Home Forums Memory DDR3 1333 vs 1600

Hi everyone,

This is for you smart guys- Sandeep, Bert, and the rest of the usual suspects-

I will be building a few more PCs, based on Sandeep's recommendations "Mid tower High Intel" using this i5 processsor

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116506

and this mobo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121599

Sandeep suggests 1333 memory. Can I use 1600 memory? Should I use 1600 memory? The price difference is minimal.

BTW, you have made a believer of me, concerning SSDs- WOW!

Thanks again. Gene

The real world difference is negligible. The main difference is in the benchmarks. (e.g. 3d mark, WEI, etc.) You can go ahead and use 1600 memory. Lots of people buy it and run it at 1333 because they forget to turn on XMP mode in the BIOS. The price difference is like <$5, so it's up to you.

At the office I have 7 computers with the exact motherboard and CPU that you selected. I used Corsair XMS RAM from Amazon. They had 16GB for 70 bucks. Bought 2 kits and built 7 comps.

My personal comp uses DDR3 1866 RAM, but that's because I'm an enthusiast lol. My CPU runs at 4.5 GHz. With business boards, you likely won't be overclocking so it's best to just get the 1333 RAM and don't forget that SSD.

Just a thought-why not go with i7 processor(same mobo,memory, 240GB SSD, 750W PS, good video card (about $150) Antec case w/ case fan)-price differential is small--over all cost somewhere around $1300 (including retail version of MS Win 7 64 bit Ultra) ?

For a cost/performance trade-off, I would consider:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103961
8 cores for $159

For an inexpensive board:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128521
6G SATA, 1G NIC, USB3, 32G max memory, $90

6 cores for $120.

My last 3 dev boxes have been AMD, and the last ~10 Virtualization hosts have been AMD. Unless you are a gamer who makes his rent on twitch latency, AMD is the better business choice.

For some benchmark data about processors:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Indy-

But...but...but...but...

IT'S NOT INTEL!!!!!!!

Gene

You're absolutely correct. That is why it costs less and does more at the same price point.

INTEL4LIFE

But seriously, Intel makes some good products. They are pretty reliable and the RMA process is not as painful as others.

The benchmark that Indy posted favor processors that can perform highly threaded tasks well. The reality of it is that office workloads, word processing, email, AC, etc. are not highly threaded. The i3-2100 is about $120 and the 8 core FX-8150 (8 core) is $190. More cores does not always equal better. I'd take a i5-3450 quad core over that 8 core any day.

See this benchmark:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=434

See how the Intel Dual core beats it out it most common tasks. It loses in video encoding which most people aren't doing. i5-3450 is pretty good too. The motherboards I chose for high end are very pricey since they feature the new H77 chipset with native USB 3. So if you wanted to save some money go with the H61 with SATA 3 ports.

Actually, my home system is pretty much what Indy described. No wonder I started big time to play with virtualization.

Both of the servers in my office are AMDs, but I have been an AMD fan for a long time. Don't get me wrong, Intel has some of the faster machines. But the price point on AMD nowadays makes it more practical for the lower end.

Another side note. Graphics cards are completely unnecessary for an office environment. Intel HD Graphics can even handle some games. Save your money. The graphics card is typically the component that uses the most power in gaming systems. You'll have to get a larger power supply as well to accommodate that.

Thought you were sporting AMD, but didn't want to put you out there.

For 1 or 2 socket servers, especially if you are doing virtualization [highly multi-threaded as Sandeep brings up] The latest generation of 16-core processors are impressive @ ~$540 per processor.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Opteron+6272

Performance is comparable to the E5-2620/E5-2630 same price point. Personally I'd just go for the E5-2620 at $400 a piece.

This is in the tech section, so I will go into an admittedly more arcane detail of processor characteristics.

The AMD 6272 is a 16 core processor, the E5-2620 is a 6 core processor. It depends on the host OS/Kernel, but most high-performance virtualization solutions are configured around a per-core/per-vcpu allocation. In that environment, more cores allocated or available is going to generate the best end-result.

As a reviewer said @ NewEgg, "...this will not help you run internet explorer or computer games. It will help you with high throughput (i.e. occupancy) and/or consistently parallel tasks"

So, for a non-virtualized server, the real-world performance will depend greatly on the OS/Kernel. 16 cores become significant when you are running high-density virtualization.

6 Physical Cores, 12 Logical Cores. Not all cores are created equal. Strictly virtualization it might be better, but for highly threaded tasks like video encoding, rendering, etc. Even with fewer physical cores, Intel usually comes out on top. Even if you could put on VM per AMD physical core, there's no saying that's actually enough for it to run smoothly. Assuming the cores are equal (which isn't the case), then I would agree AMD has better price/performance.

How virtualization allocates cores/vcpus is beyond the interest of most of the audience in this corner of the world. Anyone who wants more info is always welcome to contact me off-line.

In the heterogeneous enterprise space where the dominant virtualization platforms are VMWare and RedHat, there is significant interest and testing of the latest AMD technology - for people replacing racks of servers, cost/performance is what drives decisions.