Yep, need to see Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 running few VMs (OpenStack or VMware) and serving thousands of JBoss application users with intensive DB operation. Better yet, running Oracle 12c DB with Oracle JEE over Oracle unbreakable Linux.
I don't think I'd want one. If you notice, a majority of the benchmarks which a normal person might find useful the i7-4790K came in highest and flat out won 12 of those benchmark tests. And of course it costs about 1/10th the price.
you're right about that. I'm a systems admin in a test lab. I'd want it for my VM practice system. A Core i7 3930k isn't quite as nice to run a dozen VMs as I had hoped.
1) That "NPB, Fluid Dynamics" reports millions of operations _per thread_, which is deceptive as regards actual delivered "in your face" work performed per wall-clock time; the existing chart should be supplemented by one giving [ops per thread per sec]*[number of threads] -- i.e., total ops per sec, which is what I really care about.
2) For Linux benchmarks in general: what compiler and compile-flags? ...and is this "one binary for all the machines"? The performance can be greatly influenced by targeting the actual processor architecture ("-xHost" for Intel compilers, "-march=native -mtune=native" for Gnu. For the codes I use and the (SandyBridge or later) servers I use, targeting the architecture I'm running on typically may give as much as a 70% boost, which is nothing to sneer at when my run-times are measured in hours or even days.
Re your 2nd point, that's certainly true for th C-ray test. One can do all sorts of optimisations to show huge performance gains which are not remotely realistic. Wouldn't surprise me if this affects the other tests too.
These xeons are just crazy priced. I would be happy with an i7-5960k clocked at 4.2ghz to match my i7-980x clocked at 4.2ghz. But really even after 4 years the performance increase still does not justify spending close to 2000 on cpu + x99 mobo + 4x8GB ddr4. Since broadwell is just a tick broadwell-e probably wont justify the expense either so maybe after 6 years have passed with gulftown skylake-e will finally make the expense worth it. Even if not the extra features like pci-e connected storage, ddr4 and pci-e 4.0 will finally make it worth it. By then the ridiculous ddr4 ram prices should be in line with how ddr3 is priced now too.
You must not be doing much heavily threaded work then, because for those that are the total system performance delivered with say, a $7K workstation, has gone through the roof compared to westmere.
For example, the X5660 was 6 cores at 2.8GHz and the E5-2650v3 is 10 cores at 2.3GHz, but actually operates at 2.5GHz (something westmere didn’t do with the difference in turbo binning), both for a little over $1000 bucks each. Then, if we add 5% performance per generation, that brings the 2.5GHz to 2.9 “westmere equivalent” GHz. Then the 10 core vs 6 core means the E5-2650v3 is giving you 70% more performance than the X5660 did.
"If it happens in a core as part of the logic or caches, that core can be fused off and the die can sold as a lower core part. This is how yields are improved, by reusing the dies that have errors in removable sections."
Is this REALLY the case? We've heard this claim for years, but the only case I know of where it's actually been verified is when AMD was selling 3-core CPUs harvested from 4-core dies.
The reason I am dubious is that, if this is such a great system for increasing profits, how come the ONLY place it ever seems to be used is in Intel's server models? POWER does not sell dies with random numbers of cores. (Or more precisely they talk about 6, 8, 10 and 12 processor variants but, as far as I can tell, each one of these is a separate die. Certainly they have showed the die shots for the 6 processor version.) ARM does not do this. There are, as far as I know, no ARM phones that save a buck by using three cores harvested from a four core die, even though that would make sense for many markets and many use cases. Even Intel does not do this outside Xeons. It's the same story as ARM --- given Intel's crazy market segmentation, again there'd certainly be a market for 3-core i7's harvested from 4-core i7's and priced appropriately.
Again, why are there no database scalability benchmarks or virtualization benchmarks? Redis is single-threaded, so of course a high-clocked desktop processor will win - it doesn't take advantage of the main strength of these processors - their huge number of cores. Can we please drop the gaming benchmarks on these and get some benchmarks that reflect the use of a 36 core dual socket box.
This is an important idea that Anandtech should implement to differentiate itself and add value: Create an Anandtech designation for processors.
It could be based on performance, and some common metrics, number of cores, , and many features, but it should be consistent between generations.
