Re: AMD Shanghai versus Intel Nehalem

On 5/12/09 10:06 PM, "Scott Marlowe" <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> Just realized I made a mistake, I was under the impression that
> Shanghai CPUs had 8xxx numbers while barcelona had 23xx numbers. I
> was wrong, it appears the 8xxx numbers are for 4+ socket servers while
> the 23xx numbers are for 2 or fewer sockets. So, there are several
> quite affordable shanghai cpus out there, and many of the ones I
> quoted as barcelonas are in fact shanghais with the larger 6M L2
> cache.
>

At this point, I wouldn¹t go below 5520 on the Nehalem side (turbo + HT is
just too big a jump, as is the 1066Mhz versus 800Mhz memory jump). Its $100
extra per CPU on a $10K + machine.
The next 'step' is the 5550, since it can run 1333Mhz memory and has 2x the
turbo -- but you would have to be more CPU bound for that. I wouldn't worry
about the 5530 or 5540, they will only scale a little up from the 5520.

For Opterons, I wouldn't touch anything but a Shanghai these days since its
just not much more and we know the cache differences are very important for
DB loads.