More cores & threads or more ghz? Which is better?

[Phone Guy]

So I'm installing a dual CPU motherboard in my proxmox server. And I've got CPU choices. Need advice.

12 core (24 threads) 2.7ghz [x2 cpus: xeon E5-2697v2 $55 ea, $110 total]

10 core (20 threads) 3.0ghz [x2 cpus: xeon E5-2690v2 $38 ea, $76 total]

Better off with the slightly higher clock or the addition cores/threads?

 

[AllanM]

They are both going to perform about the same, but if I had to pick between the two the E5-2690 V2 would be my pick as it's a better value.

With that said, my advice is to try to move on to Broadwell at this point for budget Proxmox builds. I'm seeing lots of V4 hardware on the used market for pretty cheap.

E5-2680 v4's are like $75, and deliver ~50% more performance while drawing less power.

 

[LnxBil]

In addition to @AllanM's good answer,

Better off with the slightly higher clock or the addition cores/threads?

It also depends on what you want to do with it. There are corner-cases in which the higher base clock will always be better and vise versa.

 

[Phone Guy]

Thanks for the opinions.. the deal is my son got this board for me on father's day. ‍ The board is awesome, has tons of SATA and sas build in. Cheap ram, bought 160gb of ECC DDR3 ram on eBay for what I consider cheap.

It's going to be a NAS with the HBA card flashed to IT mode, so 8 hdds. I'm also going to have a windows 7 vm to program some remote controls I have that don't work on anything pass 7 (they're actually for win95) so maybe a win95 vm too. Plus I'd like to run 2 MacOS vm's because we (my son and I) are android users while the rest of the family is iphone. And I've read there are a couple workarounds to get iMessage work on Android using an apple id and an always on Mac (bluebubbles?)

I'm 100% still new and learning the self hosted homelab enviroment. I admired this board because of the 2 cpus and lots of ram slots, and build in sas/hba, so with my current hba I could run a 16 drive unit if I can figure out where to mount 8 more drives.

So because of my noob-ness I don't have any "uses" in mind except for what I listed. This Nas is going to act as a mirror back to my other production Nas... Better safe than sorry.

Now I'm wondering if we bought too old of hardware?

I've got two E5-2650v2 which are 2.6ghz 8 core. Picked up the pair for $20
Then I've got the options listed in the first post to upgrade and get more cores or more speed. No sure where the better benefit would be if any.

Upgrading from 2.6ghz 8 core cpus ($20 and in hand)
2.7ghz 10 cores ($78)
3.0ghz 12 cores (115)
2.6ghz 8 cores ($20, already got them)

That's why I need opinions... The server will have 160gb of ram so I would like to think I could do a bunch of stuff, just don't know what to do. Suggestions and advise appreciated.

 

[patch]

Clock frequency x Cores -> approximate relative performance

Provided the cores are about the same, your software uses all the cores, and performance is processor limited (not Disk, ram or thermal limited).

By the way

• When comparing performance for it to be relevant you actually need to be using all available enough for you to notice.
• When comparing price it is the overall outlay you have to make for the system not just an individual component.
• You also have to power the system for it's useful life and the difference in power cost may out weigh the difference in component costs.

I've got two E5-2650v2 which are 2.6ghz 8 core.

It's going to be ...

So when you put your processes in you board with the RAM you have, when is the performance lacking?

In summary you will be able to answer your questions better than anyone else once you have a system with your desired VM's running.

 

[LnxBil]

Now I'm wondering if we bought too old of hardware?

I have even older hardware (2 gen older, X56xx) and I am very happy with it. Yes, newer system give better bang for th kWh, but on the other hand, the hardware is much cheaper (although, we are not seeing your very low prices here in Germany, all CPUs are at least trice as expensive on eBay).

For running a home lab, the power is very good - of course, it depends on what you're doing, but should be sufficient. We ran an PVE cluster on those 2 gen older CPUs until the beginning of this year (7 years on that hardware) and we're IT consultant and IT business service company with 15 people. We upgraded from a 5-node-cluster to a 3-node-cluster for better energy efficiency and overall performance improvements (4 gens up).

 

[AllanM]

If you already have the 2650v2's just use them. They are going to perform about the same as the 10 and 12 core options for most homelab purposes, while keeping the system power draw lower.

On many boards the 2650's will run ~3GHZ base clock speeds anyway. I wouldn't throw any more money at it.

 

[Phone Guy]

My upgrade went well. Upgraded from a single CPU (e3-1270v2) 32gb ECC ram, to a dual CPU (e5-2650v2) 160gb ECC ram. I absolutely feel the couple of vm's I'm playing with are snappier than on the single e3-1270v2. I'd still like to get the 12core 3.0ghz cpus but I don't think there's $100 worth of performance to be gained... If I find a deal on a pair I'll buy them. But until then it's up and running... It's just a toy and a Nas for now. I'd like to get a few usable vm's running for java and flash based browsers to talk properly to my ancient network switches next.

Thanks for the advice. If anyone sees deals on those 3.0ghz 10 core chips shoot me a pm please.

 

[AllanM]

My advise is set aside the upgrade money to put towards a new more efficient platform.