I am very new to VM’s and don’t have much information as far as performance goes. I was looking for some info on my intended setup.

 

Currently I have a Windows 10 desktop with an i3-4370 and my my unraid server is using a Celeron G1820. What a planed on doing was getting a Xeon 1241 v3  for my unraid server and run a Windows 10 VM on it to replace my i3-4370 desktop, this way I could have all my systems in one PC.

 

My question is about VM cpu performance, If I created a VM using 2 cores (4 threads) from the Xeon could I expect better cpu performance than what I can get from the i3? Both would be dual core HT systems so I didn’t know if there would be an improvement.

 

Alternatively, I could run 3 cores (6 threads) on the Windows 10 VM, but then I don't know how the  cpu performance of the remaining 1 core (2 threads) would compare to the G1820 my unraid currently has.

 

Put simply, I’m wondering if there is any configuration that will give both my Windows 10 VM and the unraid server it self a mild performance increase by only using on cpu “Xeon 1241 v3”

 

Passmark Comparison http://tinyurl.com/h95fkor

I personally have yet to have any experience with unraid, but having read a few threads, it seems to be a common pattern to assign all the cores to docker images & vms, apart from the first (0th) one, which is left for unraid. Haven't heard any complaints on that. But someone with actual first hand experience can probably answer better.

When you assign cores to a VM there are no 'threads' so if you assign two cores to a vm, it has two cores, not two cores and four threads, Hyper threading is on applicable to the physical CPU, it does double your cores for VM use, but that's it.

 

I have a quad core i7-3770 CPU on my second UnRaid server which runs a single Windows 10 VM. I have dedicated two cores and 4GB of RAM to this VM which runs on a dedicated SSD and I pass through an Nvidia GTX 960 GPU, the VM runs as good or better then a physical machine IMO, there are no lags, I can play CSGO or Star Wars Battlefront no issues with most settings maxed. Part of the key to performance is running the VM on an SSD.

 

Xeon's are great CPU's but you may find that for the money an i7 may be a better choice, Xeon's are meant for a different type of workload than workstations and often bring features like ECC memory which can be more important for servers than workstations, its up to you. I think if you had an i7 CPU and created a windows 10 VM with two cores and 4GB of RAM running on an SSD it would perform as good or better than your i3 system.

Thats pretty impresive. I never would have though using only 2 vCores would be enough for a Windows 10 VM, especially one you can game on. Thanks for the info.

 

Also I am mainly going for the Xeon due to price.

I think a lot of people get sucked into the 'more cores is better' way of thinking and on its surface they are not wrong, its just how many cores are really needed to get good enough performance versus how many cores are too much to the point where they aren't affecting performance.