Sandy Bridge vs Phenom

[drexvil]

Hi,

I freelance as an IT troubleshooter for small businesses, managing everything IT, including their workgroup networks. Although I have a decade of experience in Windows workstations and home networking, I have less experience about enterprise IT: Windows Server, domains, roaming profiles, Cisco firewalls, VPN setups, etc.

In order to best serve my customers, I want to learn everything by having an mini enterprise-like network at home as a learning and testing environment. I want to get familiarized with all popular enterprise features and software, and eventually get certified.

This server will also double-duty as a home PC and basic HTPC (no transcoding).

I want a cheap ($400-$600) build for a quiet low-power but sufficiently powerful machine that will be on 24/7. My starting point is Intel Sandby Bridge or AMD Phenom. I'm edging towards the i5 2500K since it's so powerful, but AMD is such a bargain.

What's your experience regarding AMD processors, chipsets and motherboards regarding compatibility with Windows Server 2008? I want everything to work including both analog and SPDIF audio, onboard video, hardware virtualization, and maybe even RAID. Is an Intel CPU/motherboard better?


Thanks.

 

[Patrick]

Welcome!

First thing I would suggest is to get a Microsoft Technet Plus subscription, that way you can play with whatever you want.

On Phenom v. Sandy Bridge that is very hard. First off, you do not want the i5-2500K or i7-2600K. They do not support VT-d like their multiplier locked brethren. If you are using Hyper-V virtualization, this is less of an issue.

On compatibility, Windows is not the issue. ESXi compatibility is rough, but you will have a better chance with AMD just because the Sandy Bridge platform is only a few weeks old.

HTPC performance wise, Sandy Bridge is really a lot better than Phenom II + 8xx chipsets with onboard ATI GPUs.

Another thought is something like the Athlon II X4 series which is even less expensive.

My main suggestion is to figure out what you want to play with, what you want to learn, then lookup HCL's. Sandy Bridge is fast, but Lynnfield Xeons/ motherboards have a lot of options fully supported in terms of ESXi and with remote management features.

One thing to note either way is that you will not want to use onboard Intel or AMD RAID 5.