Xeon D as a Desktop

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Andrew911tt

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Feb 18, 2016
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I have a programmer friend who is running Windows 7 with a Linux VM on a Core i7 4790. He was telling me that he can't run more then one VM at a time because he runs out of cores/threads during compiling. He was thinking of ways to get more cores to do more things/speed up compiling. What are the downsides of using a Xeon D as a desktop computer. How would it do with compiling?

Lets say I can get a D-1540 (8 cores/16 threads) system for ~$1100 ,is there something else such as a E3 or E5 that would work better for the same price range?

Would the daily usage such as office and web browsing really have a slow down, I feel like a single broadwell core is more then fast enough for daily use.

Any help would be great thanks
 

Keljian

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Sep 9, 2015
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Wow, Urm the Xeon D would work as a desktop.

The thing is, compiling code you want as many cores and as much memory as possible. So regardless of what you throw at it, you will always want more.

IMO you are better off with standard desktop parts or a Xeon with more speed/cores
 

T_Minus

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Feb 15, 2015
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For compiling 2x E5-2670 gives you 16 Cores / 32 Threads and can be had for $120 (2x CPU TOTAL, not each) and then $250-400 for a motherboard... throw in RAM and it's still cheaper than a Xeon-D.

Xeon-D don't make sense for most due to cost $$$
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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If you are seeing this page, some part is being served by a Xeon D.

With that said, I would never use them as desktop chips. You need more single-threaded performance.

I think the Xeon E5-2670 V1 (dual) makes a decent desktop. You might also want to go with a Xeon D and colo the box somewhere and start doing remote builds. 1U 1A @ 120V is cheap to colo.
 

cperalt1

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Feb 23, 2015
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What about in a case where you are only allowed to buy through cdw-g, Dell or HP and want the most threads possible within a budget of 2k. I was thinking one of the 12 core machines and assigning 4 cores for Desktop use and the rest for Solaris, Linux, etc using KVM or is there an e5 processor in that price range that would do the trick
 
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RTM

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Jan 26, 2014
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The original post is not exactly clear on whether the Linux or Windows VM is the one doing the compilation tasks.
But if it is on Linux, you can use something like distcc to distribute the compiling to a secondary machine, that could be something like what @T_Minus suggested.

Also to get a "bigger picture", what virtualization hypervisor is he using? Virtualbox, VMware workstation/player/etc or something else?
What kind of storage is he using for the source code and result? While not as important as RAM and CPU, storage also plays a factor in the amount of time it takes to compile something. If he is not using SSDs, he might be able to get a boost from replacing the storage.
 

Andrew911tt

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Feb 18, 2016
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For compiling 2x E5-2670 gives you 16 Cores / 32 Threads and can be had for $120 (2x CPU TOTAL, not each) and then $250-400 for a motherboard... throw in RAM and it's still cheaper than a Xeon-D.
Thanks for this it is great advice

With that said, I would never use them as desktop chips. You need more single-threaded performance.
What kind of single thread performance are we talking about? Atom, Pentium 4, Core 2 Duo, Sandy Bridge, Broadwell? Besides price is there another downside to using the Xeon Ds as a desktop if all you want is decent web browsing and a whole bunch of cores for multi threaded tasks?

The original post is not exactly clear on whether the Linux or Windows VM is the one doing the compilation tasks.
But if it is on Linux, you can use something like distcc to distribute the compiling to a secondary machine, that could be something like what @T_Minus suggested.

Also to get a "bigger picture", what virtualization hypervisor is he using? Virtualbox, VMware workstation/player/etc or something else?
What kind of storage is he using for the source code and result? While not as important as RAM and CPU, storage also plays a factor in the amount of time it takes to compile something. If he is not using SSDs, he might be able to get a boost from replacing the storage.
The compiling is done in the VMware Linux VM. He is also already using 850 EVOs as drives.
 

Blinky 42

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Aug 6, 2015
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It also depends on how big the projects are that he is compiling, but throwing more memory and more cores at it will be the way to speed it up.
How much memory and CPU are allocated to the Linux VM? It should be enough memory to keep all of the needed source files and intermediate files totally in Linux's page cache.
If doing most of the programming work in Linux, may be better off running Linux as the base OS and a Virtualized Windows for whatever windows needs are. Or toss a beefier Linux server somewhere and do all the Linux work on that with the Linux VM on the desktop just providing a better work space than dozens of PuTTY sessions running.
 

Andrew911tt

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Feb 18, 2016
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I have a J1900 based system, I hope the single thread performance is better then than. It works but in no way is it fast.
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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I have a J1900 based system, I hope the single thread performance is better then than. It works but in no way is it fast.
Xeon-D core is well more than double the performance, depending on which chip maybe 3 times.
Actually it would make a fine desktop I think if you wanted to also run a few VM's, but probably also just as easy to use it as a server and use an NUC/notebook or whatever you like as a desktop.
 
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Deslok

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Jul 15, 2015
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I'll also throw the Precision T7500 in as a good All in one package in the 500-600 dollar range, it's a bit older than the E5-2670 chips but well built, I use a Dual X5675 model at home and 12c/24t is hard to slow down.

Also with vmware workstation spinning down moving to win8 or 10 would give you native hyper-v and a healthy speed boost there as well.