X-bit labs

Workstation Processors Duel: AMD Opteron against Intel Xeon (page 13)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 12/21/2005 | 08:44 PM ]

Comparative Specifications Chart: Supermicro X6DA3-G2 vs. Tyan K8WE (S2895)

Testbed and Methods

The major goal of this test session was to find out which CPUs would be the best choice for a high-performance dual-processor workstation with x86 architecture. Of course, the main candidates for this title were selected from the Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron CPU families. Moreover, we picked out 2 testing participants from each CPU family: one single-core and one dual-core processors. All the CPUs and mainboards we used in this test session have already been discussed in detail above.

We equipped our workstations with 4GB of RAM and professional NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 graphics accelerator. So, the four test platforms we assembled in our lab can really qualify for high-performance workstations.

Here is a list of hardware components we used for our systems:

• CPUs:
  • 2 x AMD Opteron 254 (Socket 940, 2.8 GHz, 1024KB L2);
  • 2 x Dual-core AMD Opteron 875 (Socket 940, 2.2 GHz, 2 x 1024KB L2);
  • 2 x Intel Xeon 3.6 GHz (Socket 604, 2MB L2);
  • 2 x Dual-core Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz (Socket 604, 2 x 2MB L2).
• Mainboards:
  • Supermicro X6DA3-G2 (Dual Socket 604, Intel E7525);
  • Tyan K8WE (S2895) (Dula Socket 940, NVIDIA nForce Professional).
• Memory:
  • 4096MB Registered DDR400 SDRAM (Kingston HyperX KRX3200AK2/1G, 8 x 512MB, 2.5-3-3-6, ECC);
  • 4096MB Registered DDR2-400 SDRAM (Hyundai HYMP564R728-E3, 8 x 512MB, 3-3-3-8, ECC).
• Graphics card: NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 (PCI-E x16).
• HDD: Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB (SATA150).
• OS: Microsoft Windows XP SP2.