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Which processor is best for us?
GoSSDHosting
Member, Host Rep
Hello,
We have around 1300+ cpanel accounts on our server. Our current server is Dual Intel Xeon L5620 (2.3 GHz, 12 Cores & 24 threads). We have decided to move to a new SSD server but confused with what processor to go for.
We have two options in front of us:
Intel Xeon E3-1270 v6 (3.8 GHz, 4 cores 8 threads, 11184 Benchmark)
Dual Intel Xeon E5-2620 v2 (2.1 GHz, 12 cores 24 threads, 13337 Benchmark)
Both the servers will be configured with 2x 1 TB SSD & RAID 1 & 32 GB RAM.
Now we are stuck with deciding whether to go for higher clock speed or higher cores? Our main aim is to improve the server speed and resolve load issues which are slowing down our customer's websites.
Also, our present server CPU average usage is around 4-5 cores at normal times but crosses 10-12 cores during weekly backups or cpanel updates. There is no such issue with RAM until now on the server.
Note: e5 clock speed is lower than our present server i.e 2.1<2.3 Ghz
Which one would be best for us in such a situation? Any advice is much appreciated!
Comments
Dual E5 would be a better choice.
Honestly its all old hardware you are on but have you considered maybe just put ssd in server you have now, you want performance boost and if the cpu and ram is not issue then see how ssd upgrade goes??
if your load on the old server was as high as you say im thinking maybe the more cores would be better but then the E3 is much newer
Thank you for your suggestion! Our present server is 2.3GHz, Will we notice a slow down in speed if we go for e5 which is 2.1 GHz?
Your present server is over 10 years old, a lot of things changed between 56xx and E5 v2+ CPUs
Yes, the load goes high during some events like a backup. E3 is almost 2 times faster than e5 here but only the issue is with less no. of cores. Will, there be a problem if we go for e3 in our case?
Definitely, a point to note!
No.
Reasons: more modern, more cache, faster memory, etc.
Clock speed is but one factor and frankly not even the most important one.
Like said the E5 with more cores would be better in this use case in my opinion and its the exact CPU im using for my own cPanel servers
with that upgrade and the SSD upgrade you will indeed notice a huge performance difference
Thank you for your response! +1 to e5!
Both are pretty old CPUs by now.
But there was a HUGE advancement from Westmere to Xeon v2. Not so much from Xeon v2 to v6 though.
That's great! I guess we are very close to finding our answer with your response!
E3 would make your clients' sites faster, but E5 would provide more stability. Since you have that many cpanel accounts, E5 is probably the safer choice.
For 1000+ accounts I would definitely not use a 4 core cpu.
E3/E5... Wtf. You go dual xeon gold or platinum. Or better AMD threadripper.
Dual E5 - More cores is more important for web hosting than less cores with more speed. The E5s are more modern than your old CPUs and will give much better performance- Going to SSDs alone will improve your server performance significantly.
You can get some sense of performance from synthetic benchmarks like Passmark.
L5620 (dual) has a passmark of 8060 (all cores), and 1072, 8 usable cores in total.
E5-2620v2 (dual) has a passmark of 13,337 (all cores) and 1292 per core, 12 usable cores in total.
E3-1270 v6 has a passmark of 11,184 (all cores) and 2308 per core, 4 usable cores in total.
Either will be 30% faster, with the E3 being 100% faster for single threaded tasksl
The 1270v6 will also have faster ram that doesn't always seem to show up well with Passmark. Theres an eternal battle of "more cores" or "faster cores". In my experience 12 cores at 1300 passmark and 4 cores at 2400 passmark are going to work through roughly the same workload at the same pace. The E5 will be more upgradable (384+ ram), whereas the E3 is limited to (64? 128? gb ram) and the ram is more expensive.
I would prefer a faster E5 (2650v2+)... the E5-2620v2 vs E5-1270 is a bit of a wash if you dont plan to upgrade.
Q3 2013 (E5-2620v2) vs Q1 2017 (E5-1270v6). The E3 isn't that old.
How much RAM does your current server have?
Why compare single-processor and dual-processor configurations?
32GB only
@HBS since you are going for a new server do consider all the new INTEL vulnerabilities, may be get a AMD based server as once you apply those patches performance will affected badly