Westmere-EP to Sandy Bridge-EP: The Scientist Potential Upgrade

Earlier this year I wrote a review of a dual processor Sandy Bridge-EP system from the point of view of the non-CS trained coder in a research group, and whether the limited knowledge of advanced processor commands (beyond basic C++ with OpenMP) was a hindrance to dual processor systems on some simple grid solvers/Brownian motion simulation.  As part of the feedback to the review, I was asked by several readers using the older Westmere-EP platform doing similar types of calculations if it was worth pushing their research budget for a move from Westmere-EP to high-end Sandy Bridge-E, and whether the jump in cores/IPC would cost effective in those simulation scenarios.  Thankfully Gigabyte was on hand to supply their GA-7TESM DP socket 1366 Xeon board and a pair of X5690s in order to run the comparison.  Read on for benchmark results!