Pentium G4400 the new ultimate low cost VM white box CPU?

[mxnerd]

http://ark.intel.com/products/88179/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G4400-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz

VT-x and VT-d support.

4096x2304@60Hz

max 64GB ram

All for $64 only.


If hardware pass-through works perfectly, you can build the ultimate low cost workstation/server all-in-one system. Sweet!

 

[dark zero]

It could be beyond godly on Sandy Bridge era... But sadly now is no longer the ultimate chip. However is by far one of the best avaliable

 

[zir_blazer]

Remember that for VM usage chances are that you want MOAR Cores and Threads, and it is merely a 2C/2T. If you need low CPU performance, yes, it does everything. VT-d opens a lot of possibilities.

 

[pantsaregood]

Skylake decoupled the BCLK from system clocks. Does that mean you could overclock this thing?

I'd love to delid one of these and overvolt it until it bursts into flames.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Remember that for VM usage chances are that you want MOAR Cores and Threads, and it is merely a 2C/2T. If you need low CPU performance, yes, it does everything. VT-d opens a lot of possibilities.

For any kind of not-performance-critical learning lab type scenario, or for a not-particularly-powerful home server situation, a dual core Celeron or Pentium with big-core single-threaded performance and ECC support is a pretty decent little CPU for cheap. Mine handles a half dozen lightly-provisioned-and-lightly-loaded VMs just fine.

Supporting hardware pass-through is icing on the cake. It looks pretty good to me. :biggrin:

 

[Zstream]

For any kind of not-performance-critical learning lab type scenario, or for a not-particularly-powerful home server situation, a dual core Celeron or Pentium with big-core single-threaded performance and ECC support is a pretty decent little CPU for cheap. Mine handles a half dozen lightly-provisioned-and-lightly-loaded VMs just fine.

Supporting hardware pass-through is icing on the cake. It looks pretty good to me. :biggrin:

Oh, hell no! I would never attempt to use a lab based on a dual core processor.

 

[mxnerd]

In a home lab setup, most of the time maybe only one or 2 VM are active.

If you use SSD, and have enough RAM, I don't see how dual core CPU can't handle it.

 

[Zstream]

In a home lab setup, most of the time maybe only one or 2 VM are active.

If you use SSD, and have enough RAM, I don't see how dual core CPU can't handle it.

Guess we define labs differently

Mine is four quads with 96 gb of memory

 

[mxnerd]

96GB? Wow.

Mine is only 32GB.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Guess we define labs differently

Mine is four quads with 96 gb of memory

It's not the size, it's how you use it.

Or, at least, what you use it for.

Building up VMs for doing VMWare or Cisco certification exams, etc., doesn't take much CPU or RAM. (You just need to do the setup, not stress test it.)

Same with initial development of server backends for web/mobile application development, or web development in general. (Although you eventually want some beefy hardware for scale testing. But you can rent that from Amazon for the time you need it.)

Most home server/automation duties will coexist fine on a dualie as well, unless you're doing something pretty extreme.

Yes, at work I can measure RAM in TB and disk in PB. But most of the time I don't need to.

 

[dclive]

It's not the size, it's how you use it.

Or, at least, what you use it for.

Building up VMs for doing VMWare or Cisco certification exams, etc., doesn't take much CPU or RAM. (You just need to do the setup, not stress test it.)

Same with initial development of server backends for web/mobile application development, or web development in general. (Although you eventually want some beefy hardware for scale testing. But you can rent that from Amazon for the time you need it.)

Most home server/automation duties will coexist fine on a dualie as well, unless you're doing something pretty extreme.

Yes, at work I can measure RAM in TB and disk in PB. But most of the time I don't need to.

Agree. My setup is 3 16GB NUC-type machines, and 1 Synology box with 2 SSD-based NFS shares; no local storage; USB boot, ESXi 5.5. It works great.

If I were recommending for a newbie, a G4400 with (key benefit here!) 64GB of RAM would be a great choice. It's very rare I care about CPU; I always wish I could cram more RAM into these little boxes.

