ESXi and Xen white box

[jay-R5TnC2l8y5lBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org]

Well I've been studying up and it does seem the phenom II x4 is the better option for a vm server.  The athlon II x4 is the same cpu minus the shared cache. But shared cache is good for vms since they generally don't stick to a single core for long.  Thus if the data is cached there is only a 1 in 4 chance of the proces being able to access it.  L3 cache is shared across all processors.  Unfortunately amd also uses an exclusive cache, and I have not found any info on if this has been optimized some how with amd-v. 

Interestingly I found out that the cache on the core 2 quad is only shared between 2 processors., not all 4.  Its litterally 2 core 2 duos on the same chip. Thus it can have the same issue as the athlon, but only at a 1 in 2 chance.  The i7 and i5 are all L3 caches and shared between all processors.

------Original Message------
From: Mark J. Dulcey
Sender: discuss-bounces-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org
To: BLU
Subject: Re: ESXi and Xen white box
Sent: Oct 26, 2009 12:30 PM

jay-R5TnC2l8y5lBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org wrote:
> I'm putting together an esxi and xen white box to play with and do some testing.  And was drawn in by the value of the new athlon II x4 620. $99 for a 2.6 quad-core is hard to beat.  The rest of the system would be running a gigabit 770 board with 8gb of ddr3 1333. But I'm considering two other options and figured I would get some input.
> 
> First option is the phenom II x4 925 - $150: upgrade to 2.8ghz and a 6meg L3 cache (same 4x128-L1 & 4x512-L2 as the athlon). Not sure if there is really much else different that would effect my use. 
> 
> Will the 6megs of L3 make a signifigant difference? And does phenom II ofer any other benefits over athlon II?

Here's a link that compares the performance of the Athlon II X4 and the 
Phenom II X4: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3638 
That should give you an idea of whether spending the extra $50 is 
worthwhile for you.

I find the new Athlon II X4 605e intriguing. True, you give up some 
performance (only 2.3GHz), but a quad with 45w TDP should be killer for 
cool and quiet system builds. It should sell for about $150 when you can 
actually get one. Here's a link with all the new CPUs: 
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/4283
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