Best OS for old server turned gaming rig?

[CallanK9]

My dad had a spare Sun Fire X4440 lying around with four AMD Opteron 8356 2.33 GHz quad-core no hyperthreading, 32 gigs of DDR2 unsure of the clock speed, and a crappy graphics card. What would be the best OS to run this on? My budget is pretty narrow and as far as I know, Windows 10 does not support four CPU's. Windows Server is also REALLY expensive and the cheap options on eBay are almost certainly scams. I was thinking Ubuntu but many games don't have support for Linux operating systems. Also, could I drop in a GTX 1050? Thanks!

[ProjectBox153]

I’d just run unactivated Server 2012 R2. Works fine. 

[mariushm]

Windows 2003 R2 will probably work great with that,and it doesn't have activation crap, entering a  serial number and disabling windows update will be enough.

If you want a copy to "evaluate" things, i can hook you up, pm me.

 

It will also take most Windows XP drivers so I'm not sure it will work with a GTX 1050 (not sure you'll find drivers for lower than windows 7 i mean, so it won't install on windows 2003) but it should work with older video cards. You could probably install a card like Radeon 7xxx series , maybe even R5 2xxx or R7 xxx

 

[ProjectBox153]

4 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Windows 2003 R2 will probably work great with that,and it doesn't have activation crap, entering a  serial number and disabling windows update will be enough.

If you want a copy to "evaluate" things, i can hook you up, pm me.

 

It will also take most Windows XP drivers so I'm not sure it will work with a GTX 1050 (not sure you'll find drivers for lower than windows 7 i mean, so it won't install on windows 2003) but it should work with older video cards. You could probably install a card like Radeon 7xxx series , maybe even R5 2xxx or R7 xxx

 

Why such an old OS? It’s not that old of a system. 

[manikyath]

8 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Windows 2003 R2

insert the "windows XP was better" army here.. you're recommending a 15 year old OS for a 10 year old piece of hardware.

[mariushm]

9 minutes ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Why such an old OS? It’s not that old of a system. 

A quad cpu 8356 (16 cores) will score around 7200 cpubench points : https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Quad-Core+AMD+Opteron+8356&id=2223&multi=4

 

That's same performance as a six core FX-63xx processor, or a single Ryzen 3 1200 but using four times as much power and with way more noise ... the Ryzen 3 1200 averages maybe 50w and this server will probably idle at 150-200 watts  - that's why they're outdated and no longer use, they use way too much power for too little performance.

So basically each core is kinda slow, and most applications will default to using only the first CPU, so at most 4 threads.

 

This, coupled with having DDR2 memory, it just makes more sense to use a leaner operating system like Windows 2003 which doesn't install and run by default a ton of services and crap.

And... it's not like there will be hardware on that system that is so new that you'd need Windows 2008 or newer to support that hardware. You won't gain any benefit from those newer OSes.

 

ps. And yeah, these processors were launched in 2007, so they still were supported for a lot of time by Windows 2003, because Windows 2008 was just launched around that time, or was still about to be launched.

 

You can find plenty of documentation and servers that were sold with this Opteron 8356 and with Windows 2003 , for example see this doc from HP : ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/c-products/servers/benchmarks/HP_ProLiant_DL385_BL685c_2tSAPSD_March2708.pdf

 

^ It's dated March 2008 and they're still doing the benchmarks with Windows 2003

 

But yeah, if you want to, go with 2008, that will also work, it's just more hassles with Windows activation and having updated installed or pre-downloaded and getting popups to install, and you're still unlikely to be able to install drivers for gaming video cards (drivers may not install on "server" operating system)

 

 

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, mariushm said:

A quad cpu 8356 (16 cores) will score around 7200 cpubench points : https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Quad-Core+AMD+Opteron+8356&id=2223&multi=4

 

That's same performance as a six core FX-63xx processor, or a single Ryzen 3 1200 but using four times as much power and with way more noise ... the Ryzen 3 1200 averages maybe 50w and this server will probably idle at 150-200 watts  - that's why they're outdated and no longer use, they use way too much power for too little performance.

