i7-2600k vs FX-8150 for VMWare Workstation?

[SBB]

I'm currently speccing up a workstation - this will be used solely for virtualisation using primarily VMWare workstation.

I'm finding it hard to find any benchmarks for these particular CPUs on VM workloads, do you guys have any thoughts?

The rest of the system will be 32GB RAM and either 2x300GB 15K SAS RAID0 or 512GB SSD

[zanzabar]

i would make sure to get ecc ram so out of those go amd but u may be better off with a socket 1366 or 1156 since u can oc and get ecc (or 1155 and not oc since its a workstation and get a xeon so u can have ecc), or get a socket g34 system with 8 core chips as they are about $175-200 a chip and the g34 is the standard for making a vm farm.

[OS-Wiz]

Depends on how many images you'll be running concurrently - you might just need a dual core, or perhaps the 8 core Opty ... the number of concurrently running images + 1 would be ideal.

[iboomalot]

pure speed wise the 2600k at 4.2 ghz which isn't pushing it at all would rock.

Then a Samsung 830 (midrange price) , Plextor 512M (best price) or Intel 520 SSD (cost no object)


happy hunting

[SBB]

Thanks for the advice so far, G34 opteron is out of my price range unfortunately - one thing I did notice is that the 2600k doesn't support VT-d, only VT-x, is there much of a difference?

[zanzabar]

vt-x is vanderpool, vt-d/amd-v are the newer version and have more than just protected memory space.

what kind of load are going to have and will be fore production or a lab.

u could go single socket g34, u can get 8 2.7ghz magny cores for $300 and a board for $175-220 and u get 8 slots per cpu with g34 so u can use 4GB sticks instead of the more costly 8GB sticks, or a thulban and an asus board (most asus amd parts do ecc) with $150 for a cpu and $100 a board, but really get something with ECC.

on the benches, per physical core and clock amd is better than the 1156 or 1366, im not sure on 1155 with vitalized loads

[EniGmA1987]

Interlagos would be a better choice than MC, as the new processors have a high built in turbo core speed. If he goes single socket G34 anyway.

AM3+ Bulldozer is pretty much the same thing and higher core speed, but less RAM slots. It does support ECC on desktop with most ASUS motherboards as you said so that is probably the way to go IMO.
But do the extra features remain when using a regular desktop chipset and BD processor? Or are those features related to just the workstation SR chipsets on the socket G34? If they require the G34 socket then that would be the better option.


This CPU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819113026
And specs on it for turbo and such:
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldo...on%206212.html

Motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813182230

RAM:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820139140 (x4, this also leaves expansion room later)

add some extra USB ports:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815166002

heatsink:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835106176

and this drive for the high reliability along with great speed:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147136

[SBB]

Thanks for the replies all, I did some more research and it seems that G34 may be the way to go after all

An update to this; I purchased a pair of Opteron 6128HE cpus from ebay for £141 ($250?)

Now I just need to save the money for the very expensive ASUS KGPE-D16 and 32GB of ECC (to start, maybe 64 in the future if I need it)

I'm sure somewhere in the future I can upgrade to Interlagos but for now I can't afford it!

[dave_graham]

I've got ddr3-1066 ecc/registered that works for and system. Ping me if you want.

[BrokenWall]

As a guy that has a large interest in Virtualization and Mission Critical, I would never recommend anyone to buy a CPU and Overclock it for something like VM work. Virtualizing will put your OC's stability to question, and it only gets worse with the more VMs you add to it.

Going with a good G34 board with ECC and a good 6-8core opty will be your best bet.

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

I'm running ESXi on a G34 and 64gb of RDimm (only 1066mhz) and I have no issues with anything.

I know the new generation of Opterons for C32/G34 aren't utilized as well as they should be (but there should be improvements as the technology matures). You can always drop in a 12 / 16 core if you really need that much processing power. Prices aren't bad for the 12 cores these days.

If you are worried about noise (some are, like myself), noctua makes a very nice G34 HSF that is super quiet.

[SBB]

My spec out is as follows:

2 * Opteron 6128 CPUs
ASUS G34 KGPE-D16
4 * Kingston KVR1333D3D4R9S/8GHB (32GB to start, probably upgrade to 64+ in the future)
2 * Noctua NH-U12DO coolers
Coolermaster ACTS 840 case
Samsung 470 512GB SSD

I've decided to replace my 2600k rig with this as I can't afford to have both, so I'm going to use an 850W FSP (Novatech branded) PSU, LG Blu-Ray and my 6990 from that and sell the rest.

