AnandTech Benchmark on Woodcrest and Opteron

We have proven that Anand a paid Intel pumper here. Now, AnandTech has
done a series of Woodcrest vs Opteron benchmark. Again, AnandTech
showed Intel having substantial lead.

Really? Can a paid pumper be trusted ever again? Let's forget about the
past, and look at AnandTech's newest presentations without prejudice.

One year ago, in June 2005, AandTech's Johan De Gelas did similar
benchmarks on dual core Opteron. You can see from that page that
Opteron MySQL performance was 17% lower under Gentoo Linux than under
SuSe Linux. On the same page, AnandTech compared the MySQL (InnoDB)
performance of two (2) dual core Opteron 875 processors against one (1)
dual core Opteron processor under Gentoo Linux. The conclusion was that
adding a processor led to about 10% performance increase. Not a whole
lot by adding a CPU, but it was at least some increase.

AnandTech's system configuration on Woodcrest and Opteron is here. For
both Woodcrest and Opteron, the Gentoo Linux 2.6.15-gentoo-r7 was used.
Gentoo has about 1% of the Linux market and is not known to be
enterprise worthy. Now, look at the MySQL performance numbers AnandTech
got here.

First, we look at the comparison between one(1) 3GHZ Woodcrest Xeon
5160 and one (1) 2.4GHZ Opteron 280. The Woodcrest did 996
queries/second, while the single Opteron did 805 queries/second. The
Woodcrest had 25% clockspeed advantage and 23% lead over the Opteron
280 on MySQL query speed.

Now, look at the next row, which was TWO Woodcrest CPUs against TWO
Opteron 280 CPUs. The result? The 2P Opteron 280 system showed a 23%
performance DECREASE from 1P Opteron 280. It did 622 queries/second.
Adding a CPU in a 2P system leads to 23% performance drop?

Anyone with half a brain would immediately conclude that something was
seriously wrong with this benchmark. The result was simply stupid. If
some moron told his boss that adding a CPU actually causes performance
drop, he should be fired immediately. Because he should have used his
brain to fixed the sucker instead of making such stupid conclusions.
You need to dig deeper, you need to debug the software and see where
it's hanging, and then solve it. MySQL has a lot of parameters to tune,
so does the Linux SMP kernel. You either try out all available
combinations to find a rational outcome or you use your brain to
identify and fix the problem. Of course, doing this requires deeper
understanding of the operating system and MySQL. We don't expect
AnandTech's people possess this level of knowledge, otherwise they'd be
working as software or system engineers who make a lot more money and
accumulate a lot of stock options. But, they should at least contact
the OS and DB vendor and Google the internet to find a solution. If the
problem was identified as a major bug in the OS or DB or was otherwise
persistent, they should try some other OS such as RedHat Enterprise,
SuSe Enterprise, or different versions of OS and DB. A nonsense
software result simply can't be used to represent CPU performance. A
nonsense result only makes the benchmarker look stupid.

Yet, AnandTech concluded that "[q]uad-core and Dual-core x86, you'll
notice that the scaling is negative... It seems like an anomaly, but
this is not the case. These benchmarks have been checked, verified and
checked again. "

So, not only AnandTech is a paid pumper, they are also surprisingly
incompetent.

We have proven that a
href="http://sharikou.blogspot.com/2006/06/our-coverage-of-anand.html#links"Anand
a paid Intel pumper here/a. Now, AnandTech has done a series of
Woodcrest vs Opteron benchmark. Again, AnandTech showed Intel having
substantial lead.

Really? Can a paid pumper be trusted ever again? Let's forget about the
past, and look at AnandTech's newest presentations without prejudice.

One year ago, in June 2005, AandTech's a class="smallbluelink"
"Johan De Gelas/a did similar a
href="http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2447&p=5"benchmarks
on dual core Opteron/a. You can see from that page that Opteron MySQL
performance was a
href="http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2447&p=5"17%
lower under Gentoo Linux than under SuSe Linux/a. On the same page,
AnandTech compared the MySQL (InnoDB) performance of two (2) dual core
Opteron 875 processors against one (1) dual core Opteron processor
under Gentoo Linux. The conclusion was that adding a processor led to
about 10% performance increase. Not a whole lot by adding a CPU, but it
was at least some increase.

AnandTech's system configuration on Woodcrest and Opteron is a
href="http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2772&p=3"here/a.
For both Woodcrest and Opteron, the Gentoo Linux 2.6.15-gentoo-r7 was
used. Gentoo has about 1% of the Linux market and is not known to be
enterprise worthy. Now, look at the a
href="http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2772&p=9"MySQL
performance numbers AnandTech got here/a.

First, we look at the comparison between one(1) 3GHZ Woodcrest Xeon
5160 and one (1) 2.4GHZ Opteron 280. The Woodcrest did 996
queries/second, while the single Opteron did 805 queries/second. The
Woodcrest had 25% clockspeed advantage and 23% lead over the Opteron
280 on MySQL query speed.

Now, look at the next row, which was TWO Woodcrest CPUs against TWO
Opteron 280 CPUs. The result? The 2P Opteron 280 system showed a 23%
performance DECREASE from 1P Opteron 280. It did 622 queries/second.
Adding a CPU in a 2P system leads to 23% performance drop?

Anyone with half a brain would immediately conclude that something was
seriously wrong with this benchmark. The result was simply stupid. If
some moron told his boss that adding a CPU actually causes performance
drop, he should be fired immediately. Because he should have used his
brain to fixed the sucker instead of making such stupid conclusions.
You need to dig deeper, you need to debug the software and see where
it's hanging, and then solve it. MySQL has a lot of parameters to tune,
so does the Linux SMP kernel. You either try out all available
combinations to find a rational outcome or you use your brain to
identify and fix the problem. Of course, doing this requires deeper
understanding of the operating system and MySQL. We don't expect
AnandTech's people possess this level of knowledge, otherwise they'd be
working as software or system engineers who make a lot more money and
accumulate a lot of stock options. But, they should at least contact
the OS and DB vendor and Google the internet to find a solution. If the
problem was identified as a major bug in the OS or DB or was otherwise
persistent, they should try some other OS such as RedHat Enterprise,
SuSe Enterprise, or different versions of OS and DB. A nonsense
software result simply can't be used to represent CPU performance. A
nonsense result only makes the benchmarker look stupid.

Yet, AnandTech concluded that "[q]uad-core and Dual-core x86, you'll
notice that the scaling is negative... It seems like an anomaly, but
this is not the case. These benchmarks have been checked, verified and
checked again. "

So, not only AnandTech is a paid pumper, they are also surprisingly
incompetent.