Dual Xeons worth it over my 2600k? Wasting money?

[boles]

Need some advice to see if i am wasting money before i make a move to upgrade my current machine. My current machine is primarily used for work but i occasionally do some light gaming. My job requires me to run about 3 or 4 virtual machines at any given time with VMware workstation. Mostly so i can run multiple SW development environments that connect over VPN to various client networks.

I am currently running:
- i7 2600k
- 16g ram
- 240g Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe (OS and small storage)
- 128g Crucial RealSSD C300 ( holds virtual machine hard disks )
- ASUS P8P67 PRO
- 1Tb hd for long term storage

Recently my setup seems like it isnt fast enough and I want more speed. I am thinking of building or buying a dual xeon (or AMD) setup with more ram to gain some more performance. I am looking at CPU charts and the 2600k isnt at the top but it isnt at the bottom so i am wondering if the upgrade would really be worth it.

I am open to other ideas but be aware i run a 30" monitor @ 2560x1600 so offloading VMs to another machine doesnt give me the full screen desktop that i want.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Dual socket motherboards and Xeons don't come anywhere close to cheap. I'd recommend looking into a socket 2011 solution. Something like the 3930k. That will give you two additional cores (4 additional threads) and 8 memory slots for lots of ram.

You could use something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116492
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157289
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233263
for under a grand.

Likely a better bang/buck than a dual socket system.

 

[tweakboy]

Depends if your a video editor or run a DAW then the dual xeons be worth it. As for gaming it will do nothing..... gl

 

[tynopik]

i really really really doubt that you are cpu bound

more likely you are RAM or IO bound

load up with 32gb of ram and maybe try a second SSD to help separate out the load

look at task manager to be sure, but i really bet more ram would do wonders

I am open to other ideas but be aware i run a 30" monitor @ 2560x1600 so offloading VMs to another machine doesnt give me the full screen desktop that i want.

vmware let's you connect to VMs running on another machine and treat it as if it was running locally, maybe something to consider

 

[boles]

i really really really doubt that you are cpu bound

more likely you are RAM or IO bound

load up with 32gb of ram and maybe try a second SSD to help separate out the load

look at task manager to be sure, but i really bet more ram would do wonders



vmware let's you connect to VMs running on another machine and treat it as if it was running locally, maybe something to consider

already running 2nd SSD dedicated for VMs. As far as the vmware feature you are talking about, what exactly is it?

OVerLoRDI: Thanks for the recommendation and agree dual is not cheap however if i am gonna spend a grand on new mb, cpu, ram combo what is another 700 for an additional processor. For me i have to remember this is work and i can write off costs and if it saves me time each week then it makes me money in the long run.

 

[podspi]

I think tynopik meant get another SSD and spread your VMs out between SSDs.

Unless these are high utilization VMs, chances are you are not CPU-bound.

 

[tynopik]

As far as the vmware feature you are talking about, what exactly is it?

http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/v...desktop_connection-virtual_machine,2-266.html

 

[tynopik]

Unless these are high utilization VMs, chances are you are not CPU-bound.

I'm having trouble imagining how he's pegging more than 2 VMs at once if they are all development environments

perhaps the VMs aren't setup correctly and don't have enough ram or virtual cpus allocated to them

 

[BrightCandle]

First things first you need to know why its going slow. A very crude measure but an effective one is to open task manager, then resource manager and when it goes sluggish look at the CPU and hard drive charts as well as memory usage.

If your CPU isn't above 90% then I doubt Xeons will help at all because what they mainly bring is more cores. More cores only helps if you can utilise all the cores you have.

 

[itsmydamnation]

16gb isn't enough, on my esxi host i have 8 VMs running,

2 win7 ( 1 with visual studio)
1 server 2k3
3 XP
1 ubuntu
1 F5 BGP-IP

im not doing heaps right now but:
current CPU usage 3821 MHZ
current memory usage 18843 MB

VM's chew memory more then anything else

 

[djgandy]

Without doing further analysis it is not possible to say for definite what the bottleneck is but I would echo what many here have said. It is probably the RAM, VM's love ram and 16GB is really not that much for 4 VM's.

What kind of dev environments and O/S's are you running?

 

[boles]

i have used task manager, resource manager and all cores on cpu never spike over 80%. i think HT would mean they really wouldnt ever hit that level.

The dev env are a mix of win xp and win 7 running visual studio. Each is used to do builds for specific clients and my main dev is done on my host pc.