[EniGmA1987]

As a guy that has a large interest in Virtualization and Mission Critical, I would never recommend anyone to buy a CPU and Overclock it for something like VM work. Virtualizing will put your OC's stability to question, and it only gets worse with the more VMs you add to it.

Going with a good G34 board with ECC and a good 6-8core opty will be your best bet.

How does using a processor more fully while overclocked bring stability to question? If you arent stable, you dont have a stable overclock in the first place. If you thought that your CPU was stable, then you should have done more testing.
But these processors dont "overclock" on socket G34 anyway, we are talking about turbo core on the processors now. The turbo is an overclock, but it is given by AMD and comes with the processor as one of its features. It is fully supported by AMD and stable, after all they made it to do that.

[BrokenWall]

How does using a processor more fully while overclocked bring stability to question? If you arent stable, you dont have a stable overclock in the first place. If you thought that your CPU was stable, then you should have done more testing.
But these processors dont "overclock" on socket G34 anyway, we are talking about turbo core on the processors now. The turbo is an overclock, but it is given by AMD and comes with the processor as one of its features. It is fully supported by AMD and stable, after all they made it to do that.

Turbo is an engineered feature and strictly tested feature of the CPU. And fully loading a CPU with a group of VMs will put more strain and test alot of things that games and benches won't touch. Virtualization uses another set of instructions that your normal user will most likely never touch in most cases. Alot of people on this forum are also professionals in the industry. Any of them would agree that overclocking something like this for VM work would be a bad idea. On top of that if you spoke with anyone for support and they had any idea of overclocking going on they would stop all support on the issue.

[herderien]

i wouldn't agree more on the "no overclock" side of the debate.

the subsidiary question is : what kind of vms will you do ?

if it's for lets say testing different platforms, it does not matter.
but if you're working on something critical, i would not recommand OC, as stability is the essence of virtualisation.

but it seems you're more concerned by performance then stability or security right ? (raid 0 ???)

[Zedex]

I hate to jump in on your thread, but I ended up here from google as it happens looking for the very same answers you were, or at least similar enough. I was looking at running around 8 VMs, on a machine, but my budget is very limited. It would be for a home lab. I was trying to decide over an i7 or FX8350. Also from what I gather VT-d being missing on the 2600K would stop you from being able to use pass-through I believe, or a proper implementation of it, which might limit some of the things you'd like to do with them. For example you might want to passthrough to a NIC for each card. I think that would be especially useful if you had more than one machine you wanted to run VMs on and have them on their own physical network. I looked at the other 2600 i7s and they seemed to looked pretty solid in specs still, and from the benchmarks I can see the i7 tends to outperform the FX series in most things, especially things that are more than likely single threaded, or possibly not optimized for as many cores as the FX and even in some cases just optimized for Intel in the first place as I believe someone pointed out on another forum as MU_engineer on here points out.

Do you think an FX would be fine dealing with 8 VMs with say 32GB of non-ECC RAM, or is the lack of using ECC really going to hurt me? I don't know if I could fit it into my budget, my budget being only ?400 (I already have some spare HDDs and a PSU, as well as a graphics card I can use in this machine). The VMs I don't think would be massively stressed as the lab will be for testing various operating systems setup in a small network and generally getting them to work nicely together. I not sure if that would really need ECC would it? ECC is also four times the price for an equal amount of non-ECC, which mostly puts it out of my budget unless I want to drastically reduce the amount of RAM for the setup. I guess it'd be a case of weighing up the benefit of ECC vs the benefit of how much RAM would be there at all. There's always the option of using 32GB of non-ECC right now and later when my budget allows I can swap it all out for ECC.

I've seen a few people say that it's IOPS on HDDs that you really notice a bottleneck with many VMs unless you're using them on RAID or even better an SSD. I do happen to have 6 old 160GB HDDs that are all the same model lying around, so I think I could use those.

I too would agree on the no overclocking also. I was using my brother's PC the other day with Gentoo Linux running in a VM alongside some other things, I had that compile a fairly large program that required a lot of resources to do so and it BSOD'd. This was something I had done IntelBurnTests on, relentless loops of 3D mark and lots of other stress tests and was also stable for him running Ultra settings anytime he played BF3 online. It wasn't even an extreme overclock tbh, it was a bloomfield running at 4GHz with RAM running 1900MHz 7-7-7-8 timings I believe, I can't remember off the top of my head. Might've been 8-8-8-9. But regardless, it wasn't that massive of an overclock in my opinion and it still managed to BSOD the system, that for all intents and purposes was completely stable in testing and everyday use.

[OldChap]

Hard for me to know if this idea is good as UK prices are so different:

ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS or ASUS Z9PE-D16 WS

and a couple of these

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Xeon...item3f2170f9ac