Quote Originally Posted by kl0012 View Post
I'm sorry if it looks like I am angry. No, I'm not angry at all.


Did I say this? potentialy - please pay attention.

The first part of your sentence please address someone else, I never said this. For the second part I can say that if you really don't need performance, then again Nehalem servers provides much higher performance/watt value especially when the server spends more time in idle. Until AMD will bring power-gated technology into its processors there is no competition here.
are you really really sure you want to start talking about power consumption.... (my dear old friend shintel tried that a few times) there are very good tools for that you know once you work with large OEM's. Review sites are never 100% identical or fail to really match the same load settings etc, OEM don't because they can be sued for that and they need to be made available for rack power calculation.

Lets take one of the major players in server world: HP
go to there site and start calculating the power, since they have tools for that:http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/s...sor/index.html

Now lets put something together, one of the most sold server is still the INTEL DL380 and AMD DL385 (equal to the dell 29xx series) now lets take a look at power:

config DL380: 2 x QC E5530, 4 x 4GB RAM LP (yes the tri channel is only a marketing hype), P410 512mb, 2 x72GB SAS 15K, 2 x 460W power redundant.

idle 148,4W
50% 209,3W
100% 272,3W

config DL385: 2 x HC 2435, 4 x 4GB RAM LP , P410 512mb, 2 x72GB SAS 15K, 2 x 460W power redundant.

idle 130,7W
50% 220,8W
100% 314,6W

now lets take the actual retail price equal to E5530:

config DL385: 2 x HC 2431, 4 x 4GB RAM LP , P410 512mb, 2 x72GB SAS 15K, 2 x 460W power redundant.

idle 130,7W
50% 214,5W
100% 293,1W


or the low power config

config DL380: 2 x QC L5520, 4 x 4GB RAM LP, P410 512mb, 2 x72GB SAS 15K, 2 x 460W power redundant.

idle 138,6W
50% 190,5W
100% 244,4W

config DL385: 2 x HC 2425HE, 4 x 4GB RAM LP , P410 512mb, 2 x72GB SAS 10K, 2 x 460W power redundant.

idle 126,7W
50% 185,2W
100% 245,9W

conclusion, idle and 50% load AMD is the better pick, only in 100% load the advantage goes to Intel and all equal in the power savings platform (but intel has the clear performance gain here). When AMD launches 4000-6000 series the power consumption will improve more thx to the new c-states, apml 2.0, stepping and soi and ddr3, intel will have to counter that with 32nm.