCI-X, gigabit ethernet and hot plug PCI support.
This may have changed and I hope it has, but if your company needs these features and can't find them on an AMD platform then it doesn't matter what processor performs better.

I really think AMD deserves consideration, the Opteron is an excellent product, but if the platform doesn't meet your needs then there really is no choice.
 
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n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
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Originally posted by: justly
While the Opteron is the obvious choice so far, the platform should be as much (if not more) of a concern as the processor.
I don't know your companies specific needs but in the past Intel platforms have had more support for things like PCI-X, gigabit ethernet and hot plug PCI support.
This may have changed and I hope it has, but if your company needs these features and can't find them on an AMD platform then it doesn't matter what processor performs better.

I really think AMD deserves consideration, the Opteron is an excellent product, but if the platform doesn't meet your needs then there really is no choice.
Click to expand...

I was looking at dual opteron boards last night, and atleast the tyan ones have PCI-X support and either multiple ethernet ports or gigabit.
 
Cerb

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
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Originally posted by: justly
While the Opteron is the obvious choice so far, the platform should be as much (if not more) of a concern as the processor.
I don't know your companies specific needs but in the past Intel platforms have had more support for things like PCI-X, gigabit ethernet and hot plug PCI support.
This may have changed and I hope it has, but if your company needs these features and can't find them on an AMD platform then it doesn't matter what processor performs better.

I really think AMD deserves consideration, the Opteron is an excellent product, but if the platform doesn't meet your needs then there really is no choice.
Click to expand...
PCI-X: check. There's a few Tyan ons with onboard dual 1GB ethernet on one bridge with the SCSI controller, one slot on that bridge (for ZCR) and the rest on another, with normal PCI slot. The only wierdness is it doesn't o PC2700 right (divides the CPU, not HT link, speed, so for the 240 server here the RAM runs at 156MHz), but PC3200 would do fine (divide by CPU multiplier and you get the right speed).
None w/ hot-plug PCI support that I know of, but the need for that isn't oo mainstream, so it may be a year or two before they bother. In fact, being able to get it in reasonably priced Intelbased servers is a relatively new thing, AFAIK.
 
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justly

Banned
Jul 25, 2003
493
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I don't doubt that there is support for these features.

I didn't mean to suggest that support was non-existant, only that Intel platforms may provide more of these features and in greater quantity.

If a certain feature or specific amount of a single feature (such as 4 Hot Plug PCI-X 4 x 64-bit 100MHz) is required then it may be limited to, or easier to find in a Intel platform.

It is also very possible that this is of no concern, I was just trying to point this out because I thought it might be overlooked in favor of benchmark results.
 
Boonesmi

Boonesmi

Lifer
Feb 19, 2001
14,448
1
81
Originally posted by: justly
I don't doubt that there is support for these features.

I didn't mean to suggest that support was non-existant, only that Intel platforms may provide more of these features and in greater quantity.

If a certain feature or specific amount of a single feature (such as 4 Hot Plug PCI-X 4 x 64-bit 100MHz) is required then it may be limited to, or easier to find in a Intel platform.

It is also very possible that this is of no concern, I was just trying to point this out because I thought it might be overlooked in favor of benchmark results.
Click to expand...


any opteron board based on amd's own chipset (8151, 8131, 8111) will have support for most anything you can find on any high end server board. including AGP 8x, AGP pro, 64bit 133/100 pci-x, 64bit 100/66 pci-x, not to mention support for 16gb of ddr ram :)
 
Boonesmi

Boonesmi

Lifer
Feb 19, 2001
14,448
1
81
by the way if your looking for options... Tyan makes 7 or 8 opteron server motherboards, so you shouldnt have any problems finding one that does what you need :)

ie. some have SCSI, some have 3 lan ports (giga-bit), etc, etc
 
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