Ryzen 7 - 3700 downgrade to a i3-9100?

[ja_sen]

I am currently running a Ryzen 7 - 3700 (with a 1050ti) running Plex and all the arrr's (radarr, sonarr, etc.)  I have a test server that is running an i3-9100 that has QuickSync.  I have Plex up and running on both, tested it and those that have to transcode (nothing in my house does), do not notice anything different.  My question is, what will I see if I swap the two?  Downloads taking longer?  Bottlenecks when SABnzbd finishes?  A lower power bill?

 

Anyone else made this "downgrade".  Am I crazy to think about this?  

 

Thanks,

 

-Jason

[JonathanM]

Benchmarks aside, I'd call moving from AMD to intel an upgrade.

 

Just my personal opinion and experience from working with both companies from back when AMD started making IBM compatible chips. AMD really does try hard, and every once in a while it seems like they've got it, but on the whole you will spend more time dealing with AMD specific issues than intel issues. There is a whole thread right now on how to set up an AMD system to make it stable. No such thread for intel.

 

In the server space, where you just want to set it and forget it, intel is the winner right now.

[Hoopster]

1 hour ago, ja_sen said:

Anyone else made this "downgrade".  Am I crazy to think about this? 

From a pure CPU power standpoint that is a big downgrade.  Passmark score for the Ryzen 7 3700x is 22768.  For the i3-9100 it is only 6610.  You are comparing an 8 core 16 thread processor to a 4c/4t processor.

 

However, the i3 9100 has QuickSync and the iGPU will be able to do your transcoding when needed.  6610 is enough power for unRAID itself as, generally, it only needs about 2000 passmarks for normal NAS operations and unRAID overhead.  Of course, if you are running lots of docker containers (depending what they are) and want to do VMs, that is a different story.  I don't use all the "arr" containers so I can't tell you how much CPU grunt they need.

 

I have always gone Intel on my unRAID servers because of the Plex supported iGPUs and stability reasons.  I have an AMD Ryzen 5700G on my main desktop machine and really like it there but I am not sure how it would fare as an unRAID server CPU.

 

Here is a forum discussion specifically dedicated to an i3-based system as a Plex server with transcoding.

Edited December 2, 2021 by Hoopster

[ja_sen]

1 hour ago, Hoopster said:

 

Here is a forum discussion specifically dedicated to an i3-based system as a Plex server with transcoding.

Thanks for this - I have it running in a test system but will see what tweaks I can do to get all I can out of it.

[Vetteman]

Is this I3 intel succeptible to the I915 onboard video instability issues that many Linux and Unraid users are experiencing?

 

I have an I-4770S and trying to troubleshoot why my Unraid has issues with my onboard video (freezing and lockups).

 

https://linuxreviews.org/Linux_Kernel_5.5_Will_Not_Fix_The_Frequent_Intel_GPU_Hangs_In_Recent_Kernels

 

I also do 3D rendering and 3D modeling and the common census is an AMD Ryzen is much preferred and more stable over Intel. My photo editing computer - Ryzen 7 3700X, MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus mobo, 32 GB DDR4,  RTX 2060 Super 8 gbs video ram,  (Photoshop/Lightroom) and 3D modeling (Blender 2.93,  3D Coat 2021, Silo 3D, Moi 3D), 3D rendering Iray via DAZ Studio and e-onsoftware's Vue Creator has been as stable as a fine tuned small block Chevy V8.

 

The Ryzen is a much superior CPU to the Intel I3 as noted by Hoopster. I was employed for 30 years as a system admin (Novell Netware, Citrix Winframe, Novell Suse, Windows servers - now retired) and never experienced any compatibility issues with AMD in the last 20 years. The original AMDs like the Cyrix CPUs of the same era required patching to keep up with Intel stability wise, but that was close to 25 or 30 years ago.

 

[Zonediver]

HW-Transcoding under Plex on an Intel iGPU is really good and working perfect. Handle 8 transcodes from 4k to 1080p is no problem.

Your 1050Ti has some restrictions as for the number of simultaneous streams - so i would always go for the iGPU 👍

And if you need more cpu-power, take an i5 or i7 👍

Edited December 17, 2021 by Zonediver

[Hoopster]

14 hours ago, Vetteman said:

The Ryzen is a much superior CPU to the Intel I3

Froma  pure CPU power standpoint, that is true.

 

Ryzen also has known issues with Linux unRAID mostly on gen 1 and gen 2 Ryzen but even sometime on gen 3.  If you ever end up with a Ryzen CPU in your server, see this post for some tips on ensuring that Ryzen is stable on Linux/unRAID.

[Vetteman]

Another reason why a Ryzen maybe preferred over a "desktop" Intel CPU,  is it has been reported by some motherboard manufacturers that Ryzen CPU can support ECC memory. 

 

https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1045186/

 

On Intel you have to consider a Xeon if you want ECC support.

 

There is a reason why ZFS pools prefer ECC memory over non ECC memory.

 

[Hoopster]

2 minutes ago, Vetteman said:

Another reason why a Ryzen maybe preferred over a "desktop" Intel CPU

For some reason, i3 also supports ECC in addition to Xeon.  ECC is not supported by i5, i7 and i9.

 

Here is the ark on an i3 9100 (cpu mentioned by OP) showing ECC supported:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/134870/intel-core-i39100-processor-6m-cache-up-to-4-20-ghz/specifications.html

Edited December 17, 2021 by Hoopster

[Vetteman]

3 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

For some reason, i3 also supports ECC in addition to Xeon.  ECC is not supported by i5, i7 and i9.

 

Here is the ark on an i3 9100 (cpu mentioned by OP) showing ECC supported:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/134870/intel-core-i39100-processor-6m-cache-up-to-4-20-ghz/specifications.html

 

Wow, that's good to know. I have an I3-10100 that is 4 cores and 8 threads. I must check if it supports ECC. It current being used as my Samba server (Zorin-os 16 - a Ubuntu 20.04 variant). Many thanks for that tidbit of info.

[Vetteman]

Just checked the specs for my I3-10100 and it does not support ECC memory.

 

https://www.intel.ca/content/www/ca/en/products/sku/199283/intel-core-i310100-processor-6m-cache-up-to-4-30-ghz/specifications.html

[Hoopster]

50 minutes ago, Vetteman said:

Just checked the specs for my I3-10100 and it does not support ECC memory.

Bummer.  They must have stopped supporting ECC with the i3 after the 9th gen chips. 

[Zonediver]

Last i3 with ECC-Support was the i3-9100...

[The_Bell]

On 12/2/2021 at 4:22 PM, ja_sen said:

I am currently running a Ryzen 7 - 3700 (with a 1050ti) running Plex and all the arrr's (radarr, sonarr, etc.)  I have a test server that is running an i3-9100 that has QuickSync.  I have Plex up and running on both, tested it and those that have to transcode (nothing in my house does), do not notice anything different.  My question is, what will I see if I swap the two?  Downloads taking longer?  Bottlenecks when SABnzbd finishes?  A lower power bill?

 

Anyone else made this "downgrade".  Am I crazy to think about this?  

 

Thanks,

 

-Jason

Hi! bumping an old thread, but I was wondering what motherboard do you have the i3-9100 in? How does iGPU pass-through work if you do not have a dedicated video card? Any issues? I am looking at building a server with just an i3-9100 (no dedicated video card) but I want to make sure I will be able to pass it through to the docker container with no issues.