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To: Elmer who wrote (72700)	2/27/2002 9:55:55 PM
From: milo_morai	Respond to of 275872

Elmer I Posted that on Tuesday on Intel Thread. #reply-17118903 Here's how they tested Hyperthreading Xeon DP: How we tested In an effort to test the real-world scalability of Intel's new hyperthreading Xeon CPUs, we built a custom server solution around a Supermicro P4DC6 motherboard. We chose Supermicro because it was strongly recommended by Intel and also because it was one of the only vendors with a shipping solution that supported hyperthreading. To the Supermicro board and case we added a 15,000RPM, Ultra160 SCSI hard disk, an Intel Pro 1000XT Gigabit Ethernet Server NIC, and 512MB of PC800 Rambus DRAM. The operating system was Windows 2000 Advanced Server with Service Pack 2 and featured SQL Server 2000 (also Service Pack 2 level). The test clients consisted of a mix of Pentium III and Pentium 4 PCs running Windows 2000 and equipped with Intel Pro 1000 Gigabit Desktop NICs. The entire solution was connected via an Intel NetStructure 480T Gigabit Ethernet-over-copper switch. Our first test scenario consisted of five physical clients conducting OLE DB-based SQL transactions against both hyperthreading-enabled and hyperthreading-disabled server configurations. To simulate multiple, concurrent SQL clients we employed the ADO Stress module from Benchmark Studio Professional Edition 2.0 (www.csaresearch.com), scaling the number of instances per client from 2 to 10 for a total of 50 concurrent, active client/server connections. For our second test scenario we used Benchmark Studio's ASP Stress module to simulate an ASP (Active Server Pages) Web client interacting with a three-tier, database-driven Web site. Once again, we scaled the number of concurrent instances per client from 5 to 20 for a total of 100 active ASP sessions conducting OLE DB transactions against SQL Server.

To: Elmer who wrote (72700)	2/27/2002 10:04:31 PM
From: ptanner	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 275872

Elmer, re: Infoworld Prestonia HT I posted this here yesterday #reply-17118702 (and an hour before Milo posted to the Intel thread <g>) but thanks for the link. I think we need a nice abbreviatation for Hyperthreading to disinguish it from Hypertransport. Perhaps HTh? -PT

To: Elmer who wrote (72700)	2/28/2002 2:23:33 AM
From: peter_luc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Elmer, "More benchmarks for HyperThreading" Check out these benchmarks, too: gamepc.com They are from GamePC. They don't test typical server, but rather workstation applications. In this area, HyperThreading does not bring such a dramatic speed increase as in those server benchmarks which you have quoted. So maybe it was a wise decision by Intel to restrict HT to the server side until next year? This is the conclusion by GamePC: "The Final Word Both the Prestonia Xeon and Athlon MP are incredible processors, and both engineering teams deserve a round of kudos for producing some incredibly fast SMP-capable CPU's. Each CPU has a specific area where you'll see one dominate over the other, although the majority of the tests were fairly close between the two CPU's. In my opinion, the Prestonia Xeon is the better CPU of the two for mission critical / server applications. The Intel 860 platform seems to be incredibly stable, considering it’s relatively short time on the market. Not one instance comes to mind where we ran into compatibility issues with our Dual Xeon systems, something we can’t say for the Athlon MP systems we setup. Unfortunately, you pay the price for the Intel name, as Xeon systems are extremely expensive. The CPU’s and motherboards are both extremely expensive, which makes the Xeon hard to recommend for the workstation market. The workstation market is much better suited by the Athlon MP processor, as its price / performance ratio is unbeatable. For most workstation applications, the Athlon MP even will be a better performer, despite its lower price tag. We would love to see AMD put a few more server-specific features on their MP processors to justify their heightened price tags over the Athlon XP, but even as they are now, the MP’s are a great deal for the amount of processing power you get in that tiny little core. As for the Xeon’s Hyperthreading technologies, it’s hard not to be disappointed with the scores which we got throughout our testing. Hyperthreading sounds like an incredibly useful processor feature in theory, but in practice, it’s useless without compatible software on the market. Time will only tell if developers want to take on the Hyperthreading challenge, and the few developers we’ve talked to have not been that incredibly impressed with the technology thus far. If nothing else, Hyperthreading will certainly be an interesting to watch out for over the next few years. This time next year, it's quite possible that we may be dealing with McKinley and Clawhammer as the workstation processors of choice, if Intel and AMD have their way. While it's anyone's guess if 64-bit processing is ready to come down to the consumer level, this article certainly proves that current 32-bit processors have more than enough power to handle today's applications." Peter

To: Elmer who wrote (72700)	2/28/2002 11:12:04 AM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Dear Elmer: I see that the higher you load it, the slower it gets. It looks like if you load it with 200 clients, the P4 actually will be slower with HT than without it and of course it does not compare it against the competition or provide absolute numbers so that it could be verified. It just goes to show that P4 (and its descendents) is a terrible server CPU unlike Athlon that loses far less or gains somewhat when pushed with high loads. THis is why when the going gets tough and complicated, Athlons blast ahead of P4s in the comparisons. Probably showing the tendencies toward streaming apps rather than multiuser multitasking type apps. It shows up the small caches and low way sets of P4 vs Athlon designs. Pete