Xeon X5570 vs E5630

Question

I'm building a 2nd dell T7500 workstation for a custom application that will run 3 or 4 very heavyweight threads, and 6-8 lighter background threads. I/O is huge, as we'll be streaming and processing lots of image data.

The first machine had a Xeon X5570 2.93GHz, the Dell salesman is trying to talk me into switching this to a newer E5630.

I understand it's slower clock speed doesn't really matter, and it is newer. But I want to make sure I'm making the right decision. Thoughts?

Answer 1

I/O is huge, as we'll be streaming and processing lots of image data.

If this is true and the newer processor is more expensive, I'd tell the salesman to go find another chump. According to wikipedia, they're both based on the same Nehalem architechure. About the only differences are clock speed, your existing processor uses a faster 1333Mhz bus, and the E5630 draws less power. Spend the money on better disks instead, or at least more RAM.

On the other hand, the wikipedia also lists the E5630 as costing much less money. If this is true, and you really are I/O-bound, then the sales guy knows what he's doing. He's saving you money by selling you a cheaper processor because the more-expensive one was mostly wasted. Another option, if you are I/O bound, is the L5618. This shows the same price as the E5630 and is another 25% slower, but uses 1/2 the electricity. So that's an option if your business is interested in going green.

If I you do want a CPU upgrade, the one thing I might do is go for an E5650. This is a six-core processor, with up to 12 simultaneous threads without the need for context switching when you consider hyperthreading. Since your application calls for up to 12 threads, that could mean a serious bump. But only if you are CPU bound rather than I/O bound.

Answer 2

According to CPUBenchmark.net the Xeon X5570 scores 5320 whilst the Xeon E5630 scores 4822... so it seems to be much faster on benchmarks alone.

So, I would stick with the X5570! It appears to be slightly older, but it is a better CPU.

Specifications of X5570

Specifications of E5320

Answer 3

Processing images eats CPU, which means that the heavy threads would very likely each require a dedicated CPU. Therefore I would suggest having two quad-core CPUs.

As regarding the X5570 vs. E5630, the E5630 is slower but newer and supports the SSE4.2 Instruction Set Extensions, which can be extremely useful in speeding up image operations. In your place I would have gone for a faster CPU from the latest generation that supports DDR3-1333, has 32 nm Lithography and SSE4.2.

Likewise, moving around huge chunks of data requires fast RAM memory, fast bus and fast disks. If you can, add in more than one disk controller and try to divide the I/O among controllers, so they will operate in parallel. Do not accept disk-stripping on one controller as a solution. Get as much RAM as you can afford, so disk operations can be fully buffered.