Xeon 2011-v3 - How slow is too slow?

[RobertFontaine]

I'm bought into a too good to pass V3/V4 motherboard (X10DRG to replace my X9DRG) today and am now bargain shopping fleabay for QS V3 chips.

Xeon E5-2669 - 12C 2.3 GHz $400
Xeon E5 - 2673 - 12C 2.4GHz 509
Xeon E5-2685- 12C 2.6 GHz 560
Xeon E5-2683 - 14C 2.0GHZ prod $465
Xeon E5-2686 -- 18C 2.0GHz $629

I've been finding my V1 2670's more than quick enough for my desktop VM's. This leads me to believe that a pair of 2685's would treat met very well BUT hmmm that 18 core 2686 might be kind of cool.

It will end up as an esxi (or some kind of type 1 hypervisor box) serving up a mix of server and desktop vms.
All the cores makes for lots of server vms but I'm not as clear that desktop vms are pleasant to use at 2Ghz.

Anyone have experience with how significant a difference the feel of 2.6 vs 2.0Ghz is on a desktop vm?
Dev/Testing/Productivity/Little to no Gaming (every once and a while I will install half life or quake to relive my youth).

thanks,
R

 

[Blinky 42]

The 2683v3 are nice, I have a number of v3 then the 2683v4's in servers around for a mix of network and cpu heavy VM workloads.

If buying 2 of them, I would go for that as a sweet spot in terms of # cores vs price, and not horridly slow single core.

 

[Evan]

I would choose the 2685 over the 2686
Without turbo they are essentially same and you get the advantages of high base clock. Don't know how either runs in terms of turbo binning though and it depends on workload.
2669 seems like a good price in the bunch if you don't simply need maximum compute power and save the $$ haveing said that you have a dual socket board and I assume you intend to go all out

Dual 2685 is still 24 cores on a home server :-O

 

[Rand__]

I can tell you that 1.7 is not enough but 2.4 is for (my) VDI
The vms on the 2630L (@1,7) feel slow often (video, lots of FF windows), but the 2680 is fine (@2,4). I do have a 2667 as well (@3.2) but usually there is no need to move the VMs over. Have not tried games though since I have not passed a GPU through / dont have K1/K2