VMware is using its still-in-beta VMmark benchmark platform to compare CPUs capability to run virtual machines and scale up.
A short but interesting post appeared on VMmark development team blog reveals results obtained measuring Intel dual-core and quad-core CPUs:
…I was able to measure the performance difference between Intel’s dual-core (Woodcrest) and quad-core (Clovertown) processors using otherwise identical HP Proliant DL380G5 systems.
One system contained two dual-core Intel Xeon 5150 processors (four cores total) running at 2.66 GHz. The other system contained two quad-core Intel Xeon 5355 processors (eight cores total) running at 2.66 GHz.
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At three tiles, the dual core system was fully utilized, which limited the score, while the quad core systems continued to scale well due to the additional available CPU resources. The quad-core system delivered a 28% higher score with three tiles. The quad-core system became saturated at five tiles and ultimately achieved a score 70% higher than the dual-core system while supporting 67% more VMs…
Read the whole article at source.