The Server/Workstation Market: AMD's Position
Question: Over the past 10 years, Intel and AMD have gone back and forth in the server market. Most recently, Intel demonstrated the benefits of its Nehalem microarchitecture with Nehalem-EX in the MP space. Before that, Nehalem-EP and Westmere-EP showcased the architecture's benefits in 1P and 2P configurations. AMD recently told us it was no longer focusing on the workstation space. Has AMD lost the momentum it generated with Opteron back when Intel relied on NetBurst for driving Xeon, or are motherboard vendors still seeing new AMD Opteron offerings as a competitive (profitable) architecture in the server space?
- AMD's new 8-core and 12-core Opteron processors are very robust, and compete well with Xeon. At the platform level, AMD server platforms now have features and performance that rival Intel.
- They have lost their momentum. The Nehalem-based Xeons have taken a huge gain this year, and we don't see AMD regaining the server space anytime soon.
- While it is true that AMD missed out on a large server buy-up recently, they still have a very price-conscious product, and that will do well in this economy.
- There is no reason to suspect this is anything but normal. AMD and Intel have always been at war. Even though we see Intel as rather successful in the [1P and 2P server] market, they have made mistakes (i.e. IA64), and so it is good to have a competitor to help drive prices and technology.
Looking back over the past four years, an increasing number of businesses had to deal with slashed budgets. IT departments were no exception. Server purchases--particularly in the 1P and 2P space--languished, along with a slowdown in general business PC sales. The former were, for the most part, simply budget-constrained. The demand was still there, but purchases were delayed, rather than outright diminished. Earlier this year, this proved to be prophetic, as we saw a heavy uptick in low-end server sales ($25 000 and under) with a revenue increase just shy of 33%*. Mid-range and high-end server sales at the margin (profit per unit) have seen a decline, as we see more scalability- and performance-driven systems enter the market, thanks to new technological growth. We have to imagine that the budget cutbacks help reinforce some of this "migration."
Particularly in Q2, we saw a proverbial micro-flood of sales for volume servers. Intel was in a great position here with its new Xeon 5600-series. In retrospect, rather than being the direct cause of its success, Intel enjoyed good sales due to an inevitable IT server refresh. AMD lost some of its usual server momentum by being late to the game, which seems almost reminiscent of Nvidia's low-end to mid-range Fermi solutions. If AMD's July earnings conference call is any indication of where things need to go, CEO Dirk Meyers is well aware the company is behind Intel and just starting to nip at its competitor's heels.
The blame, according to the company, lies with OEMs, who were slow to bring new designs to the market. Frankly, the blame can't be offloaded completely. It's likely an even split between AMD and its partners. The company knew that Intel was reaffirming its market share by building on the success of Xeon 5500, and it chose to scrap backward compatibility (Socket G3 and G3MX) in order to achieve better-scaled performance through redesigning and reorganizing its Opteron brand, implementing two multi-core dies. The cost of implementing a new socket (G34) no doubt slowed down the speed of introducing the company's new server processor lineup. With the recent economic landscape, OEMs were weary to bring a new solution to market at such a fast pace, particularly since this meant nearly scrapping older AMD server platforms.
| Model | Frequency | L2 | L3 | HT | Multiplier | Voltage | ACP | TDP | Socket |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opteron 6100-series, Eight-core "Magny-Cours" (45 nm) | |||||||||
| Opteron 6128 | 2.0 GHz | 8 x 512KB | 2 x 6 MB | 3.2 GHz | 10x | 1.3 V | 80 W | 115 W | G34 |
| Opteron 6134 | 2.3 GHz | 8 x 512KB | 2 x 6 MB | 3.2 GHz | 11.5x | 1.3 V | 80 W | 115 W | G34 |
| Opteron 6136 | 2.4 GHz | 8 x 512KB | 2 x 6 MB | 3.2 GHz | 12x | 1.3 V | 80 W | 115 W | G34 |
| Opteron 6100-series, Eight-core "Magny-Cours" (45 nm), High Efficiency | |||||||||
| Opteron 6124 HE | 1.8 GHz | 8 x 512KB | 2 x 6 MB | 3.2 GHz | 9x | 1.2 V | 65 W | G34 | |
| Opteron 6128 HE | 2.0 GHz | 8 x 512KB | 2 x 6 MB | 3.2 GHz | 10x | 1.2 V | 65 W | G34 | |
| Opteron 6100-series, Twelve-core "Magny-Cours" (45 nm) | |||||||||
| Opteron 6168 | 1.9 GHz | 12 x 512 KB | 2 x 6 MB | 3.2 GHz | 9.5x | 1.1875 V | 80 W | 115 W | G34 |
| Opteron 6172 | 2.1 GHz | 12 x 512 KB | 2 x 6 MB | 3.2 GHz | 10x | 1.1875 V | 80 W | 115 W | G34 |
| Opteron 6174 | 2.2 GHz | 12 x 512 KB | 2 x 6 MB | 3.2 GHz | 11x | 1.1875 V | 80 W | 115 W | G34 |
| Opteron 6176 SE | 2.3 GHz | 12 x 512 KB | 2 x 6 MB | 3.2 GHz | 11.5x | 1.25 V | 105 W | 137 W | G34 |
| Opteron 6100-series, Twelve-core "Magny-Cours" (45 nm), High Efficiency | |||||||||
| Opteron 6164 HE | 1.7 GHz | 12 x 512 KB | 2 x 6 MB | 3.2 GHz | 8.5x | 1.075 V | 65 W | G34 | |
But how does AMD fare on the cost front? Given that this is usually AMD's strong suite, it does well. We currently see market prices on the 6174 right around $1150, which is decent considering it falls between the X5660 (~$1220) and the X5650 (sub $1000). But the scale of the Opteron 6100-series tops out with the 6176, just one model up from the 6174. Meanwhile, Intel has four processors faster than the X5660 ($1300 and up).
