How much better is better with CPUs?

[abatterbury]

I'm looking to make a upgrade of about 300 workstations for my company (eventually over 1000), and I've observed that CPU has been limiting. We often run multiple, concurrent VMs (as well as many other programs) and hit 90+% CPU well before we run out of RAM. The switch to Win 8.1 may have been the biggest culprit.

With a new CPU, say 1-2 years incrementally better, will I see this improve significantly, or is it likely to be a drop in the bucket in this scenario? In layman's terms, if I can run 100 programs concurrently now, should I expect to be able to run 101? 110? 200?

Our current CPUs are Core i5-4590s, but I'm not sure what the new ones will be (something similar, just newer), so I'd also appreciate any practical info on how to benchmark them as well. Please keep it only moderately technical - I've been in software QA for 11 years, but my degree is biochem 😉

 

[Darkbreeze]

The only way you're likely to see any significant increase in applications capability is switching to i7's with an additional 4 thread capability per CPU or an E3 Xeon that has the same additional threads. Full E5-Xeons or Extreme i7's would be better, but much more expensive. With the Core i7 or E3 Xeon you can likely use the same motherboards you're currently running with your 4590's.

 

[a39232]

I would go with a i7-4790 would probably be the best im not very familiar with Xeon server processors however.

 

[Darkbreeze]

The E3 Xeon 1241v3 is exactly the same as the i7-4790, minus the integrated graphics and plus ECC memory support, for about a hundred bucks less than the 4790. Multiply that by however many, I think he said 1000 units, and that's a $100,000 savings. If those machines need iGPU support, there are Xeons for that that are still less expensive, but not as much so.