[Cadre-politics] Server direction, and a option

[Robert Vanderley]

   We seem to be on a turning point in hardware. Something has happened 
that has not happened in 3 yrs. Intel is making better chips. Truly 
amazing. For the longest time AMD has won out in performance, energy 
efficiency, and cost.

   The tables seem to finally be turning in Intel's favor. With their 
recent product releases of the Xeon 5100 family and the rather brand new 
Core Duo family, both incorporating new micro-architecture, AMD is 
slipping in the eyes of many. In short, lots of attention for Intel and 
a tidal wave of media coverage.

   Tom's Hardware (1) is my main source for hardware specs and divining 
rod information. When I started this search for servers the first 
article I read was "Xeon Woodcrest Preys On Opteron" (2). Being a long 
time AMD user I thought it was just the kind of response needed just to 
be able to compete with AMD's server processors. Then a 
while-you-were-out thing happened 4 days ago another article (3) hit the 
sites essentially knocking out AMD. Granted AMD's long time apathy for 
the CPU market this has generated much debate within the reviewing 
boards at Tom's Hardware (4).

   I would recommend that we abstain from buying a server ASAP, but keep 
a watchful eye on the market. Intel's Core 2 Duo processor is cheaper 
than AMD's top models. Intel's Core 2 Duo is faster than AMD's top. AMD 
announced that it will need to make price cuts to stay afloat and that's 
where we come in. After perusing many articles about virtualization 
technology I have come to the impression that AMD Pacifica technology is 
slightly superior to Intels VT. However with such a fairly recent 
technology it's difficult to find definite benchmark results the best I 
found are the .pdfs at the AMD/Intel company websites and a bias AMD 
benchmark (5) again an Intel processor that has no VT support (another 
reason to only buy with virtualization support).

    -Rob


1) www.tomshardware.com 
2) http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/06/26/xeon_woodcrest_preys_on_opteron/
3) http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/14/core2_duo_knocks_out_athlon_64/
4) 
<http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/18/would_you_buy_core_2_duo_today/page6.html>
5) 
<http://enterprise.amd.com/us-en/Solutions/Consolidation/virtualization.aspx>