Re: You can't touch the big cache Xeons and Tualatin for servers will be more expensive than PIII.
You are, at best, being hopeful here. The only direct comparison tests to date confirm that neither PIII Xeon nor P4 Xeon can touch Athlon4 - even when Athlon4 is clocked a heck of a lot lower.
For goodness sakes, Tony, SMP 1.2GHZ Athlon4s were 20% faster than SMP 1.7GHZ Xeons, and nearly twice as fast as SMP 933 PIII's. A larger cache can help that, but it's not going to make up that big a difference, and costs go through the ceiling.
The whole point of a big cache Xeon is maintain IPC in an SMP environment under heavy load. And Athlon4 does that admirably without a large cache, possibly due to its point to point architecture.
Why Athlon4 performs so well under server loads isn't important, what is important is that it does.
anandtech.com
Replacing 50 Xeon servers with 30 Athlon4 systems saves setup time, it saves on administration and maintenance costs, and it saves on software costs. Where 50 Xeon servers, their setup costs, and their software licensing costs would cost $1,000,000, the same capacity delivered by 30 Athlon4's would come in around $500,000 to $600,000.
In these days of tight margins, that can be a decision making difference, even under a "nobody was ever fired for buying Intel/Compaq/IBM influence.
The only segment of the server market that isn't shrinking is the $5K to $10K segment, and that segment almost doubled last year as larger server sales fell.
AMD is targeting the only part of the server market showing any growth, and it's doing so with systems that substantially outperform Intel based systems, while costing less.
There is no way Intel can maintain its ASPs on servers. It's heartwarming that you have such a NiceGuy attitude about Intel servers, but you're being unrealistic.
Dan |