The benchmarks comparing the two competing server solutions make this a bit more interesting. In previous years, Xeons were the power hogs, but clearly beat out Opteron in almost all performance metrics. Today, based on what we have seen, the new Opterons can beat similarly priced Xeon 5600-class processors in some areas, but the power consumption figures are nearly neck and neck. This means that the applications you plan to use dictate the correct hardware platform, be it molecular 3D simulation or Compressible Fluid Dynamics. This shouldn't come as a surprise, as multi-threaded performance can diverge based on the implemented code-paths.
This helps explain why we are getting a 50/50 response from our survey participants, as half of them see AMD as still-profitable in the server market space. No doubt, it remains an uphill battle, but AMD's long-term server position doesn't look as bad as many people make it out to be. Obviously, the late support of HP, IBM, and Dell didn't help the matter, but what's done is done. In our opinion, part of the reoccurring problem is that server model names and product lines don't specifically differentiate between AMD- and Intel-based solutions. AMD needs a way to get its name out there in a more recognizable way. Furthermore, the paramount concern for AMD in the server fight, at the moment, needs to be pricing. Granted, for most of 2011, we don't see AMD hitting any home runs for its server group. But right now, AMD is in endurance game until it can bring the Bulldozer architecture to bear.
As an aside, it's odd that AMD is so readily willing to relinquish its traditionally strong showing in the workstation/high-performance PC space. According to representatives at the company, a lack of modern supporting core logic held back the Opteron's interoperability with high-end graphics solutions. AMD has a PCI Express 2.0-based chipset now, though, so it remains puzzling that there are so few platforms designed for Opteron-based workstations.
*http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22360110
Latest Motherboards News
- 05/25 – Thunderbolt Will Become Key Motherboard Spec in 2H 2012
- 05/22 – Does Your AMD FX Platform BSOD with Steam? Read This.
- 05/04 – 54 Million Enthusiast and Performance PC Gamers Globally
- 05/01 – Intel's Next Unit of Computing Rivals Raspberry Pi in Size
- 04/10 – Intel P67 Express Chipset Begins Product Discontinuance Cycle
Latest Motherboards reviews
- 04/30 – Six $160-220 Z77 Motherboards, Benchmarked And Reviewed
- 04/23 – Video Teaser: Intel's DZ77GA-70K Motherboard
- 04/17 – Overclocking: Asus Rampage IV Extreme Versus EVGA X79 FTW
- 04/08 – Intel’s Z77 Express And Lucidlogix MVP: New Features...
- 02/27 – Six $200-$260 LGA 2011 Motherboards, Reviewed
-
Latest Intel News
- Intel Picks UK for Research Institute on Sustainable Cities
- Specs for Dell's Windows 8 Clover Trail Tablet Leaked
- Thunderbolt Will Become Key Motherboard Spec in 2H 2012
- AMD Backing Out of CPU Speed Wars Against Intel
- Intel Hopes New Batteries Can Reduce Ultrabook Cost
-
Latest Intel reviews
- Overclocking Core i7-3770K: Learning To Live With Compromise
- Core i5-3570K, -3550, -3550S, And -3570T: Ivy Bridge Efficiency
- Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: May 2012
- Intel SSD 330 Review: 60, 120, And 180 GB Models Benchmarked
- Core i7-3720QM: Ivy Bridge Makes Its Mark On Mobility
Excellent read. I love seeing you guys get real world answers from companies willing to participate. It really shows where the industry is heading.
Absolutely agree. This is basically where I've been placing my builds for the last 10 years; at the bottom of the price curve where performance hits the sweet spot for price. I alone typify that logic.
