3.73 GHZ Dempsey Xeon 5080 fragged by 1.8GHZ Opteron 265

The much hyped Dempsey (Xeon 5080) with the Blackford chipset (the so called Intel Bensley platform) is finally available for independent tests. The result is embarassing for Intel. The 3.73GHZ Dual core Dempsey server got squarely beaten by 1.8GHZ Opteron 265 in Apache web server benchmarks. Opteron 265 is AMD's lowest dual core server chip. In less bandwidth demanding workstation application tests, the 3.73GHZ Dempsey did better.

Clearly, Intel's imitation of Athlon MP 's dual bus is not going to solve Intel's FSB bottleneck problem. Please note that Woodcrest (Xeon 5100) share the same Bensley platform. No wonder Intel only allows controlled benchmarks of Woodcrest in its own labs.