May 16, 20188 yr I’m struggling to get a grasp on a new Intel Xeon upgrade for my aging server. There are so many variants of Intel Xeon E3/E5 and when combined with microarchitecture variants as well my head is spinning. I’m looking for something that will handle my storage needs (8+ drives), and also be able to run a VM for Windows and maybe another VM for Linux. I don’t game but I might dabble with passing through a GPU in the future to improve the VM performance. I don’t run a ton of docker applications currently but I’d probably get into that more with a new build. What Intel processors should I be looking at (or perhaps better stated, what should I be staying away from)? I want at least 8 cores. I like the idea of a dual CPU build, but it seems like the only motherboards that are available in any amount of options for this are socket LGA 2011 and 2011-3. Is this too old? If not, does it allow me to grow to higher performance CPUs in the future if I need them? Or is there some specific place to look for motherboards with more modern socket types that have dual options? What is the general consensus on the current sweet spot for Intel Xeons these days?
May 16, 20188 yr Think about 2011v3 i7 chips. I'm getting brilliant performance from my 5960X, which I paid £200 for. Combined with a decent X99 board, they're hard to beat. The newer 10 core chips are getting pretty cheap now too, as are X99 boards.
May 16, 20188 yr I got a E5-1650v3 for 190 € ( I believe it was a bargain :) substituting a E5-1620v4 because it has 2 more physical cores. but the v4 Win 10 VMs felt more snappy. I wonder if its the vt-d optimizations ? @HellDiverUK which 10 cores are you refering too / what price ? TIA Edited May 16, 20188 yr by unrateable
June 4, 20188 yr If you can go older, I recently picked up an E5-2680v2 (10 core, 20 thread, 2.8ghz) for $150 to $200. But it's an older lga 2011 server grade chip. A single chip scores 15000 on passmark (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2680+v2+%40+2.80GHz&id=2061) And dual chips about 23000. It's hard to beat that for under $400.
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