The Xeon E5-2600: Dual Sandy Bridge for Servers
by Johan De Gelas on March 6, 2012 9:27 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Virtualization
- Xeon
- Opteron
- Cloud Computing
The massive 416 mm² large chip contains no less than 2263 million transistors. Each generation of Intel and AMD server CPUs seem to get a bit larger as you can see below.
So how does the new Xeon compare to the older Xeons and the latest Opterons? Let's take a look at the paper specs:
|
Xeon E5-2600 "Sandy Bridge EP" |
Opteron 6200 "Interlagos" |
Opteron 6100 "Magny-cours" |
Xeon 5600 "Westmere" |
|
| Cores (Modules)/Threads | 8/16 | 8/16 | 12/12 | 6/12 |
| L1 Instruction | 8x 32 KB 4-way | 8x 64 KB 2-way | 12x 64 KB 2-way | 6x 32 KB 4-way |
| L1 Data | 8x 32 KB 8-way | 16x 16 KB 4-way | 12x 64 KB 2-way | 6x 32 KB 8-way |
| L2 Cache | 8x 256 KB | 4x 2MB | 12x 0.5MB | 6x 256 KB |
| L3 Cache | 20 MB | 2x 8MB | 2x 6MB | 12MB |
|
Max. Memory Bandwidth (Per socket) |
51.2 GB/s | 51.2 GB/s | 42.6 GB/s | 32 GB/s |
| IMC Clock Speed | = corespeed | 2GHz | 1.8GHz | 2GHz |
| Interconnect | 2x QPI 2.0 (8 GT/s) | 4x HT 3.1 (6.4 GT/s) | 4x HT 3.1 (6.4 GT/s) | 2x QPI (4.8-6.4 GT/s) |
| Transistors (Billion) | 2,26 | 2x 1,2 | 2x 904 | 1,17 |
| Die Size (mm²) | 416 | 2x 315 | 2x 346 | 248 |
The new Xeon comes with a huge die, and with its ring interconnect and improved RAS, it starts to look more like a successor of the Westmere-EX than the Westmere-EP Xeon. In fact the ring of the Xeon E5 is more advanced: it has a PCIe agent, PCU and IMC on the same ring as the 8 cores.
The massive die, the two extra cores, the integration of the PCIe controller and no competition in the high-end have made it easier for Intel to justify a price increase. The Sandy Bridge EP is somewhat more expensive than its predecessor, as you can see in the table below. The first clockspeed mentioned is the regular clock, the second the turbo clock with all cores active (most realistic one) and the last the maximum turbo clock.
| Intel new vs. Intel 2-socket SKU Comparison | |||||||||
|
Xeon 5600 |
Cores/ Threads |
TDP |
Clock (GHz) |
Price |
Xeon E-5 |
Cores/ Threads |
TDP |
Clock (GHz) |
Price |
| High Performance | High Performance | ||||||||
| 2690 | 8/16 | 135W | 2.9/3.3/3.8 | $2057 | |||||
| X5690 | 6/12 | 130W | 3.46/3.6/3.73 | $1663 | 2680 | 8/16 | 130W | 2.7/3.1/3.5 | $1723 |
| 2670 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.6/3/3.3 | $1552 | |||||
| 2665 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.4/2.8/3.1 | $1440 | |||||
| X5675 | 6/12 | 95W | 3.06/3.33/3.46 | $1440 | |||||
| X5660 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.8/3.06/3.2 | $1219 | 2660 | 8/16 | 95W | 2.2/2.6/3.0 | $1329 |
| X5650 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.66/2.93/3.06 | $996 | 2650 | 8/16 | 95W | 2/2.4/2.8 | $1107 |
| Midrange | Midrange | ||||||||
| E5649 | 6/12 | 80W | 2.53/2.66/2.8 | $774 | 2640 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.5/2.5/3 | $885 |
| 2630 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.3/2.3/2.8 | $612 | |||||
| E5645 | 6/12 | 80W | 2.4/2.53/2.66 | $551 | |||||
| 2620 | 6/12 | 95W | 2/2/2.5 | $406 | |||||
| E5620 | 4/8 | 80W | 2.4/2.53/2.66 | $387 | |||||
| High clock / budget | High clock / budget | ||||||||
| X5647 | 4/8 | 130W | 2.93/3.06/3.2 | $774 | 2643 | 4/8 | 130W | 3.3/3.3/3.5 | $885 |
| E5630 | 4/8 | 80W | 2.53/2.66/2.8 | $551 | |||||
| E5607 | 4/4 | 80W | 2.26 | $276 | 2609 | 4/4 | 80W | 2.4 | $294 |
| Power Optimized | Power Optimized | ||||||||
| L5640 | 6/12 | 60W | 2.26/2.4/2.66 | $996 | 2650L | 8/16 | 70W | 1.8/2/2.3 | $1107 |
| 5630 | 4/8 | 40W | 2.13/2.26/2.4 | $551 | 2630L | 8/16 | 60W | 2/2/2.5 | $662 |
The Xeon E5-2690's somewhat out of the ordinary TDP (135W) is easy to explain. With a very small TDP increase (+5W) Intel's engineers noticed they could raise the clock of the best SKU with another 200 MHz from 2.7 GHz (130W) to 2.9 GHz. The E5-2690 was more or less a safeguard in the event that the Interlagos Opteron turned out to be a real "Bulldozer". As the Opteron could not meet these expectations, the high performance of the 135W chip allows Intel to ask more than $2000 for its best Xeon EP. Which is quite a bit more than what the best Xeon EP used to sell for so far ($1500-1600).
Since the new Xeon has two extra cores and integrates the I/O hub (IOH), it is understandable that the TDP values are a bit higher compared to the older Xeon.
