Competition, of course, is healthy. Buy-in, however, is a necessary component to competition, and Intel still has a stranglehold on the corporate market. AMD can compete only if Tier 1 vendors offer corporate-class desktops, workstations and servers using AMD processors. I wanted to determine if AMD is a viable solution in the workplace, so I tested AMD powered-systems from Polywell Computers and RackSaver. Click here for more information on AMD's new processor.
AMD in the Enterprise
I tested Polywell's Poly 890T and a 1U server from RackSaver, the RS-1129 Dual AMD Athlon 1900+ Server, in Network Computing's Real-World Labs® in Green Bay, Wis. Both units use the AMD Athlon MP 1900+ processor and came loaded with base installations of Micrsoft Windows 2000 SP2 and the bare minimum of hardware drivers. In addition, both are equipped with Tyan Computer Corp.'s Thunder K7 mainboard and 1 GB of DDR (Double Data Rate) SDRAM.
Tyan's Thunder K7 comes standard with dual, integrated LAN controllers from 3Com Corp., built-in video and support for up to 3 GB of RAM. Add-ons include dual-channel SCSI controllers and QLogic Corp.'s server-management utilities. Unfortunately, the Thunder K7's 64-bit PCI expansion slots operate only at 33 MHz, so some of today's high-speed peripherals cannot operate at their full potential. The Thunder K7 also sports AMD's new 760 MP chipset, the first chipset to feature multiprocessor support for any AMD processor, a dual front-side bus operating at 266 MHz and support for high-speed DDR memory.
Beauty and Brains
For the Poly 890T workstation, Polywell has chosen a brushed aluminum case made by Lian Li Industrial. This midtower case provides ample room for every necessary peripheral. In addition, the unit I tested came tricked out with an 18-GB Seagate Technology Cheetah hard drive, an Elsa Gloria DCC video card, Sound Blaster Audigy sound card, a NetGear Gigabit Ethernet card, Toshiba DVD-ROM and a CD-R/W drive. All this was powered by a 430-watt power supply.
For my first series of tests, I used Intel's IOmeter disk-benchmarking utility, version 1998.10.08. I wanted to gauge the performance of the workstation's I/O subsystem in a variety of environments. To test the maximum throughput of the Cheetah hard drive, I set the transfer-request size to 64 KB, the read/write distribution to 100 percent read, and the percent random/sequential distribution to 100 percent sequential. To test the maximum I/O rating, the transfer-request was resized to 512 bytes at 100 percent read and 100 percent sequential. I simulated a database workload by reconfiguring the IOmeter's transfer-request size to 2 KB, the read/write distribution to 67 percent read, 33 percent write and 100 percent random.
I used Si Software's Sandra 2002 Professional benchmarking software to get an idea of where the dual Athlon PCs would stack up against other CPUs in the program's database. The dual 1900+ processors edged out a pair of Intel 2-GHz Xeon processors, posting a 16 percent increase in processor performance in the Dhrystone processor arithmetic benchmark and a 9 percent boost in the CPU multimedia benchmark. Impressive, considering the actual clock speed of these processors specs out around the 1.6-GHz range.
I also tested the network-throughput performance of the NetGear gigabit adapter using NetIQ's Chariot 3.4 software. The adapter maintained an average of 530 Mbps over several 1-minute sustained data-transfer tests -- only half of the possible speed of the adapter. The flaw was not a problem with the card but with the speed of the PCI bus on the mainboard. The 33-MHz interface simply was not fast enough to use the NIC to its full potential. Polywell representatives said they are going to offer the newest Tyan mainboard, which supports 66-MHz, as soon as the company finishes its compatibility testing.
The fully customizable Polywell workstation is an excellent performer, providing a host of features on top of solid performance. With the inclusion of top quality components, this machine would be a good investment.
Make Mine a Double
The RackSaver RS-1129 server hides a number of innovative solutions to the problem of keeping the pair of Athlon processors cool in an enclosure less than 2 inches tall. The server has five cooling fans: two intake fans on the front and three exhaust fans on the right side, near the processors. The heatsinks on the chips are microfinned with no cooling fans on them (because of lack of space). The server came with a pair of 36-GB Seagate Cheetah drives for storage.
I subjected the RS-1129 to the same IOmeter tests as the Polywell 890T, and the results were much the same (see "Test Results," above). Additionally, I subjected the RS-1129 to tests using RadView Software's WebLoad 4.0 benchmarking tool. The WebLoad tests showed the server capable of processing nearly 850 transactions per second.
One issue with the RS-1129 is that even though the Tyan motherboard is rack-mountable, the case that was used is so small that only one of the PCI slots could be used. Additionally, none of the components in the machine are hot-swappable, so you'll have to accept some down time should a component fail.
The RackSaver RS-1129 performed well and would make a fine addition in the data centers of companies that could use its impressive processing power.
Eric Fleming is a network administrator for KI, a furniture manufacturer based in Green Bay, Wis. Send your comments on this article to him at efleming@nandgate.com.
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