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HP says the maximum rated system electric load for the Power 595 server with POWER6 technology has increased nearly 5000 watts over the POWER5 595 for the same number of processors. 

HP's claim fails to take into consideration the POWER6® processor’s 41% performance gain moving from POWER5+™ to a POWER6 processor-based 595. That gain and the 4,990 watt increase in the maximum rated system electrical load still give the POWER6 595 20% more performance per watt than the POWER5+. More important, the Power 595 server has a performance per watt advantage versus its major competitors, the Integrity Superdome and the Sun SPARC Enterprise 9000.

The lower frequency of Itanium means lower performance and less work performed in the same space and energy foot print.

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HP says that IBM has raised the per core cost of its software by 20 percent for POWER6® processors, compared to POWER5™. 

This claim does not consider total cost of operation. For example, the price/performance of the IBM software purchase for POWER6 has improved by 16%, because of the 41% performance increase of the POWER6. Additionally, the software cost for the Power 595 server is approximately half of the software cost for an Itanium system of equal performance based on a performance per core comparison.

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