What CPU should I get?

[busmaster11]

Okay long time member but I've been away for a while, thought I'd come back and ask some of the most qualified people to answer this question.

Running a C2D 8400 oc to 3.6 GHZ and 4 GB ram, win7 32bit(yes I know about the ram limitation) and play the occasional FPS on my radeon 4870... but mainly will be used for vmware virtualization. Right now my VMs run very slow. I'm wondering if its the ram limitation but this is with 1-2 VMs running only.

I'm not in a hurry so taking the next 3-6 months into consideration and that my natural predilection is to always get the best bang for the buck, I need some ideas. I have no clue if something worthwhile will be coming out in 3-6 months, so here are my thoughts:

1. 1156 based i7
2. Phenom 2 x6 and i5 (tied)

Ideally I'd like a 6 core I7 but my budget for cpu/mobo will be under 400. I know virtualization is more ram-intensive then cpu intensive, so I will be equipping this build with a good 120gb SSD, 8-12 GB ram and win7 64 bit.

Any thoughts will be appreciated.

 

[Rifter]

Well given that you are going to be waiting 3-6 months waiting for SB seems like a good idea. I would go with at least 8GB of ram if running multiple VM's, dependign on how much memory you are burning up now going with 12 or 16GB might be a better idea. Disk I/O can also play a large role in VM performance, might be worth buying a small SSD for each VM to run off of.

 

[busmaster11]

Well given that you are going to be waiting 3-6 months waiting for SB seems like a good idea. I would go with at least 8GB of ram if running multiple VM's, dependign on how much memory you are burning up now going with 12 or 16GB might be a better idea. Disk I/O can also play a large role in VM performance, might be worth buying a small SSD for each VM to run off of.

Do we know anything more about SB's release date other than q1 2011? I've read the AT review on it and it seems like it should be significantly faster... I just don't want to see 300$ motherboards and the integrated graphics don't sound like my cup of tea either...

The SSDs are a good idea, hopefully one can find a 120GB Sandforce2 for 150 or so by Christmas.

 

[RussianSensation]

Do we know anything more about SB's release date other than q1 2011? I've read the AT review on it and it seems like it should be significantly faster... I just don't want to see 300$ motherboards and the integrated graphics don't sound like my cup of tea either...

The SSDs are a good idea, hopefully one can find a 120GB Sandforce2 for 150 or so by Christmas.

SB should launch 1st-2nd week of January. Also, since Socket 1155 is a "mid-range" replacement, most motherboards should be $100-200 range (think P55 replacement).

I also think an SSD is a good idea (maybe you can hold out until SandForce 2000 controller or Intel Gen 3).

 

[ShawnD1]

I'll go against the crowd and say the SSD is not the best idea. Personally, what seems to make the biggest difference in hard drive performance is to put things on different drives. Like instead of buying a $150 SSD that is really really tiny, buy 2 separate $75 hard drives and spread things out.
I'm doing this with my current system and it seems to work really good. C drive is just Windows and games (because games are not accessed as often as everything else). User profiles, programs, and common data are on my F drive. It's amazing what a difference it makes.

SSD is still faster, but I'm soured on them because there never seems to be enough room and I end up spanning things over conventional hard drives anyway.

 

[nenforcer]

I think your choices are either a Phenom 2 X6 / Socket AM3 now, or wait until SB and get a 1155 Core i2500 or whatever they are being called.

The Core i5 / Core i7 1156 based boards are not a good upgrade path here in mid October.

 

[busmaster11]

I'll go against the crowd and say the SSD is not the best idea. Personally, what seems to make the biggest difference in hard drive performance is to put things on different drives. Like instead of buying a $150 SSD that is really really tiny, buy 2 separate $75 hard drives and spread things out.
I'm doing this with my current system and it seems to work really good. C drive is just Windows and games (because games are not accessed as often as everything else). User profiles, programs, and common data are on my F drive. It's amazing what a difference it makes.

SSD is still faster, but I'm soured on them because there never seems to be enough room and I end up spanning things over conventional hard drives anyway.

