Hyper-threading in servers

[Trent Gillespie]

Trying to decide on the Haswell i3 or the Pentium 3220 for our web server, but was curious if apache & MySQL benefit from hyper-threading? A while back I know MySQL performance was actually degraded with HT enabled... however, has that changed?

There isn't a huge performance gap between the two CPUs, other than HT...

 

[Shamil]

With HT previously, the issue was that the cache was spread across more caches, which isn't what you want.

I believe that Intel has changed the implementation, but I haven't tested it recently with MySQL.

 

[turtile]

Neither one has HT enabled. Only the i7 and Xeon series.

 

[Trent Gillespie]

Neither one has HT enabled. Only the i7 and Xeon series.

I do believe the i3 4130 does have HT enabled. Actually, I believe every Haswell CPU except for the Pentium and Celeron have it enabled.

 

[turtile]

I do believe the i3 4130 does have HT enabled. Actually, I believe every Haswell CPU except for the Pentium and Celeron have it enabled.

You're right! Didn't know they changed it.

 

[rainmotorsports]

You're right! Didn't know they changed it.

I3s in desktop CPUs generally are an HT CPU and then the i5 isn't but the i7 is. What's funny is the laptop world was a bit different as dual cores the i3 and i5 have HT and the i7 comes in dual and quad. That's of course lumping the majority of samples I have had on my desk. I don't keep up.

 

[Trent Gillespie]

I finally decided to go with a ASRock Q1900 which has the Intel j1900 processor built in. Its a 4 core Celeron CPU and uses a low 10 watts of power. I had a slight issue getting Ubuntu 12.04 to place nice with the Realtek RTL8111GR NIC, but after rolling back the driver to version 8168, it has been running well.

In regard to performance, it scales well. It's not going to handle hundreds of concurrent users, but neither would my pipe. It serves up a few moderately busy WordPress installs as well as XenForo.... and then a few other virtual hosts, but nothing crazy.

The SSD and 8GB of Ram play a huge role in caching most the requested data, which eliminates a lot of strain on the CPU.

Overall, it will handle our needs just fine and has cut our power requirements by almost 8 fold. If anyone needs a power efficient media center or web server, you might take a look at the j1900. The Bay Trail lineup of CPUs pack a punch and don't need a whole lot of power to do it.

 

[rainmotorsports]

I just picked up a laptop with a similar baytrail quad core. Didn't even think about these taking up places in the atom server market. I've never been concerned with power consumption when it comes to colocation. I mean sure the green in all of us says we should. But I always give it a look due to the price when renting hardware. Reduced power cost is always good for the consumer.

 

[Trent Gillespie]

I just picked up a laptop with a similar baytrail quad core. Didn't even think about these taking up places in the atom server market. I've never been concerned with power consumption when it comes to colocation. I mean sure the green in all of us says we should. But I always give it a look due to the price when renting hardware. Reduced power cost is always good for the consumer.

Neither have I until I moved our web server to our place of business. The power savings will pay for itself within a few months time and from there on out, it is just a hiccup in our monthly power bill.