Intel Xeon 5600-Series: Can Your PC Use 24 Processors?
The professional space is peppered with products derived from the desktop. Today we're looking at Intel's Xeon X5680 CPUs, which look a lot like Core i7-980X, only they're optimized for dual-socket platforms. We're also introducing new Adobe CS5 tests.
Benchmark Results: SPECviewperf 11 And SPECapc LightWave 9.6
The recently-released SPECviewperf 11 is meant primarily to measure OpenGL graphics performance. It includes new viewsets from up-to-date versions of LightWave, CATIA, EnSight, Maya, Pro/ENGINEER, SolidWorks, Siemens Teamcenter Visualization Mockup, and Siemens NX.
SPECviewperf 11 | 2 x Xeon X5680 | 2 x Xeon W5580 | 1 x Core i7-980X |
---|---|---|---|
catia-03 | 21.32 | 22.3 | 22.5 |
ensight-04 | 11.4 | 11.86 | 12.03 |
lightwave-01 | 40.06 | 40.87 | 41.88 |
maya-03 | 8.94 | 14.55 | 16.02 |
proe-05 | 7.74 | 8.09 | 9.21 |
sw-02 | 32.58 | 32.64 | 33.14 |
tcvis-02 | 16.24 | 16.66 | 16.41 |
snx-01 | 13.92 | 16.55 | 16.6 |
We were hoping to see performance in these tests at least impacted by the platform hosting our Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 graphics card. No such luck, it seems. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Consistently, the highest scores come from the single-CPU Core i7-980X—though it should be noted that the differences here are fairly small.
There are actually three results garnered from the LightWave 9.6 test. However, they’re most easily generated using the Discovery mode. Once you register for a trial version of the software, you get a popup before Layout launches that ends up preventing the Interactive test from completing. The solution seems to be running this SPECapc and our custom workload using a full, registered copy. We’re working with NewTek to make that happen.
Even still, we get some interesting results from the Render and multi-task tests (yes, the LightWave benchmark was developed specifically to take advantage of threaded platforms). The render test, specifically, sees a massive speed-up moving from a single socket to a dual-socket Xeon W5580 and then to a dual Xeon X5680 configuration. Though not as pronounced, the MT test also clearly favors a pair of Xeon X5680s over the W5580s, which in turn best a single Core i7-980X.
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enzo matrix one-shotOr 24 Logical CPUs, not really Processors.Misleading title. I was excited because I assumed intel had finally come out with 12-core server CPUs.Reply -
Tamz_msc I was expecting an even better performance from these CPUs.The performance is still limited by the software you use.Reply -
shin0bi272 Enzo MatrixMisleading title. I was excited because I assumed intel had finally come out with 12-core server CPUs.they could have gone 4x 6 core cpus without HT too.Reply -
cangelini Enzo MatrixMisleading title. I was excited because I assumed intel had finally come out with 12-core server CPUs.Reply
The Xeon 5600-series tops out with 6 cores and 12 threads, yielding 24 logical processors between two sockets. =) -
wh3resmycar So many cpu's in task manager...do all but 1 go unused running a single threaded app? shame intel had to go this route with more cores instead of making single core with hyper-threading work faster. you should really only need 2 logical cpu's and hyper threading accomplishes it with 1.
i have a feeling you dont understand what the word "workstation" means. -
Hyper threading was kind of cool back in the P4 days, but now I don't see the point. Virtually nothing that >people actually use< has any benefit to see from it.. It just makes for cool screenshots imo..Reply
I guess what this review says is that, if you want performance for stuff you do at home you should pretty much just get a Nehalem i7 6c with some fast ram. The xeons seems to be behind on everything multimedia, much as expected. -
Otus cangeliniThe Xeon 5600-series tops out with 6 cores and 12 threads, yielding 24 logical processors between two sockets. =)You should have written "logical processors" or "logical cores" and no one would have argued.Reply
mheagerNot true. Hyper threading makes it so if one app gets stuck in an endless loop it doesn't suck up all the cpu and freeze the computer.The OS can do that even on a single core with no HT. Not to mention the case with many physical cores which non-HT CPUs have nowadays. -
kokin mheagerNot true. Hyper threading makes it so if one app gets stuck in an endless loop it doesn't suck up all the cpu and freeze the computer.But why should it get stuck in an endless loop with all that computing power?Reply