So why do separate hard drives make things go faster when the speeds are relatively comparable? I've always done this myself but since VMs are not static data they need to be on the fastest media anyway. I'll have a 2TB mirrored hdd volume, but I thought what I'd do is get a 120GB SSD and make it my boot drive, and it'd be big enough for me to devote 10GB per VM that I have.

 

[busmaster11]

I think your choices are either a Phenom 2 X6 / Socket AM3 now, or wait until SB and get a 1155 Core i2500 or whatever they are being called.

The Core i5 / Core i7 1156 based boards are not a good upgrade path here in mid October.

I never understood the whole "upgrade path" thing. Everytime I upgrade a cpu, I upgrade the mobo and ram and build my wife a hand-me-down.

 

[cubeless]

^... every time i build for possible upgrade path they change something enough that i end up doing this, too...

just build the hottest box your budget allows, and let the chips fall where they may...

but i fall on the side of liking ssd's more as a boot drive on systems that i use for simple computing... they make things snappier and quicker booting is nice... for a gaming rig they just don't have the same value...

 

[ShawnD1]

So why do separate hard drives make things go faster when the speeds are relatively comparable? I've always done this myself but since VMs are not static data they need to be on the fastest media anyway. I'll have a 2TB mirrored hdd volume, but I thought what I'd do is get a 120GB SSD and make it my boot drive, and it'd be big enough for me to devote 10GB per VM that I have.

What are you running on these virtual machines? Windows Vista and Windows 7 are each 20gb to install. Ubuntu Linux was about 10gb last time I installed that (about a year ago).

Anyway, the reason for separate hard drives for speed is because you need extra hard drives anyway. There's no way anyone can fit everything on and SSD. My games folder alone is over 300gb, and I don't buy games very often. My first SSD was a 30gb value drive, and I found out pretty quick that was a bad idea because the thing was 90% full when all I did was install Windows and Microsoft Office. The thing didn't even have enough room for a swap file or a hibernation file (8gb each). It was nice and snappy, but it didn't seem worth it. Once the system is up and running, the SSD makes no difference at all for most tasks because programs and data remain in the memory after they have been launched. My computer at work is slow as hell to boot and AutoCAD feels like it takes 5 minutes to start after a fresh reboot, but every time after that it launches in about 2 seconds due to Windows XP's use of prefetch.

SSD is perfect when your task involves fetching very small bits of random data. Anandtech's forum database should definitely be on a SSD. A dedicated normal drive is a much cheaper alternative if your hard drive intense task is continuous, such as saving raw video at 30mb/s. A dedicated drive only costs $40-50 and even the worst motherboard can support about 6 of them. SSD is the absolute most expensive option, they're about $100 minimum, and you will still need multiple drives simply because the SSD is not big enough to store all of your data.

 

[darckhart]

purely for us desktop VMers, i think that as long as your cpu supports hardware assisted VT and you have about 2 gb physical ram per VM, and you have LOW I/O needs, then you should be ok just dropping in more ram.

i run 2 winxp VMs on a w7x64 system (e8400 stock, 8gb ram, onboard gf9300) using vmware workstation. each VM's virtual disk is on its own physical 7200 rpm hard drive and i experience no slowdowns beyond the expected.

hth

 

[busmaster11]

purely for us desktop VMers, i think that as long as your cpu supports hardware assisted VT and you have about 2 gb physical ram per VM, and you have LOW I/O needs, then you should be ok just dropping in more ram.

i run 2 winxp VMs on a w7x64 system (e8400 stock, 8gb ram, onboard gf9300) using vmware workstation. each VM's virtual disk is on its own physical 7200 rpm hard drive and i experience no slowdowns beyond the expected.

hth

I have a hunch mine are way more ram limited then cpu limited, like you allude to. the 3.6GHZ C2D is no slouch. But I'll have a Snow leopard and two win2008 servers and 1-2 win7 workstations running. Seeing as how the cost of ddr2 is no less then ddr3 and I don't want to invest in older tech, I'm leaning toward the SB route. Thanks!