Opteron or Xeon for server?

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mega10169

New Member
I'm thinking of rigging up a server for storage as well as LAN game hosting and multimedia duties. Which would be a better choice of CPU?
 
you do not need high powered machines to run dedicated game servers on a LAN. That would be a waste of money IMO. The dedicated servers run in terminal mode and do not require a heavy graphics card, or need to have quad xeons or quad opterons....Its not like you are running an exchange server that is getting data sent through it by 1000s of users constantly.

I would just scrap together an machine from older parts, toss in bunch of large HDs in it, load linux on it, download all the dedicated servers for your games (linux versions, and yes most of them make linux versions) then set up some NAS via SAMBA and you have everything you need on a stable OS that does not require that much power to run.
 
How many CPUs do you want? For a single CPU system, the new Xeons are very good (FBDIMMs sort of drag it down) but for a multiCPU system usually Opterons are better.

A celeron would eb able to handle small volumes of users and assuming the games have dedicated server programs.
 
Tlarkin, you prove some good points I was already aware of but I forgot to include in my original post that I want some extra horsepower for things such as rendering 3D animation, levels for certain games, perhaps video encoding but my PC is quite capable of that already and also some other demanding tasks.

As for the number of CPUs, if in those applications two noticeably cuts down the time compared with one then I'll go with two. Also in the end if they end up being slower than what I have now, then there is no point in getting them.

Oh and here is a silly question, would an old Compaq server with 8 700mhz Xeons and 8GB of RAM be able to handle anything like what I described?
 
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mega10169 said:
Tlarkin, you prove some good points I was already aware of but I forgot to include in my original post that I want some extra horsepower for things such as rendering 3D animation, levels for certain games, perhaps video encoding but my PC is quite capable of that already and also some other demanding tasks.

As for the number of CPUs, if in those applications two noticeably cuts down the time compared with one then I'll go with two. Also in the end if they end up being slower than what I have now, then there is no point in getting them.

Oh and here is a silly question, would an old Compaq server with 8 700mhz Xeons and 8GB of RAM be able to handle anything like what I described?
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Here is the problem with what you are trying to accomplish. Most OSes support dual processors and that is it, XP home and vista home basic only support 1 processor. If you want more support you have to run a server OS. I can tell you right now Maya, 3DSMAX, Softimage, etc will not run that well on a server OS. Unless you plan on running Linux, but then again I am not sure what kernel supports 8 processors...

If you want a kick ass rendering rig for Maya and the like, just go buy a Mac Pro desktop. They already come with Dual Xeons and have options to run Quadro cards, which are built for rendering. Building a dual Xeon system you will probably not save any money really since those aren't commonly built machines.
 
i would have to agree with Tlarkin on this matter. no need for something heavy for gaming on a lan. just make sure you have a good switch or hub 10/100/1000Gbt network connection. i think that would be enough. just keep it simple and fast!
 
tlarkin said:
Here is the problem with what you are trying to accomplish. Most OSes support dual processors and that is it, XP home and vista home basic only support 1 processor. If you want more support you have to run a server OS. I can tell you right now Maya, 3DSMAX, Softimage, etc will not run that well on a server OS. Unless you plan on running Linux, but then again I am not sure what kernel supports 8 processors...

If you want a kick ass rendering rig for Maya and the like, just go buy a Mac Pro desktop. They already come with Dual Xeons and have options to run Quadro cards, which are built for rendering. Building a dual Xeon system you will probably not save any money really since those aren't commonly built machines.
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So it sounds like getting the right OS is the biggest problem here. I was thinking of installing XP Pro 64 bit edition on it since I would be fine with setting up server oriented software rather than a server OS anyways.
 
mega10169 said:
So it sounds like getting the right OS is the biggest problem here. I was thinking of installing XP Pro 64 bit edition on it since I would be fine with setting up server oriented software rather than a server OS anyways.
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XP Pro only supports a max of 2 processors so the other processor would be a waste.
 
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