CPU Performance

[MikieZ]

Greetings:

I am putting together a Dell server and have a question regarding CPU performance.

In regards to CPU throughput which type of processor configuration is faster; dual quad processors or a single 8 core processor?

The CPUs in mind are the Intel Xeon E5-2643 (quad, 3.30Ghhz) x2 or a single Intel Xeon E5-2690 (8 core, 2.90Ghz).

Do dual processor mobos behave somewhat like a raid configuration as far as throughput to and from memory? In other words would 2 CPU sockets have a higher throughput to memory than a single socket?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

If I am understanding the nature of your question the answer is yes. If you look at the board you will see that there banks of memory for each processor. So when you put memory on the board you will want to put memory in for each processor over just loading it up for the first processor (i.e. the first processor has 4 slots for memory around it and the second processor has 4 more memory slots around it). So if I only put a single processor on the board than I don't want to put any memory in the slots for the second processor.

Now since each processor has it own memory dedicated to it the bus from the memory to the processor is not shared between the processors.

 

[k1114]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e5-2687w-benchmark-review,3149-5.html

 

[MikieZ]

Hi Christian -

Thanks for such a quick response.

If I understand this then, theoretically speaking, if I have a dual socket mobo and processors from the same architectural family (e.g. Intel Xeon E5-26xx family) running at the same speed, two 4 core processors would out perform a single 8 core processor?

The reason I ask this is that the software that will be running on this system is licensed according to how many physical processors it has. I would like to save some money by running one processor rather than two if that isn’t going to kill performance. Any thoughts?

Thanks again!

 

[k1114]

What software is it? I've never heard of 2 license of the same software for 1 pc. You only need 1 instance open and a multithreaded software will use both cpus.

Also 2x E5-2643 beats a single E5-2690 because of cpu performance. Memory bandwidth is only a minor role. But the 2643 costs the same as the 2640 (6cores) which would be better performance assuming it's multithreaded. Even the 2630 would be better.

 

[MikieZ]

Thanks for the feedback k114,

This server will run VMWare (which is licensed per processor) and will host a Cisco network control system (NCS).