I've got a few HP 32GB servers with 4-core Xeons, but I don't want the noise and power use...

 

[cbn]

http://ark.intel.com/products/88179/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G4400-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz

VT-x and VT-d support.

4096x2304@60Hz

max 64GB ram

All for $64 only.


If hardware pass-through works perfectly, you can build the ultimate low cost workstation/server all-in-one system. Sweet!

I noticed Pentium also got AES-NI (which was previously only available on Core i3 and greater for the Haswell generation).

And the G4500 (one SKU above the G4400) is the first Pentium to get a GT2 iGPU.

 

[mxnerd]

Agree. My setup is 3 16GB NUC-type machines, and 1 Synology box with 2 SSD-based NFS shares; no local storage; USB boot, ESXi 5.5. It works great.

If I were recommending for a newbie, a G4400 with (key benefit here!) 64GB of RAM would be a great choice. It's very rare I care about CPU; I always wish I could cram more RAM into these little boxes.

I've got a few HP 32GB servers with 4-core Xeons, but I don't want the noise and power use...

+1

I hate heat and noise.

 

[PingSpike]

Yeah, I mentioned I was kind of excited about this in the other thread. I'm not to interested in changing to DDR4 memory at this point though. I have a lot of DDR3. But you used to be looking at a $180+ cpu just to get started with vt-d in Intel land. AMD still has the cheaper option with the crappiest FM2 cpu supporting that feature as well as DDR3 with normal voltages, but at $64 its an option to go with an Intel setup and stay cheap. I'm not sure how the G4400 stacks up against the $80 quads on that socket but its probably better on power consumption at any rate.

Unfortunately, AM1 doesn't supported Amd-Vi. I've seen nothing to indicate its even possible.

 

[Chicken76]

http://ark.intel.com/products/88179/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G4400-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz

VT-x and VT-d support.

4096x2304@60Hz

max 64GB ram

All for $64 only.


If hardware pass-through works perfectly, you can build the ultimate low cost workstation/server all-in-one system. Sweet!

Sure, the CPU is great for a home lab, especially at that price, but what motherboard would you pair it with, to keep it low-cost?

 

[ALIVE]

Sure, the CPU is great for a home lab, especially at that price, but what motherboard would you pair it with, to keep it low-cost?

is the ecc of the ram supported by the server chipsets only??'

because if you also want ecc then you may find cheap cpu but expensive workstation motherboard but if you get that motherboard you can buy a xeon e3
lol

 

[zir_blazer]

The question is: When you will actually be able to buy the Pentium G4400?

And yes, chances are that you need a Server class Motherboard (C Series Chipset) for ECC support, not your typical Desktop ones. I think that not even Q Series has ECC support at all. This is worse because Intel only lets you use the Processor IGP with the highest end C Chipset (In Haswell it was C226, C222 and C224 can't). So basically, you are going to put a low end Processor in a rather expensive Motherboard if you want to actually use all its features.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Sure, the CPU is great for a home lab, especially at that price, but what motherboard would you pair it with, to keep it low-cost?

The motherboard in the server in my signature, or something similar. Bought it as a refurb, $120. Supports all the goodies, but I can't use Vt-d because the CPU doesn't support it.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

is the ecc of the ram supported by the server chipsets only??'

because if you also want ecc then you may find cheap cpu but expensive workstation motherboard but if you get that motherboard you can buy a xeon e3
lol

Just because your motherboard CAN support a much faster CPU doesn't mean you have the budget for it. You're still talking about a ~$150-200 difference between the Pentiums and the E3s. If your application or use case is better served by 32GBs RAM and a Pentium than by 16GB RAM and a Xeon, you'll get the first option.