Smartphones/PDA? They've existed for a long time now. The problem is the technology wasn't around to give them the power they needed to do everything a Netbook can do. That is rapidly changing. I hate to say it, but I disagree with Netbooks being a long-term investment. The consumer now is driven by convenience. If my smartphone can be my multimedia outlet, document editor, day planner, browser, camera, accessory portal (ear pieces/headsets, printers, scanners, etc...) and telephone, they why would I want to lug around seperate devices for each of those?
Very short-term. At the way things are going, that will be one to two years worth of earnings at the most. Hardly worth the R&D IMHO.
This is the bottom line for everything, basically. This motto can not falter.
Complexity is definitely the direction the industry has taken. However, I would think if a manufacturer wanted to baseline a board with IGPs, they would do so in terms of finding a way to allow additional discrete GPU and/or CPU installments for those that tinker. I know this has been tried in the past, but I'm not talking about simple onboard graphics processors.
The baseline board would be for the general consumer and could handle day-to-day tasks found in every household. While additional GPU and CPU configurations that would work in conjuction with the onboard processors appeals to the specializing category. We just need a manufacturer to take that step to allow them to co-exist in the same environment and provide that extra benefit of accessorizing.
The Future Of Motherboads And Their Makers
The P55 is a great middle of the road platform, and if one graphics card (even two) is enough to wet your whistle, you could'nt ask for more.
I think brand loyalty comes about by great customer support and innovation, and it doesn't hurt to have a well used and supportive attached forum.
I've hide my eggs with Intel, WD, Corsair, ASUS, and EVGA for many years now, and they are safe.
I agree with everything the first poster said, except for one STRONG disagreement; that he is the only one who typifies that logic. "How low can you go" is a recurring theme in every build I do, especially for myself. If I want more future resistance, I'll go a step or three above that, but the base thinking still tends to be at the bottom in terms of cost (including power usage).
In an economy where it is more important that things last, what I want to see is a focus on durability. Gigabyte advertises this very well, but I find that ASRock has many of the same elements (e.g. all-solid, Japanese caps, ferrite chokes) and costs a lot less.
fix the manfucaturer graph
I am surprised MB makers didn't talk about speeding up the boot process, or UEFI, if it can speed up the boot time. I think really fast boot up is what everybody really wants. Now we can get SSD to speed up the loading for the OS part, but the very first thing when you turn on the computer, you still have to wait couple seconds for the slow BIOS to finish its tests, etc. That's probably the one thing that hasn't improved a lot when comparing to the speed improvement in other components.
Wow extremely confusing heading for this article.
Thought it is some software that does what with motherboards ?
And talking heads music band has got what to do with this ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_Heads
If not for the weird article name the rest is very nice.
Good to see Toms getting serious about hardware and reality from a users point of view.
5*
I don't know if competition in motherboards has decreased that much.. Zotac and EVGA are new. It's not like the CPU market which went from 4 competitors to 2.
Hm might want to look at that ULV comment in reference to Intel. With such small and highly integrated parts you can't just use a processors wattage requirements but instead use the platforms requirements. In this case I believe Via's Nano processor wins.
I am impatiently waiting for UEFI as well. I think it would be amazing to have a 4TB single hard drive. BIOS is ancient, it needs an update. I also don't believe that the competition in the market of GPUs is reflected at all in the Motherboard market, especially on the AMD side. Nforce boards are terrible in both price and features. It seriously affects my decision on which new GPU to purchase.
I can count on this, thanks tom - more to do.
I don't know with people bashing the Atom, due to its poor performance or efficiency. It is a chip with a very small die area.
I still celebrate the death of ABIT - they caused me so much trouble, money, and pain.
Jtt283 - ASROCK is a subset / knock off of ASUS - think of it as the ASUS version of Saturn - quirky and a bit bizarre (hey, I got a 4core dual SATA2 REV 2 running on one of my systems), but reliable and relatively inexpensive.
This article was very refreshing and I'm ooking forwards to the future from IGPonCPU for the future. Saving power, and they might even make decent entry level gaming possible for REAL cheap. Give it a year or two and it'll be just as powerful as what you get on a 360 / PS3 lol
.I've hide my eggs with Intel, WD, Corsair, ASUS, and EVGA for many years now, and they are safe.
That is, till EVGA releases another bad batch of Motherboards/Vid Cards (Thanks to Nvidia's faulters, still an issue in small instances and its debatable on each board which is to blame)
Evga's stance is the same as Microsoft's xbox, offer a product that may fail, and if they do, honor the warranty without any sort of argument.
Out of all my Intel using buddies that had Evga parts (well over 100) 20 of them had to return boards -multiple- times. That's not an acceptable return rate and a reason that I won't use another EVGA board for builds in the future. (Letalone the turd cooler they put on my Geforce 6800 so many years ago.)
