i'll take 2 ,please, and i want them for free, along with a 2 socket board, and 192GB RAM not sure what i would use it for, but hey, penis extension!!!!!!!!
Clock Speed > Number of Cores I'd rather get an i7, save a ton of money, and likely get better performance.
That's true enough for your uses, but when these are used in Rack mount units in data centres or the like, it would blitz anything available on the consumer market. Companies like Google & Dell etc probably wouldn't think twice when it comes to hardware like these. Sam
That's 10 Processors vs 1, so that 1 only needs 1 power supply, only needs 1 motherboard, where as the 10 CPU's need 10 PSU's, 10 Motherboards etc etc. Also the Architecture is different, so Xeons work differently to Sandybridge, X58 and the rest. If you ask Dell or Google what setups they run, and i would put money on them replying with Xeon based setups, than consumer products. Sam
You realize AMD's been shipping 12 core CPUs for a while and BD will bring 16 core and possibly 24 core at launch, right? But yes, server density is why we have CPUs like this. Because it's easier to run one (in my own personal setup) dohexacore machine than a few quad core machines. Also, in situations like this, HT=/=more cores. It can spawn more threads, yes, but they are not as efficient as real cores and the numbers start to work against them above 4 cores/4 threads unless specifically optimized for HT, which most loads are not. I think it's overpriced and positioned wrong, but a 10-core Xeon isn't a bad idea. However, I can build a few 24-core machines for the price of one. That's not win for Intel.
If you were using a DAW or rendering software that scaled linearly with core count, you'd not be saying that.
Sure AMD has. And most benchmarks and real world tests put a Xenon 6 core on about the same playing field as an AMD 12 core. First off, the Intel 6 core processors run much higher clocks than the Magny Cours 12 core and next off, the intel architecture is just vastly superior. Bulldozer might pull out a win, but I am hesitant to believe it. The new Xeons just look like they are going to be lower powered, faster and more efficient than the Bulldozers. 16 cores doesn't buy you a win, if every 1 of your cores is only equivelent to .75 of your competitors...and your competitors are bringing 10 of them to bat, oh with hyperthreading (which at first blush and of so little benchmarks on any not released Bulldozers looks like under a lot of scenarios to be as fast or faster than Bulldozers 2 integer and 1 FPU per core).
In a server environment that matters less than a workstation/consumer environment. If the price for the component is only 10% of the total server (ECC memory is expensive) and the difference between chip prices is say 50%...well you only increase the overall machine cost 5%. If that 5% increase in cost bought lower power use, you are saving money, if it bought better GFLOPs or better virtulization, well maybe you had to buy fewer machines, saving you a lot of money. The difference between an $800 CPU and a $2000 CPU seems like a lot to us, but if it is going in a machine costing $5,000-10,000 total, it isn't all that much, especially if there are other savings. If the Magny Cours parts were so much better because of their low price I think you'd see a lot of the IT industry using them instead of Xeons. Since Intel still has the majority share in the server space, by a lot, that tells me the Xeons got a lot going for them.