I agree that ram is low as each vm uses 2.5g and total of 10 of the 16. But the distribution of ram to each vm is enough because they never hit 75% ram usage. Each VM is setup to have 2 cpus and 2 cores (vm sees 4) but i have no idea how VMware manages that under the covers.


maybe i am chasing performance that just doesnt exist outside of things like ram disks...

 

[BrightCandle]

OK so you are fairly CPU heavy but still unlikely dual cores would net much. A 6 core sb-e would mean that the >50% usage would be on a real core not a ht core so there is some potential performance there depending on how often it peaks above 50%. 12+ real cores however doesn't look like you need just yet.

There is the possibility that each of the VMs is IO bound however. When you virtualise io a lot of performance is lost and for java a VM can be 1/10th the speed of native while still being on the same machine and drive. Ssds help but the VMs really can't utilise it all that well. You can do some basic crystal disk mark checks in the VMs and native to confirm how much you are loosing.

For compilation we are normally dominated by two things, hard drive 4k seeks and CPU performance, and normally single threaded CPU performance depending on the compilers capabilities. Its these you will want to check now we know you aren't technically running out of ram and paging.

 

[tynopik]

OK so you are fairly CPU heavy

I think you misunderstood what he said

 

[tynopik]

maybe i am chasing performance that just doesnt exist outside of things like ram disks...

what exactly feels slow? when do you notice it?

 

[Gunbuster]

Look up if Vmware uses VT-D that is locked out on K chips. If people are saying that gives a good boost look into switching to a non K if you don't overclock.

 

[BrightCandle]

I think you misunderstood what he said

there are two obvious interpretations that I can think of:
1) Only 1 core is spiking ti 80% at any one time (less than 12% total utilisation)
or
2) All cores are spiking to 80% and hence 80% utilisation.

I went with (2) because (1) isn't a very useful categorisation, but it may well be the case.

However in both cases the CPUs aren't being maxed out which suggests an IO bottleneck so its the next trace to look at.

 

[tynopik]

there are two obvious interpretations that I can think of:
1) Only 1 core is spiking ti 80% at any one time (less than 12% total utilisation)
or
2) All cores are spiking to 80% and hence 80% utilisation.

I went with (2) because (1) isn't a very useful categorisation, but it may well be the case.

He didn't say they average 80%, he said they NEVER go above 80%

I would interpret that to mean they could generally be idling, but even under his highest load (running multiple compiles simultaneously or something) they never go above 80%

Spiking the cpu load every once in a while is no trick at all. Now if he was CONTINUOUSLY running at 80%, then yeah, that would be a heck of a load.

But that's not what I got out of it.

However in both cases the CPUs aren't being maxed out which suggests an IO bottleneck so its the next trace to look at.

yeah, he hasn't said exactly how it feels slow, but i'm 99% sure more memory will solve his woes

 

[zephyrprime]

I can't say for certain but as a software developer myself, I'd say it'd probably be worth it to go dual socket.

I've worked with VM's before and they are slow. Going to dual sockets may not be a huge performance gain unless you are compiling multiple things simultaneously but since the bill rate for software developers is high, it doesn't take much in the way of productivity gains to justify an expensive machine. Just getting a few percent more productive is enough to justify the cost of a dual socket machine.

I would do these things in order or cost effectiveness in order to get the best performance:

1. Spread out your VMs between your SSDs.
2. Get 32GB
3. Buy more monitors (very useful. I recommend the auria 2560x1440 at microcenter if you cannot afford more 30" monitors)
4. Buy a dual socket machine.

Also, no matter what you do, a VM is a lot slower than native execution. You may want to consider just buying multiple computers.

 

[Gunbuster]

Also, no matter what you do, a VM is a lot slower than native execution. You may want to consider just buying multiple computers.

What? I have a bunch of VM's on Hyper-V at work and there is no noticeable difference. Building out a Server 2008 R2 VM on my Windows 8 Pro laptop and the VM is super fast...

The CPU and IO penalty of being a VM is under 10% these days. Maybe that is "a lot" to you...

 

[tweakboy]

i really really really doubt that you are cpu bound

more likely you are RAM or IO bound

load up with 32gb of ram and maybe try a second SSD to help separate out the load

look at task manager to be sure, but i really bet more ram would do wonders



vmware let's you connect to VMs running on another machine and treat it as if it was running locally, maybe something to consider

Yes my gosh what is wrong with you LOL jk, man up dude get 64GB RAM hehehe giddy!