Today is easy to get lost. I lost track of many, many meaningless names. Haswell, Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge, Vishera, E5-2695 V3 means nothing to me. Too many generations, too many names, conveying too little information. When I see an article title, saying E5-2697 V3, I don’t get a clue about if this is a portable processor, a desktop, bang for the buck, server, a top processor, review worth of my time, of just a random processor being reviewed just for the sake of making content. Ok, the title on THIS article says at least that it is a 14 cores Xeon processor, but that is not the point. The point is that ANY article should be clear about what it does review. It does not matter if the title spoils the conclusion by telling the processor performance right on the title. I want information, not a mystery story. The article will explain why it got the designation it got.
There are many dimensions explaining the performance of each processor. Single threaded performance, multi threaded, energy efficient, portable at notebook level, or at tablet/phone level, locked/unlocked, gaming, office, server, workstation, socket compatibility, GPU integrated, etc. But processor naming make little or no attempt to clarify any of those variables. I would prefer sockets being referred by year of introduction, features, type of memory, etc; not by another meaningless jungle naming. I already lost track of soo many designations, and each year it gets worse, more varied and confusing.
Anandtech already haves some classifications on GPU and processors based on similar performing. It should be converted into an Anandtech rating, for clarity.
Anandtech should create a naming scheme not making a difference between AMD and Intel when it does not matter (like on performance). Of course, it would necessarily have unavoidable flaws, but any system would be better that the official naming, and lack of coherency between generations and manufacturer.
Maybe other sites start adopting Anandtech designation.
Small point for C-ray: the benchmark home page URL is at my sgidepot site, not on the Blinkenlights site, because the latter is just a mirror (and it's down atm, hence why it should not be used as the home URL for any of my pages, ie. I have no control over the Blinkenlights site).
I agree. No database benchmarks and especially no VM benchmarks make this a sad review.
This is especially egregious when you add in useless web browsing tests. No one who is looking at this class of processor is really worried about web browsing on it.
Looks like when Anand left he took half the intellect away from the team ... This is a piss poor review ... Where are my separate idle/load power usage data? Why are you guys benching games? Ffs this site has gone done the tubes with slow reviews and on top of that useless reviews. Anand must be so proud of you kids.
Sever class CPU but many many gaming and video benchmarks!!!! Seriously ?!! No enterprise class tests! Like DB tests / VM tests / Java EE tests / web tests with thousands of hits per second.
I have to agree... as a server cpu review those benchmarks are kind of useless. Anybody here who would buy $4000 cpu to play games (...most of which epically suck at utilizing 4 cores properly)? For gaming that cpu has to suck anyway since it's not it's purpose. It's seriously missing server usage tests... web hosting, heavy db and vm, ldap, sap, encryption etc. etc. - it was said here many times over.
Thank you very much for posting this 14-core review. Could you please confirm that the 2697 v3 even under full (100%), continuous load (e.g. over >6 h) has a steady-state frequency of 3.1 GHz and does not clock down to 2.6 GHz as suggested by the base frequency of the processor?
If possible, I would love to see a 2-D version of the two frequency response profiles which you published on the last site of this 14-core review. 3D is much harder to read out data.
Another comment re gaming benchmarks and Xeon v3: These just hurt my heart. The 2P and 4P Xeon server market is already only relevant for a very specific market of people. If anyone buys a Xeon v3 server and plans to game on this CPU, I don't think any review can save such a high-end Xeon-gaming enthusiast. (-:
Why isn't anyone from the staff responding to the glaring omissions and repeated complaints? What's the point of having a comments section if the staff couldn't care less what the readers are actually looking for in a server review? This article reads like something you'd do during garbage time on a Friday afternoon for a weekend release, not as a core review of expensive hardware on a strict schedule.
This is awesome :-D I'll never get to touch one of these, even at work, but it's still ridiculous fun to read about them, much less see game benchmarks on them.
(Imagine a game actually designed for 18 Haswell cores LOL)
I'd loooove to run Folding @ Home across that many cores!
It's interesting, I am actually system builder, so this information is very useful for me. Why you didn't benchmark it with VMWare? I've been using S2600CP for entire my client for year, and I just curious with the performance this processor in real Server usage. Thank you.