Asus had those Crosshair 4 boards that were faulty also, Hell Gigabyte had some boards that had no paste on the northbridge!
Don't just assume becuase it's a brand Y it'll last forever. Buy what's the best for the budget.
One of the things I have discovered is if you are looking for longevity, even if you aren't a overclocking commando (using liquid nitrogen to try and keep your cpu from hitting critical mass at 8 ghz) using a top--end overclocking motherboard is a really good way to insure a long life for your pc.
More robust components, greater voltage control capacity causing greater power stability, and - most importantly - the more extravagant cooling provided for on far more areas of the board usually means that the board is just plain going to last longer than cheaper alternatives.
You get what you pay for. You buy strong components parts, you insure stable power and sufficient cooling and your pc lasts until Windows obsoletes it out of existence.
One more thing the PC manufacturing world needs to deal with: you guys need to come up with MUCH better ways of keeping dust out of the box (ones that don't impede airflow). Even cleaning inside the box regularly is not an optimal solution as things like taking the unit apart to get at the back of the motherboard risks damaging it.
I'm old school I guess. I have no intention of ever overclocking (because I want my system to last) or unlocking CPU cores. I don't even game on my PC beyond poker (I use to play the Halo free demo) - that's what my separate gaming console is for. I use onboard video & it works just fine. So, I don't want to spend money on MoBo parts/features I'll never use like cross-fire/SLI & more - I'll never buy 2 GPU's.
My PC is for my small business & personal use. I'm more concerned with smart Power consumption management (don't want skyrocketing energy bills), upgradeability to next-generation technology and long lifespan while keeping costs down.
Everything seems to be all about gaming - my needs are omitted or ignored by PC PR/Adverts and websites. I'd like to see more products that focus on my needs - not everybody is a PC gamer. What PC website community focuses on my needs?
Good luck on that Jose.
My comment on "dust in the box" is one of those sorts of issues...and about using some "over-clocker's" components to get a long life.
Unfortunately, no one makes money by playing up selling a pc that will last 5 or more years and few people make parts for that market.
Microsoft tends to actively discourage that sort of thinking by pushing hardware manufacturers to change the plug-in / data buss options for parts every couple of years to optimize for Windows updates - these eventually shut down or hinder the operation of older motherboard hardware formats (early AGP, USB 1.0, older CPU slots, isa card slots, etc) usually by messing with either the Windows boot or voltage control.
Figure your pc designed for a version of Windows will last more or less thru one Windows redesign - a Win 95 pc lasted until Win 2000 (sort of) , Win 98 to XP, a Win 2000 system will last to Vista, XP systems are being killed off right now by Win 7, etc.
I'm not sure how that will work with Vista / Win 7 as Windows 7 is actually Vista SP2 and is using less resources but you get the idea.
In addition, buying an off-the-shelf desktop pc or cheap laptop is pretty much a prescription to getting a pc that - due to system manufacturers using cheap parts on their lower-end systems - will crap out on you a few months after the base warranty expires...if you are lucky
I don't game much either, but I do use my systems as home media centers (why by a dvd player when you can just plug in a pc to your tv AND be able to surf the net from your comfy chair or laying in bed) and I do CAD work for both school and my job - so a little bit of extra oomph in the gpu beyond the onboard graphics is needed on at least one pc.
Your safest bet is in doing a LOT of research...this means reading thru hundreds of customer comments on sites like NEWEGG and TOMS about specific components AND by trying to follow the help forums. NEVER buy anything that has less than a hundred comments good and bad.
If all you see is people asking either novice "I can't read the instructions" type of questions (guilty as charged your honor!) or about hot-rodding their pc and few actual faulty part issues, you can bet that part or pc is a decent option that will last you a while.
Jose - I'd guess I'd say if you are looking for a normal-user community, I'd just surf the help forums.
Thanks wayne. I figured as much - I've been thinking it for a long time; waiting for someone else to say it so, I finally said it. I'd like to see a section on this website for cheap, tight, penny pinchers like myself. I suppose they do, sort of, ya just have to know what to look for as it's just not always clear. I just wish it was more obvious; especially with the recession/economy the way it is.
"It is important to remember that Atom's success is due to low pricing, which cannot be understated."
So it's not important at all? Or do you mean cannot be overstated?
The most helpful motherboard innovation would be for Asus to let users replace their "splashtop" boot environment with a user-loadable Linux kernel & initrd.
For example - the ability to do an iSCSI boot this way would be HUGE.
I had enough of Windows 7 (am using 22 Workstations) but why no more frequent talk about ATI/nVidia future support on Linux? Why doesn't Tom focus? I always loathed nVidia's driver model on Linux compared to ATI. It would be great if these guys talk more about Linux now because Multi platform (Apple/Linux/Windows) business users (plus kernel hackers) like me would benefit a lot.