How Significant is Quad-Channel Performance

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Jonny Quick

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Building a Server for a medical clinic that will be running Terminal Services for about 15 different client machines, so throughput is the primary factor to consider.

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Note the motherboard is a dual-CPU Server Motherboard and the RAM is spec'd at 32 Gbyte (DDR3, 1600). From what I've read, and my assumption is that, in order to achieve quad-channel performance, there needs to be at least 4 sticks of RAM per CPU. So dividing the 32 Gbytes of RAM, that means 2 (4 sticks X 4 Gbytes), but that seems really clunky. I'd rather do 2 (2 sticks X 8 Gbytes) but that would only deliver dual-channel performance, so my question here is how important is that performance difference, and if you were in my situation, what would you do, and why? Thanks in advance.
 
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ronintexas
RAID10 is most effective when you have many drives banded together. I typically use 160 or 320GB SAS drives (12-15k RPM) to get a 2TB - 4TB RAID array. I always purchase 20-25% extra drives. If I am building a 2TB drive array, it takes 14 drives, with 4 spares (I know drives will die - and I want exact replacements).

The advantage is going with 14 - 320GB drives, is you are actually writing to 7 drives in the stripe (plus 7 mirrored), so disk I/O is a lot lower in database applications. You also need a beefy RAID controller - not just a mobo controller.....

That all being said, a medical EMR & scheduling software shouldn't take that much disk I/O....the RAM should be more than enough....
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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For a server that will be running terminal services for several client machines, the actual perfoamance difference between quad- or dual-channel is imperceptible.

Many, many other things along the chain will impact far more that that.

If you're building a new server box that supports quad channel. there is little reason to NOT do that. But the perf diff between quad and dual would be minimal.
 
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Jonny Quick

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Thanks for that. And so, if it were you, would you go with 8 GByte sticks of RAM. Is there any performance difference using fewer and larger sticks, vs. more and smaller sticks? Cooler? Less power consumption? Longevity? Faster? Foot massage?

 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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I'd have to evaluate the actual and proposed usage before deciding won how much RAM. 8/16/32....Dunno.
How much drive space? Dunno.
How are you fixed for a backup solution?

But 2 x 8GB vs 4 x 4GB (16GB either way)
or
2 x 16GB vs 4 x 8GB (32GB either way)

probably not a lot of actual difference. What are the users actually doing?
 
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Jonny Quick

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15 Clients primarily running a proprietary medical software (EMR & scheduling, etc...) via Terminal Services on a Server running MS Server 2008 (Standard). Their biggest complaint is lag, hence the new Server upgrade from a single-core Xeon running MS Server 2003. It's almost all text, so the file transfer size will be very small. The 32 Gbyte RAM is twice what the software's author recommends. I built around a dual-CPU motherboard thinking that it would open more "pathways" for multiple users to access information quickly. Also, the data storage is RAID 10 using 1 Tbyte drives. Total space used by the entire hard drive currently is about 100 Gbytes, so 1 Tbyte drives are way more than adequate.

Currently backup is going to be a 5th HD located on the Server, but eventually we will move to cloud data backup.
 
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ronintexas

ronintexas

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RAID10 is most effective when you have many drives banded together. I typically use 160 or 320GB SAS drives (12-15k RPM) to get a 2TB - 4TB RAID array. I always purchase 20-25% extra drives. If I am building a 2TB drive array, it takes 14 drives, with 4 spares (I know drives will die - and I want exact replacements).

The advantage is going with 14 - 320GB drives, is you are actually writing to 7 drives in the stripe (plus 7 mirrored), so disk I/O is a lot lower in database applications. You also need a beefy RAID controller - not just a mobo controller.....

That all being said, a medical EMR & scheduling software shouldn't take that much disk I/O....the RAM should be more than enough....
 
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