Hi, Can one of you CPU experts explain something please? We have upgraded our hardware and thus CPU from a Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor X5460 3.16 GHz to an AMD Opteron 6276, 2.30 GHz. However, the performance of some tasks has decreased - Response times have doubled. When we can only use one core (i.e. single-threaded application), do we then drop in processing power of the core, as the core frequency is lower? I bet it's no as simple as that but some guidance would be a great help. Thanks!
The AMD Opteron 6276 supports Turbo Core. If less than 8 cores are active, the CPU will actually ramp up the clock speed from 2.3 GHz to 3.2 GHz. The faster performance of the Intel Xeon system can be explained if you were using a motherboard with the Intel 5400 chipset. That chipset allows for four memory channels, which greatly increases the amount of bandwidth delivered to the CPU.
Opteron is not necessarily an upgrade unless you need multithreaded performance. X5460 might be old, but it is very closely matched with current top of the line consumer processors, which is very impressive. In single threaded performance, X5460 should have the edge.
Core is still pretty solid even up to these days. unless of course your application is very sensitive to memory performance(latency clock for clock, core is more efficient than opteron in non DB applications. what you have is a core that's 800 mhz faster than the 6276 so I doubt there is anything wrong with your setup. nehalem beats the hell out of opteron in everything else.