 

[ALIVE]

Just because your motherboard CAN support a much faster CPU doesn't mean you have the budget for it. You're still talking about a ~$150-200 difference between the Pentiums and the E3s. If your application or use case is better served by 32GBs RAM and a Pentium than by 16GB RAM and a Xeon, you'll get the first option.

well i was talking form the aspect to keep things balanced
if you want ecc you need the c chipset to support it and that will mean an expensive mainboard. so anyway the cheap solution is already out of the picture.

if only intel made another chipset to build a cheaper mainboard and have i3 or pentium with the ecc support.

but putting a cheap processor to an expensive motherboard i consider it unbalanced building yes you can do it
but you can also use hight end graphic card with an atom lol

 

[dave_the_nerd]

well i was talking form the aspect to keep things balanced
if you want ecc you need the c chipset to support it and that will mean an expensive mainboard. so anyway the cheap solution is already out of the picture.

if only intel made another chipset to build a cheaper mainboard and have i3 or pentium with the ecc support.

but putting a cheap processor to an expensive motherboard i consider it unbalanced building yes you can do it
but you can also use hight end graphic card with an atom lol

Most of the people on this forum get their ideas of "balance" from gaming rigs, where that means pairing a CPU/GPU that cost $BUDGET and don't bottleneck each other much, and then getting a bunch of other stuff (RAM, HDDs) that hopefully won't hurt framerate much.

But system "balance" is one of those things that means different things to different people, depending on their chosen application. A GTX Titan and an Atom would be a killer Folding@Home cruncher, for instance. Or a transcoding workhorse. Anything you can GPGPU with, really.

A Pentium with expensive ECC RAM would make sense if you have an application (like a file server or a low-end SAN controller or, heck, even a lightly-loaded database server) where data integrity was important but you were rarely CPU-bottlenecked. Additional money spent on CPU in that case is a waste.

 

[zir_blazer]

Unbuffered ECC RAM wasn't much more expensive than regular Unbuffered last time I checked. The problem is that Motherboards with the C Chipset aren't exactly cheap, so there goes a big part of the budget.

Worse, you need the most expensive one, C226, if you want to use the IGP on Haswell platform. All Desktop Chipsets can do so, even budget oriented H81, but on the Server/Workstation platform it is at a premium.

 

[ALIVE]

Most of the people on this forum get their ideas of "balance" from gaming rigs, where that means pairing a CPU/GPU that cost $BUDGET and don't bottleneck each other much, and then getting a bunch of other stuff (RAM, HDDs) that hopefully won't hurt framerate much.

But system "balance" is one of those things that means different things to different people, depending on their chosen application. A GTX Titan and an Atom would be a killer Folding@Home cruncher, for instance. Or a transcoding workhorse. Anything you can GPGPU with, really.

A Pentium with expensive ECC RAM would make sense if you have an application (like a file server or a low-end SAN controller or, heck, even a lightly-loaded database server) where data integrity was important but you were rarely CPU-bottlenecked. Additional money spent on CPU in that case is a waste.

okey but we can still agree because of the motherboard ecc support is not cheap to implement so pentium or i3 brings some features from the xeon line depending what one you want you will not end up to a chip solution

 

[mxnerd]

G4400 will be in stock on Nov 2nd
http://www.shopblt.com/item/intel-p.../intel_bx80662g4400~b1g8835.html#Availability

G4500 will be Oct 19th
http://www.shopblt.com/item/intel-p.../intel_bx80662g4500~b1g8834.html#Availability

 

[ALIVE]

Unbuffered ECC RAM wasn't much more expensive than regular Unbuffered last time I checked. The problem is that Motherboards with the C Chipset aren't exactly cheap, so there goes a big part of the budget.

Worse, you need the most expensive one, C226, if you want to use the IGP on Haswell platform. All Desktop Chipsets can do so, even budget oriented H81, but on the Server/Workstation platform it is at a premium.

well if you do not need what c226 offers you can go for a cheaper chipset and just throw a low end graphic card in the mix and end up saving money

and since ecc unbuffered cost the same as normal ram
it would be nice if intel offered that as a default feature to increase the reliability of the system