over a year later and intel finally releases stoakley . . .

where were you when i was setting up my workstation??

What about gaming performance?

Nice review. I suggest that when on the comments page, there still be a link to the article at the bottom the the summary. As it is you have to back out to the front page to go back to the article.

I am interested in hearing more details about PCI 2.0 on the server (not workstation). PCI 2.0 is exciting for me because it means the bus is no longer the "limiting factor" for using multiple NICs running at 10gbps. (think commodity router).

Intel's Seaberg (5400?) chipset apparently will replace the "Blackford", Intel 5000P (The memory controller hub for a Xeon Dual-socket server).

Quick power cost calculation for servers:

We know that servers must have the performance to meet peak demand, and so they typically idle a lot at non-peak times, and reports put the idle time at 75% to 85% per day. Let's use 80% idle time and that other 20% at full load as a rough approximation for the typical server. From the article, the 2360SE vs the new Xeon shows roughly 45 watts advantage for the Opty at idle and 20 watts disadvantage at load. Also for the SPECjjb2005 the Xeon is about 5% faster, so put the Opty2360SE load time up from 20% to 21% to match (even a number of 25% wouldn't change this calculation much -- greater precision would imply more accuracy than we have here (significant digits, etc)).

The 2360SE 2.5Ghz vs the new Stoakley/e5472 3Ghz (enough of a performance advantage to be somewhat noticible, but not completely out of range for a comparison.)

In 1 year at 20 cents/KwH, you get the 2360SE electrical cost advantage for 1 year at about $50-$60 in typical server operation, or perhaps $200 over a 3.5yr server lifetime, or as much as $300 for a long lived server.

This is more than nothing, but not decisive for all purchasers. Initial cost will often be more important in such a comparison. Of course, in a crowded server room, power use at idle and load can be very important also due to the limits of the building.

As enthusiasts we like to get excited about what are actually modest differences. These chips are not far apart as servers actually.

For specific applications HPC on the other hand, then it's a question of what the application is when choosing.

i think the new Xeons are still being held back by the FB-DIMMs and the way they're buffered, with huge latency compared to desktop RAM...Penryns will be even faster on the desktop

awesome review, thanks scott :)

well, that about seals it for amd (fingers crossed that intel+nvidia don't become the only player in their markets); i'm pretty disappointed, but it's hardly an accident we're seeing here.

AMD woke a sleeping beast with their K8.

Urgh, I want to see desktop benchies!

Comparison of the 2.0 and 2.5Ghz Barcelona chips show a pretty nice scale in performance. In at least a few cases, assuming the same increase when jumping to 3.0Ghz shows Barcelona may keep up or surpass the new Xeons when they finally ramp up the clock speeds. Time will tell though.

By the way, as a coup de grace for AMD, IBM will start shipping AMD K10-based Opteron systems a week after these Xeon E54xxes launch:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/15100...

I wouldn't say Intel was a sleeping beast . . more like a Fat, Lazy beast that now has to exercise to keep what they once had.

It amazes me how much stuff Intel can keep pushing out without anyone complaining . . . like the amount of chipsets and processors they're cooking up . . . but if AMD wants to switch something and make it backwards compatible, they're a dead-end company.

I was hoping to see some 1333 FSB Penryns for a more direct comparison with the Clovertowns. There are only a couple of high-end 1600 FSB Harpertowns on the charts at this point.

Didn't he get sign with Denver?

Meh.