VMware on 4770S, 4770T, or 4765T?

Aegean BM

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Jun 9, 2012
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Anyone experience the reality of the new Haswell uber low power champs and VMware? I develop integration software, using up to 4 big VM's as test servers.

My current rig of Q6600 quad@2.4, 8 GB, HD 7750 and HD can't handle the VM's I throw at it. I'm also getting tired of playing games on lowest setting, but VMware Workstation is my biggest concern. My rig heats up, and consequently the fans are loud. I know what to do for memory, graphics, and SSD in my next rig. My question is solely about the CPU.

I want Intel's 4770 series for the 4(8) cores and low power. I can't do the 4770K because it disables some virtualization. Instead of 4770 (3.4 to 3.9), I'm tempted by 4770S (3.1 to 3.9), 4770T (2.5 to 3.7), and 4765T (2.0 to 3.0) . I know that each step down in power (good) comes with less heat (good), less noise (good) and less performance (bad). How far can I go down until I notice a slight performance change? How far until I notice a significant change?

I know my questions are subjective, and I deserve "How would WE know what YOU would notice?" Here's a hint to help you guess: I didn't notice the difference between two identical laptops, one @ 2.7MHz and the other @ 2.9MHz.

(I'm not considering AMD. To spare the inevitable question, I had 2 AMD CPU's burn up, and never had an Intel one burn up. Yeah, I know it's a small sample rate, within margin of error, and you might have the opposite numbers. Regardless, AMD is off topic.)

 
I have 2 systems to run my VMs. A Q6600 with 16GB of memory (8GB definitely wasn't enough to run several VMs) and a 3770 with 32GB of memory. To be honest, unless you run benchmarks, I doubt you'll be able to tell the difference between the 4770 and the 4770S, but I definitely wouldn't consider the 4765T. I don't own a 4770, but the 3770 isn't noisy even when running Prime95 for several hours (though it gets a bit hot with the stock cooler). VMs run a lot quicker on the 3770 and the hard disks are identical in both systems. I don't use my servers for gaming or as desktop PCs.
 

Aegean BM

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Jun 9, 2012
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10,640

Yes, gamers scoff at anything over single digit RAM. That's why I stressed VMs. For the price of RAM nowadays, no VMware jockey should get less than 32GB. I'm even considering MSI motherboards because they claim to handle 64GB. I can put in 32GB cheap memory now, and replace it all when 16GB sticks get cheap. Not sure I believe the 64GB claim. Intel lists 32GB as the maximum for the CPU and LGA 1150. Can anyone shed light on MSI's claim?

I had one of those moments where I mostly answered my own question because of the act of asking the question. Agreed on the unnoticiable 4770S being my front runner and 4765T is out of the race. Still tempted to bet on 4770T. I will probably go with S because its TDP of 65 is already quite a jump from the Q6600's TDP of 105. Still, I can't shake the joy of going down to T's TDP of 45. However, if T is too slow to run in anything less than burst mode, then I'm sure burst's power, heat, and noise will cancel any benefit of T. I could be wrong, which is why I'm asking for opinions, particularly from those who experienced them.

Thanks for the reply. I welcome other thoughts (although I must also put cooling tech on the off topic list. Quieter powerful fans, water, better passive, mineral oil, ... doesn't matter. They all depend on ambient temperature. Southwest windows that don't open and very little AC make my office the cooling bottleneck.)