Regarding the "snoop mode". I got two dual socket, Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2697 v3 boxes and found them performing 15% slower on a finite element code than the previous generation dual socket Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2697 v2 boxes we had. After much investigation I found the snoop mode was set to early snoop, changing to "cluster on die" sped up the FEA simulation immensely, with that one change the box then outperforming the V2 counterpart by 25%. This was great, however I'm still encountering one problem. I have a monte carlo particle transport code (not a matrix dominant code) whose performance was unaffected by this change, and is still 50% slower than the v2 counterpart. All that said, any intuition on why might be and either troubleshooting thoughts, architecture differences that could cause this, or any other BIOS settings to try?
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alacard - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
"Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013"Who gives a shit?
alacard - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
They're going to kill that poor woman!ayprof - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
This affects all of us!osx86h3avy - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Mark it zero dude.ERJ - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
I want to know what happened to the server benchmarks? Where is the VMware / SAP stuff?romrunning - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
I agree - I'm not sure why VM testing was left out. That is one of the highest usage scenarios for this type of processor.alacard - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Maybe Ian was too busy playing "Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013" to bother.linuxnizer - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
Yep, need to see Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 running few VMs (OpenStack or VMware) and serving thousands of JBoss application users with intensive DB operation. Better yet, running Oracle 12c DB with Oracle JEE over Oracle unbreakable Linux.Ian Cutress - Sunday, November 30, 2014 - link
That's more Johan's area. Johan has access to a lot more server based hardware/software than I.dgingeri - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Maybe you could convince Intel to let you give away one of these samples to readers. :)bill.rookard - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
I don't think I'd want one. If you notice, a majority of the benchmarks which a normal person might find useful the i7-4790K came in highest and flat out won 12 of those benchmark tests. And of course it costs about 1/10th the price.MrSpadge - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Since he's reading AT I don't think he's a normal "person" ;)dgingeri - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
you're right about that. I'm a systems admin in a test lab. I'd want it for my VM practice system. A Core i7 3930k isn't quite as nice to run a dozen VMs as I had hoped.cjcoats - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
About those Linux benchmarks:1) That "NPB, Fluid Dynamics" reports millions of operations _per thread_, which is deceptive as regards actual delivered "in your face" work performed per wall-clock time; the existing chart should be supplemented by one giving [ops per thread per sec]*[number of threads] -- i.e., total ops per sec, which is what I really care about.
2) For Linux benchmarks in general: what compiler and compile-flags? ...and is this "one binary for all the machines"? The performance can be greatly influenced by targeting the actual processor architecture ("-xHost" for Intel compilers, "-march=native -mtune=native" for Gnu. For the codes I use and the (SandyBridge or later) servers I use, targeting the architecture I'm running on typically may give as much as a 70% boost, which is nothing to sneer at when my run-times are measured in hours or even days.
mapesdhs - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Re your 2nd point, that's certainly true for th C-ray test. One can do all sorts of optimisationsto show huge performance gains which are not remotely realistic. Wouldn't surprise me if this
affects the other tests too.
Ian.
FriendlyUser - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Will it play Assassin's Creed: Unity?anubis44 - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
You forgot to say: "BUT can it run (insert terribly optimized pig-of-a-game here) ?"Cravenmor - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Enjoying my coffee...Laststop311 - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
These xeons are just crazy priced. I would be happy with an i7-5960k clocked at 4.2ghz to match my i7-980x clocked at 4.2ghz. But really even after 4 years the performance increase still does not justify spending close to 2000 on cpu + x99 mobo + 4x8GB ddr4. Since broadwell is just a tick broadwell-e probably wont justify the expense either so maybe after 6 years have passed with gulftown skylake-e will finally make the expense worth it. Even if not the extra features like pci-e connected storage, ddr4 and pci-e 4.0 will finally make it worth it. By then the ridiculous ddr4 ram prices should be in line with how ddr3 is priced now too.wallysb01 - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
You must not be doing much heavily threaded work then, because for those that are the total system performance delivered with say, a $7K workstation, has gone through the roof compared to westmere.For example, the X5660 was 6 cores at 2.8GHz and the E5-2650v3 is 10 cores at 2.3GHz, but actually operates at 2.5GHz (something westmere didn’t do with the difference in turbo binning), both for a little over $1000 bucks each. Then, if we add 5% performance per generation, that brings the 2.5GHz to 2.9 “westmere equivalent” GHz. Then the 10 core vs 6 core means the E5-2650v3 is giving you 70% more performance than the X5660 did.
