Thinking of moving to AMD Opteron

[alex75871]

I thinking of moving to AMD Opteron for my home server. See my signature for my current Xeon build.

 

I currently run FreeNAS OS. I do a lot of streaming to multiple devices and run virtual machines. I think I could benefit from having more cores vs my current quad core Xeon E3-1226v3.

 

I think a 12 core Opteron 6344 or 6348 would serve my needs well. Or wait until the new Opterons come out based on 16nm (i think).

 

Your thoughts?

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, alex75871 said:

I thinking of moving to AMD Opteron for my home server. See my signature for my current Xeon build.

 

I currently run FreeNAS OS. I do a lot of streaming to multiple devices and run virtual machines. I think I could benefit from having more cores vs my current quad core Xeon E3-1226v3.

 

I think a 12 core Opteron 6344 or 6348 would serve my needs well. Or wait until the new Opterons come out based on 16nm (i think).

 

Your thoughts?

Wait. Never a good idea buying CPU's right before a product launch, especially when it's a new architecture and node shrink.

[alex75871]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Wait. Never a good idea buying CPU's right before a product launch, especially when it's a new architecture and node shrink.

I agree. I should sit and wait to see what AMD comes out with in their new line of Opterons.

[thatguyyouknow75]

If you can get one cheap enough 

[tt2468]

I will buy your xeon off of you if you upgrade

[dalekphalm]

17 hours ago, leadeater said:

Wait. Never a good idea buying CPU's right before a product launch, especially when it's a new architecture and node shrink.

Keep in mind that we're not really "right" before a product launch. ZEN is realistically still probably 8+ months away. If the OP thinks he needs the additional power now, then he should shop now, and not wait.

 

However, if the upgrade isn't urgent, then I would suggest waiting.

 

Also, @alex75871, can you give us a bit more detail on usage? Why you feel the 12-core AMD Opteron would be better? Why AMD Opteron, and not a higher-core count Intel CPU? Remember that even the Opteron CPU's are still based off of the relatively terribad Bulldozer architecture family tree. Yes, higher core count will probably help in straight up multithreaded/multitasking situations (12 cores/12 threads vs 4 cores/4 threads).

 

But you'd have to replace your Motherboard as well as the CPU - why not get an equivalently priced Xeon CPU (same price as the Opteron by itself) and then you can keep using the same Motherboard? Or factor in the cost of Opteron + Motherboard, and you can get an even better Xeon CPU.

 

Just food for thought.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

Keep in mind that we're not really "right" before a product launch. ZEN is realistically still probably 8+ months away. If the OP thinks he needs the additional power now, then he should shop now, and not wait.

True, way I was reading the question was that it wasn't an urgent upgrade and more of planned upgrade if viable.

[alex75871]

On 2/29/2016 at 9:21 AM, dalekphalm said:

Keep in mind that we're not really "right" before a product launch. ZEN is realistically still probably 8+ months away. If the OP thinks he needs the additional power now, then he should shop now, and not wait.

 

However, if the upgrade isn't urgent, then I would suggest waiting.

 

Also, @alex75871, can you give us a bit more detail on usage? Why you feel the 12-core AMD Opteron would be better? Why AMD Opteron, and not a higher-core count Intel CPU? Remember that even the Opteron CPU's are still based off of the relatively terribad Bulldozer architecture family tree. Yes, higher core count will probably help in straight up multithreaded/multitasking situations (12 cores/12 threads vs 4 cores/4 threads).

 

But you'd have to replace your Motherboard as well as the CPU - why not get an equivalently priced Xeon CPU (same price as the Opteron by itself) and then you can keep using the same Motherboard? Or factor in the cost of Opteron + Motherboard, and you can get an even better Xeon CPU.

 

Just food for thought.

My current usage is running a ZFS file system, streaming and transcoding media to multiple devices simultaneously (media center, tablets, phones and off site clients), and running multiple virtual machines (Windows Server and Debian Linux).

 

Ideally I need more memory too because my current server is limited to 32 GB. The server runs nearly 100% CPU usage when streaming and transcoding to one high definition device. This is kind of expected because I have configured PLEX media server to "Make my CPU hurt" (that is the actual name of the transcoding setting).

 

Extra CPU cores would also make my VMs run more smoothly because they will have more guaranteed CPU resource instead of sharing with other VMs and services running on FreeNAS.

[dalekphalm]

2 hours ago, alex75871 said:

My current usage is running a ZFS file system, streaming and transcoding media to multiple devices simultaneously (media center, tablets, phones and off site clients), and running multiple virtual machines (Windows Server and Debian Linux).

 

Ideally I need more memory too because my current server is limited to 32 GB. The server runs nearly 100% CPU usage when streaming and transcoding to one high definition device. This is kind of expected because I have configured PLEX media server to "Make my CPU hurt" (that is the actual name of the transcoding setting).

 

Extra CPU cores would also make my VMs run more smoothly because they will have more guaranteed CPU resource instead of sharing with other VMs and services running on FreeNAS.

As mentioned above, I would contrast and compare the cost of simply upgrading your current CPU vs buying a 12-core Opteron CPU + Motherboard.

[alex75871]

46 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

As mentioned above, I would contrast and compare the cost of simply upgrading your current CPU vs buying a 12-core Opteron CPU + Motherboard.

I can't get more than a quad core Xeon on my current platform

 

At best I could get hyper-threading and a clock boost but that would cost about almost as much as a 12 core Opteron (minus the motherboard).

 

I'm going to wait for Zen and reevaluate then.