Gateway GR585 F1 review

Since launching its new range of servers, Gateway has relentlessly pursued HP, and its latest GR585 F1 takes the fight into the 4P market, supporting four 12-core Opteron 6100 processors. Targeting the new HP ProLiant DL585 G7, we find out whether Gateway achieves its aim.

With its 2U rack chassis, the GR585 F1 offers a much higher processing density than the DL585, squeezing 1,008 cores into a standard 42U rack cabinet. The DL585 is twice the height, and so has half the processing density.

Storage options aren't as good: the chassis supports up to six 3.5in SATA hard disks, and Gateway doesn't offer low-profile SFF drives. In its standard form the GR585 F1 can't support SAS drives either, as the motherboard has only six embedded SATA ports.

To use SAS drives you need an extra RAID card, and Gateway sells an eight-port SAS model for £479. The company plans to make near-line SAS drives available early in 2011.

HP's DL585 G7 scores higher for local storage: it supports eight SFF hot-swap hard disks. It also includes an embedded P410i RAID controller that supports RAID5 arrays and has options for 512MB or 1GB of cache memory and a battery backup pack.

Power redundancy is available: the single 1,400W supply in the GR585 F1 can be augmented with a second hot-swap unit. Power cables are plugged in at the back, but supplies are removed from the front, so replacing a failed unit doesn't require a trip round the back of the rack cabinet.

The GR585 F1 did well in our power tests, although note its modest specification. Our inline meter recorded a draw of 159W in idle and 328W under load, with SiSoft Sandra giving the processors a good workout.

The tidy interior offers easy access to all key components for upgrades and maintenance. The four processor sockets are staggered down the motherboard to avoid impeding airflow, and each is accompanied by 12 DIMM sockets.

Memory capacity is the equal of HP: the GR585 F1 can handle a maximum of 512GB using registered ECC memory. Bear in mind that using cheaper UDIMM memory will reduce capacity to 128GB.