[Bioclusters] opteron vs xeon quad cpu boxes

[Dow Hurst]

 From benchmarks I have seen done with dual Opterons and Xeons, the quad 
Opterons should benefit greatly from the onboard Hypertransport bus, so would 
blow the quad Xeons servers away.  The Xeons are bandwidth limited beyond two 
processors due to bus design so can only compete with dual Opteron boxes.  I'd 
love to see blast benchmarks comparing quad Xeons versus quad Opterons.  Or, 
even the Russian 8way Opteron boards would be cool to see some benchmarks for 
in a clustered situation.  Reducing the cost of the needed interconnects is a 
another benefit of having more CPUs per node, just as long as the onboard CPUs 
can trade info as fast as needed between each other.
Dow


Ognen Duzlevski wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> we are looking at a quad-cpu server for our bioinformatics apps like 
> multithreaded clustalw, blast and some in-house multithreaded 
> application I developed over time.
> 
> I noticed that I can get a basic 8GB RAM 4xOpteron 848 with a RAID 
> controller and a couple of hdds for close to $17,000. At the same time 
> it looks like I can get a 4xXeon MP 2.7Ghz with the same ram/hdd 
> configuration for close to the same price.
> 
> Any insights on the performance of the Opteron quad boxes? How do they 
> compare to their 32-bit counterparts like Xeon MPs? Have they proven 
> suitable for your bioinformatics environment?
> 
> Any advice would be valuable!
> 
> Thanks,
> Ognen
> 
> -- 
> Ognen Duzlevski
> Digital Biology Laboratory
> 302 North Engineering Building
> University of Missouri-Columbia
> (573) 882-5978
> _______________________________________________
> Bioclusters maillist  -  Bioclusters@bioinformatics.org
> https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters
> 

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