Intel Xeon 1.7GHz: King of the High End?

The Quirks of MP

The major problem with evaluating a MP system such as the new Intel Xeon is how to measure performance.  In fact, most of the benchmarks from our usual test suite will not show any noticeable performance increase over a single processor.  Does that mean that you shouldn't concern yourself with this review since going MP won't give you any performance boost?  Not at all, in fact, there is a very good chance that you can improve your performance by going MP.

There are three requirements for enjoying the benefits of multiple processors:

1)      Operating system support - if your OS doesn't support multiple processors then you won't be able to take advantage of your second (or third/fourth etc…) CPUs at all; they will simply go unused.  None of the Windows 9x and ME OSes support MP however Windows NT, 2000, XP Professional (the home edition won't support it), Linux, Unix, etc… all support MP operation. 

2)      Application support - this isn't actually a requirement but it is ideal for getting the most out of multiple processors.  If your application is specifically designed for use with multiple processors (generically referred to as multithreaded since each CPU can only handle one thread at a time) then you will generally get a reasonable performance improvement by going MP.  Examples of such applications are the majority of database servers (e.g. Oracle, SQL), and some 3D rendering programs (e.g. 3D Studio MAX).  However not all "high-end" applications take advantage of having multiple processors, case in point would be PTC's Pro/ENGINEER. 

3)      The need for a second CPU - we just mentioned that you don't necessarily need application support to enjoy the benefits of having a second processor, which is true.  If your applications aren't specifically designed to take advantage of multiple CPUs then you have to at least be runni ng more than one application at a time in order to give your second CPU a workout.  This requirement is actually one of the most difficult to describe via benchmarks but it is arguably one of the most useful for AnandTech readers that aren't running DB servers since many of them use their systems in this manner.

With those three requirements in mind, we can start to take a look at benchmarking this monster.