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Ryzen 9 3900X or multiple Xeon E5 - which is better?
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Ryzen 9 3900X or multiple Xeon E5 - which is better?

Say you're building a server where you will be hosting multiple VPS. Which configuration would you prefer?

Ryzen 9 3900X

  • No ECC Support
  • Single thread rating score 2929
  • Multiple thread rating 31,897
  • 12 cores
  • $589 retail price

Xeon E5-2620 v3 (x4)

  • ECC memory supported
  • Single thread rating score 1703
  • Multiple thread rating 9986 x 4 = 39,944
  • 6 cores x 4 = 24 cores
  • $84 retail price x 4 = $336

My question is why should I purchase a Ryzen when I can build a server with multiple Xeons offering better performance at a lower price? Or am I missing something here.

Appreciate your thoughts on this.

Comments

  • Single thread rating score 2929

    Single thread rating score 1703

    It all depends on what people want to use their server for, some workloads require ST performance while some require MT. This is a huge factor.

  • power usage, faster cpu speed, cpu bugs (spectre, meltdown, etc) ?

  • MikeAMikeA Member, Patron Provider
    edited November 2019

    Ryzen does support ECC if the board does. You're comparing an old server CPU to a brand new HEDT CPU. All depends on what kind of clients you're targeting.

    Thanked by 1seriesn
  • Not many applications can utilized many cores effectively. The best bet is ryzen especially when I have each core performance count.

  • Ryzen does support ECC if motherboard does. I am testing 3900X with ECC right now along with Ryzen 3600 and 3800X. Bloody beast of a cpu compared to Xeon E-2276G and E2288G I am comparing/testing as well. Ryzen with ECC FTW. You'd want to be using at least 5.3+ Linux Kernel to fully take advantage of Ryzen and EPYC zen2 cpus.

  • I didn't know that Ryzen supports ECC. That is good. If they're better than Xeon E series, then that presents a pretty compelling case. And of course, the single core performance is really good so a 1 vCore VPS on this machine will be quite fast.

  • JordJord Moderator, Host Rep

    AMD is just getting better and better. AMD IS PREM....

  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker

    Good luck finding a halfway current mainboard for 4 x Xeon at an affordable price.

    As for the rest -> It depends on what you need to do with that server and what kind of VPSs you want to run.

    Thanked by 1poisson
  • You cant put these xeons on single mobo. E5 is max dual CPU.

  • If the electricity bill is not an issue, I will choose E5....

  • PureVoltagePureVoltage Member, Patron Provider

    Are you going to put the 4x E5's into two systems? You will have the costs for two motherboards, twice the amount of ram needed, and twice the drives required.

    Epyc would be better however more costly.
    The AMD 3900x and 3950x are pretty sexy systems. While they are not server grade itself they still are quite nice and hard to beat for the pricing. It all comes down to what your end goal is.

    Personally we build more server systems at this time as it's what our higher end clients want. That being said we have seen a lot more requests for AMD desktop systems lately and have built out a few of those along with Threadripper systems.

    We all have to love what AMD has been doing! :)

    Thanked by 2Ouji poisson
  • dodheimsgarddodheimsgard Member
    edited November 2019

    Btw OP - at same price as these Xeons you can get dual 2680v3 on eBay. Same number of cores.

  • user54321user54321 Member
    edited November 2019

    @PureVoltage said:
    While they are not server grade

    I don't understand how there are still people out there believing this myth, the dies come all from the same wafers, the realy good ones go to consumer high end, the ok ones go to servers and the still ok ones go on low end with the broken stuff deactivated.

    That is the case for AMD and intel.

  • williewillie Member
    edited November 2019

    Look at the hosting costs for the amount of power those Xeons will use. If you have super cheap or free electricity the Xeons may still be viable. Otherwise the Ryzen (or look at Epyc) catches up quickly despite higher initial cost. Around here an amp of power is $20 a month or more, so that's $680/year in electricity alone for the Xeons (4x 85W) vs $210/year for 3900X (105W). YMMV.

    Ryzen 3900X is $529 retail these days, formerly $499. They are no longer hard to find. Everyone wants the 3950X now.

    Threadripper 3960X and 3970X are just announced and are amazing, but maybe less cost effective for hosting. Power consumption is high. They are HEDT processors and EPYC are server processors, while Ryzen 3900X/3950X are "mainstream" :O.

    Thanked by 1poisson
  • PureVoltagePureVoltage Member, Patron Provider

    @user54321 said:

    @PureVoltage said:
    While they are not server grade

    I don't understand how there are still people out there believing this myth, the dies come all from the same wafers, the realy good ones go to consumer high end, the ok ones go to servers and the still ok ones go on low end with the broken stuff deactivated.

    That is the case for AMD and intel.

    I don't recall saying anything about the dies. There is much more than just the dies, motherboards, ECC ram naturally supported along with many other things.

    As we build many large systems a lot of those being 15-30k+ our company has a higher focus on those. That being said the price and performance from these is great.

    Being a company that provides colocation and dedicated servers we highly like systems for servers which have IPMI as it's one less thing we have to worry about when people want to colocate these systems. :)

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