So basically each core is kinda slow, and most applications will default to using only the first CPU, so at most 4 threads.

 

This, coupled with having DDR2 memory, it just makes more sense to use a leaner operating system like Windows 2003 which doesn't install and run by default a ton of services and crap.

And... it's not like there will be hardware on that system that is so new that you'd need Windows 2008 or newer to support that hardware. You won't gain any benefit from those newer OSes.

 

but running *essentially* windows XP, you'll have a very fun time finding anything that'll run on the OS. as welll as modern operating systems being more designed to use "many much" cores, compared to the OS you recommend that came from an era where multicore was for the rich kids.

[mariushm]

10 minutes ago, manikyath said:

but running *essentially* windows XP, you'll have a very fun time finding anything that'll run on the OS. as welll as modern operating systems being more designed to use "many much" cores, compared to the OS you recommend that came from an era where multicore was for the rich kids.

All the software will still run on it, some software may complain because it's so old, but older versions will still work. For example the absolute latest version of Firefox may not want to run anymore because it has some hardware accelerations features built in that rely on DirectX stuff that's only on newer OSes but you can still use older versions like 52esr (extended support release) which works fine.

 

And no, newer os'es won't necessarily work better. It's a whole different thing having 4 physical processors compared to a single processor with 16 threads. Exchanging data between two physical processors is slower than exchanging data between threads in a cpu, so the OS will still favor keeping application threads on single CPUs (for example if application has 3 threads, the OS will prefer to put all those 3 threads on single cpu instead of placing one on each physical cpu)

You also have issues with NUMA and memory per physical cpu and other shit like that, and you'll have pci-e slots that are tied to physical processors ... overall such server hardware will be a pain in the ass.

 

Smart programs like x264 or hevc video encoders will know how to detect physical cpus and how to spread the load and move data between threads and all that, but most games and software isn't optimized to work with multiple cpus.

 

Also keep in mind that some video card drivers will have issues with 4 physical processors or may only use one physical processor for all its threads... so you will also be bottlenecked by the low frequency of those Opteron processors (2.3 ghz per thread). You may be surprised to see the video card driver stuck on first cpu, and then you have DirectX on first CPU and your game will probably also choke the first CPU and the other CPUs are probably less used.

 

Newer OSes may choke the system more, for example Windows 2008 with all the graphical interface things enabled may use more video card memory and use DirectX more to render the interface and all that crap...

 

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

All the software will still run on it, some software may complain because it's so old, but older versions will still work. For example the absolute latest version of Firefox may not want to run anymore because it has some hardware accelerations features built in that rely on DirectX stuff that's only on newer OSes but you can still use older versions like 52esr (extended support release) which works fine.

so.. you'd be running an outdated OS, with an outdated browser, with an outdated antivirus.

 

thats a security, and compatibility nightmare.

[Razor Blade]

Being that it is a 4 proc server your choice of OS is going to be limited...As you've already found out.

 

IMO I would not suggest server 2003 either...that OS went out of support in 2015.

[CallanK9]

So Windows Server 2012 r2 is my best bet? And I need two copies of that right? Because one license only covers 2 cpus

[mariushm]

It doesn't work like that. If the version doesn't support the number of physical sockets, you have to upgrade to the higher version.  Buying additional license won't help.

 

see pdf attached, for ex windows 2012 r2 foundation supports only one cpu socket (and 32GB memory), essentials supports 2 cpu sockets (and 64GB memory), standard and datacenter support 64 sockets

 

If you're really against 2003 R2 , you could try the 2008 R2 , the 2008 R2 Standard supports 4 sockets and 32 GB and the enterprise supports 8 sockets and 2 TB and datacenter version ... 64 sockets / 2 TB.

 

pm me if you're interested in a copy, i have the ISO images for it as well.

Windows Server 2012 R2 Products and Editions Comparison.pdf

[Radium_Angel]

Or linux....works without all that "physical CPU" BS that microsoft throws your way, and a large number of games on Steam support it.

It's what I do with my PowerEdge 2900