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This article is different from the previous ones, as we have changed the methodology we use to evaluate a...
December 22, 2008
29 comments |
AMD's new 45nm Shanghai CPU launches today and we ran tests using database workloads. What changes, and...
November 13, 2008
26 comments |
For those readers finding our in-depth studies of various technologies a bit too daunting, we've created...
October 28, 2008
16 comments |
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blog post by Johan De Gelas
We have emphasized
it more than once: the Nehalem architecture is all about
regaining the performance crown in servers and HPC, desktop and mobile
use were sometimes a bonus, sometimes an afterthought. Today it becomes
almost painfully obvious. Just read Anand's
thoughts about the Core i7:
"The
Core i7's general purpose...
December 16, 2008, 29 comments
blog post by Johan De Gelas
The last post generated some very interesting comments and questions, which I wanted to address. Unfortunately, some people misinterpreted the post as a "the best scores Nehalem and Shanghai can get in Linpack" review.
So let me make this very clear: this and the previous blogpost are not meant to be a "buyer's guide". The Nehalem desktop...
December 1, 2008, 35 comments
blog post by Johan De Gelas
A "beta BIOS update" broke compatibility with ESX, so we had to postpone our virtualization testing on our quad CPU AMD 8384 System.
So we started an in depth comparison of the 45 nm Opterons, Xeons and Core i7 CPUs. One of our benchmarks, the famous LINPACK (you can read all about it here) painted a pretty interesting performance picture.
We had...
November 28, 2008, 61 comments
blog post by Johan De Gelas
More and more of the database vendors are talking about the wonders that SSD can do for transactional (OLTP) databases. So I read Anand's latest SSD article with more than usual interest. If many of the cheaper MLC SSD's write small blocks 20 times slower than a decent harddrive, these SSD's are an absolute nightmare for OLTP...
November 9, 2008, 33 comments
blog post by Johan De Gelas
Want to get rid of Windows (Vista) and run DirectX games on Linux? Found the recent virtualization articles just a bit tad too much "nuts and bolts"? Or do you wonder how well Microsoft's Hyper-V performs compared to VMware's ESX? It is all cooking in our IT lab.
Liz will explain you why virtualization is fun and interesting in layman's...
October 7, 2008, 20 comments
blog post by Johan De Gelas
Updated (22/09/2008): Our Dunnington review will be online tomorrow.
After seeing how much reactions Derek got with his now famous post about "female readership at Anandtech", I thought that this title would definitely draw your attention :-). Anyway, one of suggestions that Derek got was that Anandtech should hire female editors for the...
September 15, 2008, 23 comments
blog post by Johan De Gelas
A new stepping has improved Intel's dual socket Xeon 54xx Line, as the top bin has increased from 3.2 GHz to 3.4 GHz (Xeon 5492). Stepping E also decreases power consumption significantly: a Xeon 5482 3.2 GHz which previously came with a 150W TDP now dissipates 120W. Both the Xeon at 3.2 and 3.4 GHz are targeted at the HPC and workstation, and have a 1.6...
September 9, 2008, 5 comments
blog post by Johan De Gelas
IDF has started and the first benchmarks of Nehalem
are going to start popping up. It is without a doubt an impressive architecture
with a much better platform to run on, but this CPU is not about giving you better
frames per second in your favorite game than the Penryn family. Let me make that
more clear: even when the GPU is not the bottleneck, it is...
August 19, 2008, 43 comments
blog post by Johan De Gelas
Marketing and benchmarking can lead to some pretty smart, but very misleading results. As promised, I shall give you a very good example of it. One promoted by some of the smartest people industry in fact. But first, a bit of background.
If you read our article about the nuts and bolds of virtualization, you might remember that...
August 17, 2008, 5 comments
blog post by Johan De Gelas
Don't mention "performance" in a conversation about virtualization. It is not trendy, it is archaic, it is part of the folkore. At least if you believe the gullible press and Analysts. Some of them seem to be all in a hurry to repeat the claims of the vendors.
We give you a small Anthology of these "inspired" articles and discuss why they...
August 14, 2008, 17 comments
blog post by Johan De Gelas
The first generation of hardware virtualization was nothing to write home about from a performance point of view. In many cases, hardware virtualization was disabled by the OEMS to avoid problems, in other cases hardware virtualization was simply slower than the current forms of software virtualization. It was a step back from the highly optimized...
July 10, 2008, 20 comments
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