Xeon E31230Lv3 vs. Atom C2750 for virtualization

dZeus

Newcomer
the title says it all.

I'm desperately in need of upgrading my virtualization server. I'll be running many guest OSes at the same time. This will mostly be a mix of Windows flavours, Mac OS X 10.6 & 10.8, Linux, and some BSD and Solaris on the side.

Right now I'm looking at both the Xeon E31230Lv3 and the Atom C2750 for a compact and low power server.

Would the doubled core count of the Atom chip and higher frequency (2.4 GHz vs 1.8 GHz) prove to be more advantageous than the higher IPC and loads of instructions that are fully accelerated (AES-NI? SSE3/4?) available on the Xeon?
 
The Xeon will be faster, and for some things much faster. The IPC difference is really quite large and like you said when hardware accelerated instructions come into play there is no competition.

However the speed difference may not be all that noticeable depending on the type of storage you choose (SSDs really shine here).

Does the Xeon platform offer any advantages over the Atom one and vice versa? The Atom can address more memory for sure but 32GB is probably more than enough already.

What does the current server look like?
 
Would the doubled core count of the Atom chip and higher frequency (2.4 GHz vs 1.8 GHz) prove to be more advantageous than the higher IPC and loads of instructions that are fully accelerated (AES-NI? SSE3/4?) available on the Xeon?

I thought the Silvermont Atom cores in Avoton had ISA support up to AES-NI and SSE4.1/2. Or is the implementation of them in Silvermont not as fully-fledged as Haswell?


Here are some benchmarks comparing the E3-1230 V3 and C2750 (and other CPUs):
http://www.servethehome.com/Server-...8-core-avoton-rangeley-benchmarks-fast-power/
 
If anyone doubted how much faster the new Atom architecture is compared to previous gen, just have a quick glance at the benchmarks over there. You can even choose to ignore the multithreaded ones and focus only on the single thread tests -- new Atom is amazingly good.

But if you really need the performance, the Haswell Xeon "U" series will be faster overall, of course while ignoring the substantial power difference.
 
Yup new Atom is astonishingly better. I am blown away by the CPU power of the 2W version in my Venue 8. I have even been messing with Virtualbox on it and running XP.

Regarding its AESNI, I haven't benched it but the Silvermont thread in the processor forum says it is definitely slower than that of the big chips.
 
Bay Trail is amazing. I swear the Z3740 in my Asus T100 is a small miracle. It pretty much negates the need for low end big socket desktop CPUs, which I suppose is why Intel will be using it in future Celerons :)

However the bigger chips still have their place, and in this environment I think you'd be better served by the Xeon.
 
Bay Trail is amazing. I swear the Z3740 in my Asus T100 is a small miracle. It pretty much negates the need for low end big socket desktop CPUs, which I suppose is why Intel will be using it in future Celerons :)

However the bigger chips still have their place, and in this environment I think you'd be better served by the Xeon.

Interesting that you recommend the Xeon. When extrapolating the servethehome.com benchmark data, the 1230Lv3 (1.8 vs. 3.3 GHz for the benchmarked E3-1230v3)) shouldn't be that much faster for generic usage than the Avaton.

Another big concern for me with is that I'm intent on buying a mini-ITX formfactor motherboard. I haven't been able to find a mini-itx board for Xeon that sports 4 DIMM slots. The Asrock board with Avaton has that, allowing for double the RAM that the Xeon boards allow for.

note that I'm not decided on my choice, and I'd love to hear compelling arguments why to chose one over the other.
 
Interesting that you recommend the Xeon. When extrapolating the servethehome.com benchmark data, the 1230Lv3 (1.8 vs. 3.3 GHz for the benchmarked E3-1230v3)) shouldn't be that much faster for generic usage than the Avaton.

The Xeon has Turbo up to 2.6GHz. It will be a fair bit faster.

Another big concern for me with is that I'm intent on buying a mini-ITX formfactor motherboard. I haven't been able to find a mini-itx board for Xeon that sports 4 DIMM slots. The Asrock board with Avaton has that, allowing for double the RAM that the Xeon boards allow for.

That's why I recommend you look at the whole platform offerings before making a decision. Things like that might matter more than outright CPU performance. :smile:
 
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