Performance upgrade from FX8320 to Dual X5650's

[heffe2001]

How much of a performance upgrade would going from a single FX8320 8-core AMD cpu to a system with dual Xeon X5650 6-cores?  I know in raw cores I'll have 4 more, plus whatever gains hyperthreadding gets.  The individual cores are faster on the FX (at least by MHZ rating, but I'd bet core to core the intel would keep up with, or surpass the FX cores).  I'm just wondering if I'll see a major increase with my docker containers, as I'm getting issues with Plex telling me that my system can't keep up from time to time, as Pynab seems to want to hog the system..

 

[ashman70]

So the passmark for your FX8320 is 8017, the passmark for dual X5650's is 11569 and the passmark for a single X5650 is 7257 so you don't quite double your score adding a second CPU and you'll gain a little over half of your existing CPU again but going with the dual X5650 setup. How many concurrent streams are you trying to support in plex now?

[tdallen]

The AMD FX8320 has 4 modules with 2 cores each, and they share resources.  So, it isn't truly an 8 core CPU - more akin to 4 cores with hyperthreading.  The X5650 on the other hand is 6 cores with hyperthreading.  So with 12 cores hyperthreaded I think you'd get a nice boost for applications that like cores and threads - like Plex.

 

You'd still probably be better off with a nice new E3 or E5, but assuming you are trying to get a good deal on used hardware and can put up with the noise, heat, and power utilization of a dual X5650 setup I think you could get a noticeable performance boost over the FX8320.

[heffe2001]

I have an older Cisco 1u box that has dual X5650's in it already, so as far as the hardware goes I already have that much of it.  I'll need to get another MD1000 box and a controller to run it if I were to move my existing storage over to that.  It would also open up more expansion bays than what I currently have..

 

[unevent]

The AMD FX8320 has 4 modules with 2 cores each, and they share resources.  So, it isn't truly an 8 core CPU - more akin to 4 cores with hyperthreading.  The X5650 on the other hand is 6 cores with hyperthreading.  So with 12 cores hyperthreaded I think you'd get a nice boost for applications that like cores and threads - like Plex.

 

You'd still probably be better off with a nice new E3 or E5, but assuming you are trying to get a good deal on used hardware and can put up with the noise, heat, and power utilization of a dual X5650 setup I think you could get a noticeable performance boost over the FX8320.

 

The FX 8320 is an 8 core module design where every two cores share one floating point unit (FPU).  Eight execution cores with four FPU.  Intel Hyper-threading is a completely different animal where there is one execution core for every two logical cores which are copies (duplicate) of a physical core but store only the architectural state and does not duplicate the main execution resources.  Basically two threads with only one execution core.  Intel is faster partly due to how they can optimize the threading to not stall a core or recover from a stalled core by executing another thread from a logical core, put simply.

 

 

Edited May 3, 2017 by unevent

[rainlen]

I'm personally running twin 5690's. I think you'll like the westmere chips better. there older tech but definitely still holding there own weight even in today's market and the 60's are a dime a dozen.