May 19, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Dell and HP workstation performance and power consumption
| HP xw4600 | HP xw6600 | Dell Precision T5400 | Dell Precision T7400 | |
| Benchmarks | ||||
| SPECviewperf 10 quad | 47.00 | 50.01 | 53.35 | 94.45 |
| Sandra XII ALU | 37.3K Dhrystone MIPS | 83.4K Dhrystone MIPS | 83.2K Dhrystone MIPS | 115.9K Dhrystone MIPS |
| Sandra XII Multimedia | 144.0K fit | 321.9K fit | 320.9K fit | 540.6K fit |
| Sandra XII Memory Latency | 101 ns | 108 ns | 112 ns | 94 ns |
| Sandra XII Memory Bandwidth | 5.10 GB/sec | 7.23 GB/sec | 7.16 GB/sec | 4.94 GB/sec |
| Sandra XII HDD Bandwidth | 50.52 MB/sec | 72.40 MB/sec | 60.55 MB/sec | 188.6 MB/sec |
| Sandra XII HDD Random Access Time | 16 ms | 15 ms | 22 ms | 6 ms |
| Power Consumption | ||||
| Power consumption at rest | 88 W | 190 W | 189 W | 237 W |
| Power consumption at 100% | 144 W | 296 W | 288 W | 409 W |
| Energy Star Power Consumption | 52.2 W | 105.4 W | 102.6 W | 146.7 W |
Posted by Doug Dineley on May 19, 2008 03:00 AM
May 19, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Dell and HP workstation features at a glance
| HP xw4600 | HP xw6600 | Dell Precision T5400 | Dell Precision T7400 | |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz | Intel Xeon E5430 2.66GHz | Intel Xeon E5430 2.66GHz | Intel Xeon 5482 3.2GHz |
| Number processors | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Cores per processor | quad | quad | quad | quad |
| L2 cache per processor | 8MB | 12MB | 12MB | 12MB |
| Chipset | Intel x38 | Intel 5400B | Intel 5400 | Intel 5400B |
| System RAM | 4GB | 4GB | 4GB | 4GB |
| RAM type and speed | DDR2 800MHz | DDR2 667MHz | DDR2 667MHz | DDR2 800MHz |
| Graphics card | Nvidia Quadro FX 1700 | Nvidia Quadro FX 4600 | Nvidia Quadro FX 4600 | Nvidia Quadro FX 4600 |
| Graphics RAM | 512MB | 768MB | 768MB | 768MB |
| Disk capacity | 250GB | 250GB | 80GB | 146GB (73GB x 2) |
| HDD model | Seagate Barracuda | Seagate Barracuda | Western Digital Caviar SE XL160S | Dell Virtual Disk |
| HDD interface | SATA 3.0 Gb/sec | SATA 3.0 Gb/sec | SATA 3.0 Gb/sec | SAS |
| HDD RPM | 7200 | 7200 | 7200 | 15000 |
| HDD cache | 16MB | 16MB | 8MB | 32MB (16MB x 2) |
| Network | GbE | GbE | GbE | GbE |
| CD/DVD | 16x DVD+/-RW | 16x DVD+/-RW | 18x DVD+/-RW | 16x DVD-ROM RW |
| Jacks, plugs, case | ||||
| USB front, rear, internal | 2, 7, 1 | 2, 5, 1 | 2, 5, 1 | 2, 5, 1 |
| PS/2 | 475 W | 650 W | 875 W | 980 W |
| Power supply | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Warranty | 4 hour on site, 3 years | Next business day on site, 3 years | Next business day on site, 3 years | Next business day on site, 3 years |
| Operating systems | Windows Vista Business, Windows XP Pro, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 | Windows Vista Business, Windows XP Pro, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 | Windows Vista Ultimate, Vista Business, Windows XP Pro, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 | Windows Vista Ultimate, Vista Business, Windows XP Pro, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 |
| Expandability | ||||
| Drive bays (3.5", 5.25") | 3, 5 | 2, 2 | 2, 2 | 4, 3 |
| PCI slots (legacy, PCIe x8, PCIe x16, PCIe x64 ) | 4, 1, 1, 0 | 2, 2, 2, 0 | 1, 1, 2, 2 | 1, 1, 2, 3 |
| Max RAM, Max DIMMs | 8GB, 4 | 32GB, 8 | 32GB, 8 | 64GB, 8 x 2 (with risers) |
| Cost | $2,056 | $5,049 | $5,087 | $7,897 |
Posted by Doug Dineley on May 19, 2008 02:59 AM
May 01, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Lab test: Infortrend EonStor B12S Iometer results
Enterprise storage is typically fast, reliable, large, and heavy, and consumes a good amount of energy. Infortrend's EonStor (see Mario Apicella's review) is fast, reliable, thin (1U), and a scant 45 pounds with 12 disks. All because it uses 2.5-inch, Small Form Factor SAS drives instead of the usual 3.5-inch disks.
Better yet, Mario's tests show the EonStor draws significantly less energy than like-configured arrays based on 3.5-inch drives -- about 40% less. The key thing, of course, is that it doesn't sacrifice performance or reliability features. Spinning at 15,000 rpm, the little SAS drives hold up their end, and uptime is backed by redundant RAID controllers, power supplies, and cooling modules.
Below are the results of Mario's Iometer tests and associated power consumption figures. By way of comparison, he's measured the power draw of similarly configured 3.5-inch arrays at 380 watts when idle, i.e., when not moving data (spinning but no reads or writes).
Read sequential
RAID5 volume of six drives
| Block size | IOPS | MBps | Watts |
| Idle | -- | -- | 235 |
| 512 bytes | 38,023 | 18.5 | 238 |
| 4K | 36,788 | 143.7 | 240 |
| 16K | 27,693 | 432.7 | 246 |
| 32K | 15,882 | 496.3 | 248 |
| 64K | 11,202 | 700.0 | 248 |
| 256K | 2,945 | 736.2 | 249 |
Write sequential
RAID5 volume of six drives
| Block size | IOPS | MBps | Watts |
| Idle | -- | -- | 235 |
| 512 bytes | 20,882 | 10.2 | 238 |
| 4K | 19,238 | 75.2 | 242 |
| 16K | 13,298 | 207.8 | 246 |
| 32K | 9,287 | 290.2 | 254 |
| 64K | 5,884 | 367.8 | 254 |
Posted by Doug Dineley on May 1, 2008 01:00 PM