Originally posted by: Idontcare
Originally posted by: coldpower27
Originally posted by: OneEng
It is also interesting to note that K10's power efficiency bests Intel's Clovertown and even Penryn in most cases. Intel is gaining ground here and if they ever abandon FBDIMM's, things may change quickly. The K10 is still a very cool operator showing that it can hang with an Intel 45nm part even at 65nm.
I will say that it's primarily due to the FB-DIMM's that the Stoakley platform post such high power consumption.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/13224/9
As seen there in terms of power consumed at high load the E5472 system already beats the 2360 SE system, and that is with the handicap of using FB-DIMM modules which consume considerable amounts of power.
The primary reason the AMD parts can hang in there is due to Intel's use of FB-DIMM's and not because the processors are particularly more efficient in terms of energy usage. The difference between the 2350 and the E5472 is only 43W, and there are 8 DIMM's there so even with a conservative figure like 5W per DIMM we are looking at 3 W difference which would be within a margin of error.
K10 is very competitive in terms of power usage due primarily because of the platform and not because of the processors themselves necessarily.
Any thoughts on how much performance would be lost were Intel to abandon FB-DIMM in favor of reducing system wattage?
Surely there is some performance related reason why Intel couples their server platform to FB-DIMM...if not then why would they stick with higher cost, higher power, and lower performance memory parts?
I can only conclude it is a trade-off for real-world performance, which will be lost should they back away from FB-DIMM. I also note they have zero road-map plans to back away from FB-DIMM, so Intel appears to intend to continue to rely on this performance boost for future server (and skulltrail'esque) platforms.
My point being that yes surely you can argue that migrating from FB-DIMM to standard DDR2 or DDR3 parts as AMD has done would drastically decrease Intel's server platform power consumption and
ought to tip the performance/watt balance to their favor...but that argument assumes the performance decrease would not be so punitive as to negate the benefits of decreased power consumption.
Both the numerator and denominator will scale-back, and the ratio is no-doubt something Intel already knows and also no-doubt was a deciding factor in their decision to go with FB-DIMM.
I very much doubt Intel overlooked where their system watts are going in their servers when they set out to hit their performance/watt targets.