AMD serves up a benchmarking tool

Quad and hexa cores revealed.

Chip design house AMD has released a benchmark selector tool that's designed to allow customers to sort and filter benchmark and performance data for servers using its four-core and six-core Opteron processors.

Andy Parma, an AMD product marketing manager for servers and workstations said the tool will be enhanced soon to include data for servers using the 8-core and 12-core AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors.

The tool can filter for integer throughput performance of servers using low-power six-core AMD Opteron processors, sort data for mainstream processor models, higher performance SE processor models, and energy efficient HE and EE processor models.

It can also benchmark data by workload application, including virtualisation and compute-intensive high performance computing (HPC) applications.

An updated AMD website also includes data on the energy efficiency of servers using AMD Opteron processors and feature set comparisons and performance summaries.

Parma could not resist reminding people that some compilers, which he would not name but said began with the letter I, had a nasty habit of identifying some AMD chips as faster than others when they clearly were not.

He also said there is more involved in selecting a new server than just looking at the benchmark numbers. With that in mind, he encouraged customers to also consider the information available on other parts of the company's website, including its latest virtualization webinar.

AMD's benchmarking tool can be found here.