As far as I know, the only main reason to have a high clock speed CPU in a server is for game servers, at least for me. (And also for a router, but that doesont really apply here).
My basic question is this:
- Xeon 2690 v2
- 10 cores, 3Ghz Base, 3.6 Boost
- 2667 v2
- 8 Cores, 3.3Ghz Base, 4 Boost
- 2643 v2
- 6 Cores, 3.5Ghz Base, 3.8 Boost
Which should I get? All 3 have a 130W tdp.
For background this is for a new server I want to build alongside two I already have, which are in a proxmox cluster. This new one will join them.
One of the servers has Dual 2670 v2s and the other has a single 1230 v2.
A 2670 only has a 2.5 base and 2.2 boost, which is why im wondering if having another server with less cores but a higher clock speed would be beneficial for certain tasks.
Currently I run things like plex, nextcloud, homeassisstant etc, and game servers.
For many applications, more clock speed is often preferable than more core counts. However, the apps you listed can actually benefits from more core counts, so think choosing a cpu with more core is better in this case.
What about something like a NAS, would that benefit from higher clock speeds?
My rule of thumb when deciding between more single thread performance or more core counts:
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if the server is going to be fully utilized (regularly hitting 100% CPU usage most of the time instead of on rare occasions), I’ll choose high core counts other high single thread performance. The reason is in a highly utilized servers, there will be a backlog of pending tasks because the CPU is busy, and CPU with more cores can clear those queued tasks faster.
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if the server is mostly idle (<10% CPU usage most of the time), I’ll choose processor with high single thread performance. There is no backlog of queued tasks here fighting for execution priority, so how fast your sporadic task completed will depend on how fast the CPU executes that task so it can wait for another (idle).
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if the application that will be hosted in the server can fully utilizes parallelism (e.g. fluid modeling, transcoding, compilation, etc), then I’ll choose more core counts.
So, using the rules above, assuming the NAS will be mostly idle, I’ll use processor with higher single thread performance over higher core counts.
I went with the 8 core because it’ll be the only cpu in the system for now so 6 cores seems like too little. The 8 core also has a higher boost clock.
Thanks for helping, that cleared things up.
According to this page, the 2667 v2 has higher single thread rating (~6%), probably due to higher boost speed: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/2084vs2154/Intel-Xeon-E5-2643-v2-vs-Intel-Xeon-E5-2667-v2
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It depends on your usage. If you are going general purpose I would aim from the middle ground.
If your running loads of services that scale horizontally go for more cores. If you have services that scale vertically go for speed
