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Survey; Intel Home Server CPU

F

fasterthanlight

Gawd
Joined
Nov 22, 2005
Messages
677
I am creating a "headless" server for Terabytes of movies to feed 3 other pc's and a 360. I had a Pentium D E2160 before and found it a little weak, even in just that environment.

Am I better off getting a Pentium 3.0Ghz or a slower C2D.

Budget is ~$200
 
There is no Pentium D E2160, just a Pentium Dual Core E2160.

A Pentium what 3.0Ghz? A 1.8Ghz Core2 architecture chip (E2160, E4300, E6300, E6320, etc) would most likely outperform a 3.0Ghz Pentium D, and will definitely outperform a Pentium 4 at 3.0Ghz.

For $200, your best bet is a Q6600 from Fry's or Microcenter.

Though, why would you need a quadcore for a Windows Home Server? How could an E2160 not be enough for a WHS? :confused:
 
It won't be WHS. It will be a Vista Ulitmate machine so I can have remote access, but I want to use the MCE functionality.

...yeah, I was a little confused too. There was a Pentium that was a dual core, then the Core Duo? (E2160?) I thought the nomenclature was different.

The E2160 was just really weak. Even though it was a dual core proc. I previously had a Pentium D that was 3.0Ghz and it ran better than the E2160. IMHO.

http://www.intel.com/Consumer/Learn...re-detail.htm?iid=learn_proc+pentium_notebook
 
What is this going to be used for? If this "server" will be doing what most other home servers do, whichis practicaly nothing except for file and print sharing, a quad core would be a huge waste. Even the lowest end dual cores will go largly unused, but at least you can get them for very cheap.
 
At stock speeds, the E2160 is good for a basic machine with light to medium multitasking. If you'd like to get more performance out of it, and you certainly can; you just need to OC it to 3Ghz, which is very easy. At anything above 2.5Ghz, it will certainly outperform any Pentium 4 or D at 3.0Ghz.

Core2 architecture chips greatly outperform their predecessor, netburst architecture chips, despite the much lower clock speeds. As you can see from these OLD reviews of the first Core2Duos, even a 1.8Ghz E6300 would outperform a Pentium Extreme Edition 965 3.7Ghz (netburst, Pentium D family).

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802&p=5

So not only do you get better performance with a Core2/Penitum Dual Core chip, you also get better efficiency, lower power consumption, and less heat production -- these things run so cool they can be OC'd to 1Ghz above their rated speed easily, on avg.

Even the E2160 performs good at stock speeds:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-e2160_8.html#sect1
... but OC'd, its even better...
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-e2160_14.html#sect0

Netburst architecture:
Pentium 4 s478
Pentium 4 LGA775
Pentium D LGA775

Core2 architecture:
Core2Duo LGA775
Pentium Dual Core LGA775
 
Those comparisons are informative. I had an 80GB HD hooked up to the board and moving through Vista and the 200+ movies on the second HDD was just slow. Not sure where the bottle neck was.

So what is the best combo board and cpu available on NewEgg right now for the money?
I need at least 6 SATA 3GB ports. I will have 4 TB drives on it.

Intel board, ~2.4 C2D, raptor main HDD?
Asus/Abit board, ~2.0 C2D, and Sata 7200rpm HDD?
 
Gigabyte boards have, in general, the most SATA ports, while there are a few others with 8 as well.

If you want a lot of SATA, I'd suggest the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R and if this is just a server, then an E2220 @ 2.4Ghz. If you need more performance out of it, it can easily reach 3Ghz, especially on that board with some DDR2-800 RAM.

Raptors aren't worth their price premium anymore, so don't bother with one unless you want a VRaptor -- even then, not really worth the price, IMO.

The bottleneck was most likely your HDDs. If you'd like to speed that up, go for a board with a PCI-E 16x or 8x slot that can be used for a RAID card, and pickup a Dell Perc5 or Areca 1210 off of eBay for some hardware RAID5 action, along with a bunch of SATA drives.
 
Intel boards are stable and reliable, but can't overclock unless its one of their enthusiast boards (read: $200+). And while they're still good, their mobo QA isn't as good as their CPU QA. I've had to RMA quite a few Intel retail boards... moreso than you'd expect.

The Gigabyte board I recommended is not only stable/reliable due to the intel chipset and Gigabyte's all solid caps, it can also OC the chip, should you need it. And trust me, these things are cake to OC and well worth the performance gains.

The HDD is still the slowest thing right now, so to get good speed, go for the WD6400AAKS. It transfers files faster than the older raptors, and gives you much more space for the money.
 
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