SQL Server Performance Forum – Threads Archive
Itanium vs Xeon
Has anyone done a test between Itanium 2, and Xeon 64x MP, to see which is faster for running SQL Server? Which of the following servers will run SQL faster? 4 Itanium 2 processors with 9Mb L2 and 1.6GHz clock Or 4 Xeon 64x MP dual core processors with 8Mb L3 and 3.33GHz clockthere is not a published TPC-C benchmark for a 4xXeon 3.3GHz/ 8M, but there are for the 4×3.6GHz/1M Xeon and the 4×1.6GHz Itanium 2 4xXeon 3.6/1M 141,504
4xIt2 1.6/9M 121,065 this is not surprising because the Itanium 2 is based on the 130nm process while the Xeon is on the 90nm, so one would expect a 40% gain on the manufacturing process.
the Xeon 3.0GHz on 130nm process was 102,667. basically, the new Itanium 2’s on 90nm is late, and having problems clocking higher due to thermal envelope, the It2 should probably clock almost as high as the Opteron on the same process, but cannot because it was not designed with power efficiency in mind, and only so much can be retrofitted in.
Thanks. It was important to me cause we planned to change our SQL Server Hardware and HP head recommend to us Itanium processors but I heaved filing that Xeon should be faster.
Itanium 2 systems with 8 or more processoers is a decent solution for SQL Server 2000 apps, due in part to the fact that 32-bit SQL needs to use AWE memory. With SQL 2005, with X64 support, both the new Xeon and Opteron systems look very competitive to 16P for Xeon and 4 socket, 8 core for Opteron
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