martinpw - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Of interest - Intel did a custom version of the 2698 called the 2698A for Lenovo which pushes the base clock from 2.3 to 2.8GHz. It is water cooled.aka_Warlock - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
14 core gaming benchmarks!???!! Wtf?? Who the f*** cares?? Where are the virtualization benches??? Ffs... This is just too god damn poor.wallysb01 - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
And I’m pretty sure this has been a main complaint through out this whole E5-2600v3 review, but no action to fix it.SanX - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
You take 4790k overclicked to 5GHz and it will win most of single chip benchmarks lolname99 - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
"If it happens in a core as part of the logic or caches, that core can be fused off and the die can sold as a lower core part. This is how yields are improved, by reusing the dies that have errors in removable sections."Is this REALLY the case? We've heard this claim for years, but the only case I know of where it's actually been verified is when AMD was selling 3-core CPUs harvested from 4-core dies.
The reason I am dubious is that, if this is such a great system for increasing profits, how come the ONLY place it ever seems to be used is in Intel's server models?
POWER does not sell dies with random numbers of cores. (Or more precisely they talk about 6, 8, 10 and 12 processor variants but, as far as I can tell, each one of these is a separate die. Certainly they have showed the die shots for the 6 processor version.)
ARM does not do this. There are, as far as I know, no ARM phones that save a buck by using three cores harvested from a four core die, even though that would make sense for many markets and many use cases.
Even Intel does not do this outside Xeons. It's the same story as ARM --- given Intel's crazy market segmentation, again there'd certainly be a market for 3-core i7's harvested from 4-core i7's and priced appropriately.
looncraz - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
From my understanding, some higher models with defects are binned to lower models even if specific dies exist for those lower models.For instance, it could be the case that some i3s are binned i5s, but it would probably be only a few percent of the total number of chips.
chekk - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Power consumption delta is still undesirable. Please Ian, Ryan et al, go back to separate idle and load measurements.kordian - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Again, why are there no database scalability benchmarks or virtualization benchmarks? Redis is single-threaded, so of course a high-clocked desktop processor will win - it doesn't take advantage of the main strength of these processors - their huge number of cores. Can we please drop the gaming benchmarks on these and get some benchmarks that reflect the use of a 36 core dual socket box.antialienado - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
This is an important idea that Anandtech should implement to differentiate itself and add value: Create an Anandtech designation for processors.It could be based on performance, and some common metrics, number of cores, , and many features, but it should be consistent between generations.
Today is easy to get lost. I lost track of many, many meaningless names. Haswell, Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge, Vishera, E5-2695 V3 means nothing to me. Too many generations, too many names, conveying too little information.
When I see an article title, saying E5-2697 V3, I don’t get a clue about if this is a portable processor, a desktop, bang for the buck, server, a top processor, review worth of my time, of just a random processor being reviewed just for the sake of making content.
Ok, the title on THIS article says at least that it is a 14 cores Xeon processor, but that is not the point. The point is that ANY article should be clear about what it does review. It does not matter if the title spoils the conclusion by telling the processor performance right on the title. I want information, not a mystery story. The article will explain why it got the designation it got.
There are many dimensions explaining the performance of each processor. Single threaded performance, multi threaded, energy efficient, portable at notebook level, or at tablet/phone level, locked/unlocked, gaming, office, server, workstation, socket compatibility, GPU integrated, etc.
But processor naming make little or no attempt to clarify any of those variables.
I would prefer sockets being referred by year of introduction, features, type of memory, etc; not by another meaningless jungle naming. I already lost track of soo many designations, and each year it gets worse, more varied and confusing.
Anandtech already haves some classifications on GPU and processors based on similar performing. It should be converted into an Anandtech rating, for clarity.
Anandtech should create a naming scheme not making a difference between AMD and Intel when it does not matter (like on performance).
Of course, it would necessarily have unavoidable flaws, but any system would be better that the official naming, and lack of coherency between generations and manufacturer.
Maybe other sites start adopting Anandtech designation.
dave1231 - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
$0.10 per kwh? Try $0.28 per kWh in the UK then nearly triple the running costs. This is why we are so much better at not global warming.mapesdhs - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Small point for C-ray: the benchmark home page URL is at my sgidepot site, not
on the Blinkenlights site, because the latter is just a mirror (and it's down atm,
hence why it should not be used as the home URL for any of my pages, ie. I have
no control over the Blinkenlights site).
