AMD vs. Intel

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AMD vs. Intel

Crispin Proctor

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Points: 18161
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June 8, 2005 at 8:04 am

#87745

Greetings all...
Has any got some nice AMD servers running SQL? Through out my career I have always said XEON when asked what to use. Not because it's better but because I have never thought of trying AMD.
I know, as far as desktops go, AMD is in some ways faster than Intel.
Just curious about moving away from Intel if AMD is cheaper and as good or better.

Cheers,CrispinI can't die, there are too many people who still have to meet me!It's not a bug, SQL just misunderstood me!

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Rick Phillips-220796 SSC Eights! Points: 967 More actions · Answer 1

I am using both an AMD 64 / 3200 processor and a Intel process (both running 32 bit operating systems) to test the SQL 2005 product.

So far I have found no problems between the two CPU's.

Rick Phillips

BlueIvy SSC-Addicted Points: 436 More actions · Answer 2

I am testing on AMD Opteron64 and a Intel processor running SQL Server 2000 Ent.

I have encountered problem when I was running a reindex script on one of the database and the log file size increased tremendously after the reindex.Somehow the reindex was running fine for intel processor.I'm still trying to solve this one..

Crispin Proctor SSCoach Points: 18161 More actions · Answer 3

Rick, how does the AMD compare to Intel performance wise? Why did you go the AMD route? Cost?

Cheers,CrispinI can't die, there are too many people who still have to meet me!It's not a bug, SQL just misunderstood me!

gbn SSCertifiable Points: 6429 More actions · Answer 4

AMD vs Intel. What a debate. Been going on for years.

Anyway:

See this article list for where they've tested AMD vs Intel using assorted RDBMS:

http://www.anandtech.com/it/

I like this one as well:

http://www.webpronews.com/it/database/wpn-20-20041210SQLServerHardwarePerformanceChecklist.html

This gives some info on CPU specs for DBs.

IMHO:

Intel used to be the way to go for server kit but I reckon AMD have arrived now. I use AMD at home and have done for years (for cost), but always Intel for servers at work ("Never got fired for buying I..." ;-).

Intel suffers from (shared) FSB issues when multi CPU hence huge L2 caches. AMD uses point to point (EV7 bus like the old Alpha chips, if I remember right) so scale better.

Personally, if I had to go 4 way or more, I'd try to justify AMD to management. At our shop we only go upto 2 way and all Intel (for now).

Rick Phillips-220796 SSC Eights! Points: 967 More actions · Answer 5

The AMD was purchased just to test the 64 bit software for Data Warehousing. It is only a test machine that cost $1,050.

The machine outperforms the Intel 3.2 GHz with a 800 FSB but the test is unfair because I have 1 GB of memory on the AMD and only 512 MB of memory on the Intel.

Rick

Crispin Proctor SSCoach Points: 18161 More actions · Answer 6

Interesting about it outperforming the intel. Maybe with the same memory it'll be slower or at worse, match.

Think I'll try convince my bos to buy a dual AMD so we can compare. If it fails, I'll hide it under my desk till he forgets and then claim it as a desktop

Thanks for those reviews, busy reading them now.

Cheers,CrispinI can't die, there are too many people who still have to meet me!It's not a bug, SQL just misunderstood me!

BlueIvy SSC-Addicted Points: 436 More actions · Answer 7

Seems you guys have a good review for AMD...after testing it for 2 weeks basically it really performs well but my bottleneck now is still stuck with my abnormal log file size when I perform Reindex for my SQL Server 2000 database.

Any idea guys??

~Blueivy~

Rick Phillips-220796 SSC Eights! Points: 967 More actions · Answer 8

Are you sure that the tests are the same between the Intel and AMD.

Have you loaded both databases from identical copies.

Is your recovery model the same on both servers?

Is either server taking periodic log dumps?

Rick

BlueIvy SSC-Addicted Points: 436 More actions · Answer 9

Hi Rick,

Yes for all your questions except for the last one.

These databases in both the servers was setup for my testing purpose and no log dumps is being scheduled.

I did some tests to isolate the problem area on the AMD database I found that the root cause of the problem came from DBCC SHRINKFILE. It seemed like the server having problem to shrink the log file after the reindex process. The shrink process in AMD took longer time than Intel did.