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Intel Xeon 5130 and 5160 (2-way SMP) Performance Review

By Vijay Anand - 30 Oct 2006

Test Setup & Benchmarks

Test Setup & Benchmarks

Lets get down to the testbed setup used before we roll out the benchmark results as per normal. The two Xeon platforms we received for testing came in slightly different server boxes and unfortunately we didn't have time to standardize both of them completely. Still, we believe the comparisons we have gathered are sufficiently comparable with one another as you can see that it's not all too different. The dual Xeon 5130 system came in a 1U server and with Windows 2003 Server operating system; together, these factors hampered us from running several benchmarks. Another set had a pair of Xeon 5160 processors in a workstation box using the 5000X platform running Windows XP Professional (SP2). Since that would accept a standard graphics card, we give it a good run-in, though its results only serve as benchmark indicator for the upcoming quad-core processors to beat.


Intel Core 2 Extreme Configuration

  • Intel Desktop Board D975XBX (Intel 975X Express chipset)
  • Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800
  • 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 4. 4-4-12)
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
  • MSI GeForce 7900 GT 256MB - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 84.21
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2


Intel Xeon 5130 (dual) Configuration

  • Intel Enterprise Server S5000PAL (Intel 5000P chipset)
  • 2 x Intel Xeon 5130 processors
  • 2 x 1GB FB-DIMMM DDR2-533 memory modules
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
  • ATI ES1000 on-board graphics - ATI driver version 6.14.10.6553
  • Microsoft Windows 2003 Server


Intel Xeon 5160 (dual) Configuration

  • Intel Enterprise Server S5000XVN (Intel 5000X chipset)
  • 2 x Intel Xeon 5160 processors
  • 2 x 1GB FB-DIMMM DDR2-533 memory modules
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
  • MSI GeForce 7900 GT 256MB - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 84.21
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2


Benchmarks Used

The benchmarks chosen are not ideal towards true workstation and platform use, but they should be sufficient to indicate performance based on the user group we are targeting this article:-

  • SPECCPU 2000 v1.3
  • Futuremark PCMark 2005 Pro
  • BAPCo SYSmark 2004
  • Lightwave 3D 7.5
  • Cinebench 2003
  • XMpeg 5.03 (DivX 6.2.5 encoding)
  • Futuremark 3DMark06 Pro
  • Unreal Tournament 2004
  • AquaMark3
  • Quake 4 ver.1.20
  • F.E.A.R.

Here's the main CPU-Z screenshot for the Xeon 5130 platform. We had this system much earlier thus we only had the older version of this tool to get this shot. Full load clock speed is 2.0GHz per core.

The Xeon 5160 was a much more recent system and we had the latest CPU-Z version for proper CPU information gathering. At load, it operates at 3GHz per core at 1.217V. However at idle, it steps back to 2.0GHz at a voltage of 1.075V. Yup, DBS is in action

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