Selecting Server Processors to Reduce Total Cost

We compared the high-end Intel Xeon processor X5570 (2.93 GHz) with the low-end Intel® Xeon® processor E5504 (2.0 GHz) for two Intel IT computing environments: design and enterprise. In real-world application testing with Intel’s electronic design automation (EDA) workloads, two-socket servers based on the 2.93GHz processor delivered the same performance for an estimated 42 percent lower TCO over four years, as shown in Figure 1. For enterprise computing, analysis confirmed a similar relationship: A two-socket server based on the 2.93-GHz processor delivered 87 percent better performance for an estimated 8 percent increase in TCO.