How does these new Xeon SKUs compare to the Opteron? See below.
| AMD vs. Intel 2-socket SKU Comparison | |||||||||
|
Xeon E5 |
Cores/ Threads |
TDP |
Clock (GHz) |
Price | Opteron |
Modules/ Integer cores |
TDP |
Clock (GHz) |
Price |
| High Performance | High Performance | ||||||||
| 2665 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.4/2.8/3.1 | $1440 | |||||
| 2650 | 8/16 | 95W | 2/2.4/2.8 | $1107 | 6282 SE | 8/16 | 140W | 2.6/3.0/3.3 | $1019 |
| Midrange | Midrange | ||||||||
| 2640 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.5/2.5/3 | $885 | 6276 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.3/2.6/3.2 | $788 |
| 2630 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.3/2.3/2.8 | $639 | 6274 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.2/2.5/3.1 | $639 |
| 6272 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.0/2.4/3.0 | $523 | |||||
| 2620 | 6/12 | 95W | 2/2/2.5 | $406 | 6238 | 6/12 | 115W | 2.6/2.9/3.2 | $455 |
| 6234 | 6/12 | 115W | 2.4/2.7/3.0 | $377 | |||||
| High clock / budget | High clock / budget | ||||||||
| 2643 | 4/8 | 130W | 3.3/3.3/3.5 | $885 | |||||
| 6220 | 4/8 | 115W | 3.0/3.3/3.6 | $455 | |||||
| 2609 | 4/4 | 80W | 2.4 | $294 | 6212 | 4/8 | 115W | 2.6/2.9/3.2 | $266 |
| Power Optimized | Power Optimized | ||||||||
| 2630L | 8/16 | 60W | 2/2/2.5 | $662 | 6262HE | 8/16 | 85W | 1.6/2.1/2.9 | $523 |
Let's start with the midrange first, as the competition is the fiercest there and these SKUs are among the most popular on the market. Based on the paper specs, AMD's 6276, 6274 and Intel's 2640 and 2630 are in a neck-and-neck race. AMD offers 16 smaller integer clusters, while Intel offers 6 or 8 heavy, slightly higher clocked cores with SMT. And while we did not receive a Xeon E5-2630 for benchmarking purposes, we were able to quickly simulate one by disabling the 2 cores of our Xeon 2660, which gave us a six-core processor at 2.2 GHz with 20 MB L3-cache. This pseudo-2660 should perform very similar to the real Xeon 2630, which is clocked 4.5% higher, but has 5 MB less L3-cache.
Meanwhile in the high performance segment we'll be comparing our six-core 2660 with the Opteron 6276. The CPUs in this comparison aren't going to be in the same price bracket, but as the AMD platform is typically a bit cheaper the 2660 and the Opteron 6276 end up having similar total platform costs. Otherwise for a more straightforward comparison based solely on CPU prices the 2660's closest competitor would be the Opteron 6274. We don't have one of those on hand, but you can get a pretty good idea of how that would compare by knocking 4% off of the performance of the 6276..
Finally, for the "Power Optimized" market there seems to be little contest over who is going to win there. Intel's chip is a bit more expensive, but it offers a much lower TDP, just as many threads, and a higher clockspeed. Considering that the Intel chip also integrates the PCIe controller, it looks like Intel will have no trouble winning this battle by a landslide. Fortunately for AMD, this review is mostly about the more popular midrange market.
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silverblue - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
You've put that Interlagos has 4x2MB L2, but that would only be true for Valencia; Interlagos is 8x2MB.aranyagag - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
you forgot the E5-2687W with a 150w tdp and higher speedscolonelclaw - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Hi There,Thanks for an excellent article. With regards to the rendering benchmarks, would you consider using VRay as a rendering engine? It's fast becoming industry standard, is compatible with all the big hitters (Max, Maya, Softimage etc), is cross platform, and I believe, is incredibly well coded to scale with cores.
It's also incredibly popular, not something you could say about iRay right now.
Slik - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
Would be nice if some game benchmark was included as well.colonelclaw - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Bloody hell those chips look good, and don't Intel know it; those prices make me wince.Having waited what seems like forever, I was thrilled to see the Xeon E5s finally available, right up until I did some quick maths and figured out that for my business to buy a new 2U Twin squared rendernode with 16/32 cores per node will cost us around £10,000. Still the thing is, now that those chips are available, next time we buy kit we can't afford not to choose them.
Skouperd - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
Great article... but can it run crysis?Seriously, what will happen if you plug in some high end graphics card in that machine, how will that compare from a gaming perspeective to say an LGA2011 cpu?
;-)
fudd101 - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
From the 'article' .....'The Opteron might also have a role in the low end, price sensitive HPC market, where it still performs very well. It won't have much of chance in the high end clustered one as Intel has the faster and more power efficient PCIe interface'
Well, if that's the case, why exactly would AMD be scoring so many design wins with Interlagos. Including this one ...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394515,00.as...
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Cray-Ti...
U think those guys at Cray were going for low performance ? In fact, seems like AMD has being rather cleaning up in the HPC market since the arrival of Interlagos. And the markets have picked up on it, AMD stock is thru the roof since the start of the year. Or just see how many Intel processors occupy the the top 10 supercomputers on the planet. Nuff said ...
jaskhoo - Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - link
Hi, abit blur here and would like to know if there's anyone who could enlighten abit.I'm looking to purchase a new server to work with an SQL 2012 4 core, the initial ppreference was for an E5620 which is now an outdated model but I can't go for higher E5-xxx models as all are 6 core and will affect the 4 core SQL licensing. I'm not running a huge databse but would like to know if there are any serious performance difference between the two processor. Appreciate it.
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