Performance diff: J1800 vs J1900 vs N3050 vs N3150 vs 3205U vs 3755U on Dual LAN NIC boxes?

[mstone]

Sorry to be a little off topic here, but how important will AES-NI be if there is only only to be 1 VPN to be used once or twice a day between 2 sites?

Depends on your link speed and how much other stuff you want the box to do. Raw benchmark numbers from the N3150 (first is no AES-NI, second is with):

type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-128 cbc 27482.49k 30927.17k 32224.17k 79698.26k 80573.78k
aes-128-cbc 145037.58k 215046.27k 256579.24k 269656.06k 273514.50k

Note that you won't see raw crypto speeds with VPN because of the overhead of other VPN operations--but that gives you some idea of how much more effectively utilized the CPU is, far and away beyond 10% or 50% improvement here or there.

 

[xbliss]

If you're usin openssl for crypto stuff you're probably better off with the N3150 because it's the only one of the three which supports AES-NI.

But the peak TDP is so much higher that it's less comfortable to run it in a mini server. If you don't really need the peak cpu power, there's no point having to build around the cooling requirements of the peak cpu power. The U series skylakes are a better target for this application, IMO, and the i3-6100u would probably be the sweet spot except that I've never seen one on a board as opposed to a prebuilt system like a NUC.

For network stuff I'd probably go with the N3150. If you're doing VPN it's the only one of that bunch to even consider. If you're doing virtualization, the 3755U does vt-d and the others don't, and it does 16G vs 8G RAM.
I don't see a reason to get a 3755U at this point over a 3855U except for availability (the 3855U has AES-NI, 32G rather than 16G, and basically the same performance & price as the 3755U).

just google "[model id] ark" to get intel's ARK page for that cpu. AES-NI is one of the features they list.

Realtek vs intel really doesn't matter for gigabit ethernet for the kind of systems we're talking about in 2016 (almost 2017).

Thanks for the insights. Currently got the Nano, looking to see if I can get another one of the same or one your suggestions in a similar price range.

 

[Cheddoleum]

Hi xbliss. I brought this thread back to life the other day because you might be able to provide some information about the CI323 that I'm finding a little hard to confirm or refute. But it looks like my question got a little lost:

Sorry to ressurrect this older thread but can you possibly clear something up? There's a claim, so far unchallenged by anyone, that the CI323 doesn't support dual-channel despite having dual slots. If true this would be a significant design blunder on Zotac's part, but it wouldn't be the first time. I've written to Zotac to confirm/deny but no response in a week.

I like the Zotac but if it won't do dual channel I might as well spend an additional 60 bucks or so on a Jetway N3160 with its single SODIMM slot and get dual Intel i211 NICs instead of the Realteks. Appreciate it if you can help.

Depending on your OS there are ways to check for dual channel. It's typically indicated in the BIOS, where it shows the amount of memory installed: depending on the BIOS implementation it may actually say Dual Channel Mode in so many words. If running windows, CPU-Z will tell you. Under linux,

dmidecode -t 17

will usually tell you what there is to know; usually under the term "Bank Locator". Channels are indicated as A, B, etc, to distinguish them from slots.

(I doubt that even running several VPNs as both server and client, and yes, this is something I do normally, single-channel will make that much difference given the total available bandwidth, but once I get a machine it tends to get repurposed a few times before it finds its place, so knowing its limitations going in would be useful. Dual channel most definitely makes a difference on a media streamer, for example.)

If you get a chance to check this I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

 

[xbliss]

I agree its a great little All in One box. Hence, I chose it over several options.
But the mysteries remain.
Zotac officially said its only capable of 8GB, but wierdly someone posted on NewEgg that they were using 16 (8+8).
I tested that and I was able to see 16 G under Win 8.1 x64.

I havent had the time to work on it, but its on my upcoming task list.
One issue I found was when Hyper V was enabled on 8.1 via Programs / Features, it borks on the Restart with a HAL error.
Upon googling saw similar things on HV and VMware Esx. Also saw some posts/ threads about how to fix it /add drivers etc.
Havent done it yet.

So, lets work on this together. I'll try to help give you some updates as I get some time.

Hi xbliss. I brought this thread back to life the other day because you might be able to provide some information about the CI323 that I'm finding a little hard to confirm or refute. But it looks like my question got a little lost:



Depending on your OS there are ways to check for dual channel. It's typically indicated in the BIOS, where it shows the amount of memory installed: depending on the BIOS implementation it may actually say Dual Channel Mode in so many words. If running windows, CPU-Z will tell you. Under linux,

dmidecode -t 17

will usually tell you what there is to know; usually under the term "Bank Locator". Channels are indicated as A, B, etc, to distinguish them from slots.

(I doubt that even running several VPNs as both server and client, and yes, this is something I do normally, single-channel will make that much difference given the total available bandwidth, but once I get a machine it tends to get repurposed a few times before it finds its place, so knowing its limitations going in would be useful. Dual channel most definitely makes a difference on a media streamer, for example.)

If you get a chance to check this I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

PS: Why was this thread/ post deleted/ removed?
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?posts/113441/
FMA1394 replied to the thread Used HP ProCurve J9021A vs J9021B vs J9028A vs J9028B?. There may be more posts after this.

 

[Cheddoleum]

I agree its a great little All in One box. Hence, I chose it over several options.
But the mysteries remain.
Zotac officially said its only capable of 8GB, but wierdly someone posted on NewEgg that they were using 16 (8+8).
I tested that and I was able to see 16 G under Win 8.1 x64.

Thanks. Yes, that's expected. Just hoping the two ram slots are on different channels. This would be the normal way to do it and allows twice the memory throughput. If they don't enable dual-channel as one reviewer has claimed, it's probably just fine as a networking and VPN device: network bandwidth alone will never be sufficient to saturate even a single memory channel; the pipes are of very different diameters. But I wouldn't want to use it as a video renderer or transcoder.

 

[xbliss]

Thanks. Yes, that's expected. Just hoping the two ram slots are on different channels. This would be the normal way to do it and allows twice the memory throughput. If they don't enable dual-channel as one reviewer has claimed, it's probably just fine as a networking and VPN device: network bandwidth alone will never be sufficient to saturate even a single memory channel; the pipes are of very different diameters. But I wouldn't want to use it as a video renderer or transcoder.

For video I'd go and check recommendation from the XBMC/ Kodi forums.

 

[Cheddoleum]

After a little ad hoc research, mostly poking around on the geekbench browser, I'm persuaded that the user review that suggested the ci323 doesn't do dual-channel is wrong. In practice it sees on the order of 10GB/sec memory bandwidth; not earth-shattering and only half the CPU's maximum spec but it's fully consistent with the dual-channel performance of these low-wattage multicore Intel SOCs in the real world. It's similar to that of a J1900 -- a very slightly more performant chip than the N3150 at the cost of drawing twice the wattage -- that I have in house that I know for a fact is running in dual-channel mode.

So, false alarm. I suspect the BIOS just wasn't reporting in a way that the utility that the reviewer used could understand. This is actually pretty common too with these little systems.