Ian.
cynic783 - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
What is going on at Anand. Why are they doing desktop tests on a server?What happened to the server benchmarks, e.g. SQL, VM, etc.
WGAF about browser and gaming benchmarks on a datacenter server? Seriously.
romrunning - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
I agree. No database benchmarks and especially no VM benchmarks make this a sad review.This is especially egregious when you add in useless web browsing tests. No one who is looking at this class of processor is really worried about web browsing on it.
deontologist - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Looks like when Anand left he took half the intellect away from the team ... This is a piss poor review ... Where are my separate idle/load power usage data? Why are you guys benching games? Ffs this site has gone done the tubes with slow reviews and on top of that useless reviews. Anand must be so proud of you kids.androticus - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
Don't you people have editors? I understand not all authors are native English speakers, but sheesh at least get someone to edit before publication.linuxnizer - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
Sever class CPU but many many gaming and video benchmarks!!!! Seriously ?!!No enterprise class tests!
Like DB tests / VM tests / Java EE tests / web tests with thousands of hits per second.
HollyDOL - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
I have to agree... as a server cpu review those benchmarks are kind of useless.Anybody here who would buy $4000 cpu to play games (...most of which epically suck at utilizing 4 cores properly)? For gaming that cpu has to suck anyway since it's not it's purpose.
It's seriously missing server usage tests... web hosting, heavy db and vm, ldap, sap, encryption etc. etc. - it was said here many times over.
Jurgen_modeling - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link
Dear Ian,Thank you very much for posting this 14-core review. Could you please confirm that the 2697 v3 even under full (100%), continuous load (e.g. over >6 h) has a steady-state frequency of 3.1 GHz and does not clock down to 2.6 GHz as suggested by the base frequency of the processor?
I noticed that in your 12-core review, the same thing happened with base frequencies being below the steady-state frequencies.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8679/intel-haswellep...
The same thing seems to have happened here for the 10-core CPUs.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8584/intel-xeon-e5-2...
Even the 18-core model seems to have a base clock frequency of around 2.6 GHz and not 2.3 as suggested by the processor label.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8730/intel-haswellep...
If possible, I would love to see a 2-D version of the two frequency response profiles which you published on the last site of this 14-core review. 3D is much harder to read out data.
Thank you & Kind regards
Juergen
Jurgen_modeling - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link
Another comment re gaming benchmarks and Xeon v3: These just hurt my heart. The 2P and 4P Xeon server market is already only relevant for a very specific market of people. If anyone buys a Xeon v3 server and plans to game on this CPU, I don't think any review can save such a high-end Xeon-gaming enthusiast. (-:Cheers, Juergen
daxomni - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link
Why isn't anyone from the staff responding to the glaring omissions and repeated complaints? What's the point of having a comments section if the staff couldn't care less what the readers are actually looking for in a server review? This article reads like something you'd do during garbage time on a Friday afternoon for a weekend release, not as a core review of expensive hardware on a strict schedule.Wolfpup - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
This is awesome :-D I'll never get to touch one of these, even at work, but it's still ridiculous fun to read about them, much less see game benchmarks on them.(Imagine a game actually designed for 18 Haswell cores LOL)
I'd loooove to run Folding @ Home across that many cores!
daresystem - Monday, December 15, 2014 - link
It's interesting, I am actually system builder, so this information is very useful for me. Why you didn't benchmark it with VMWare? I've been using S2600CP for entire my client for year, and I just curious with the performance this processor in real Server usage.Thank you.
jackdgalloway - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
Regarding the "snoop mode". I got two dual socket, Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2697 v3 boxes and found them performing 15% slower on a finite element code than the previous generation dual socket Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2697 v2 boxes we had. After much investigation I found the snoop mode was set to early snoop, changing to "cluster on die" sped up the FEA simulation immensely, with that one change the box then outperforming the V2 counterpart by 25%. This was great, however I'm still encountering one problem. I have a monte carlo particle transport code (not a matrix dominant code) whose performance was unaffected by this change, and is still 50% slower than the v2 counterpart. All that said, any intuition on why might be and either troubleshooting thoughts, architecture differences that could cause this, or any other BIOS settings to try?lucien_br - Sunday, March 5, 2017 - link
Xeon V3 with actual game BF1:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Faae3_Tdtfw