virtualbox.org

HI guys/gals. Please help me out. I cant find research on this anywhere... What is a good processor for virtual computing? I am building a PC that will be exclusively used for virtual computing for good hands on related to clustering with Oracle ASM, Oracle Database development, RAC, Hosting a web server, advanced networking. The goal is to tie everythign together and I dont have the resources I need so i'm planning to start building a machine. i plan to have about maybe 8 VM's total.

I see all reviews about Intel i7 5820, intel i7 6700 related to gaming but not related to anything about REAL computing lik virtual machines, or running databases and such.

The reviews say the i7 6700 (quad core) bests the i7 5820(six core) in performance but since this has more cores, wouldnt the 5820 be better for virtual computing or not? Plese clarify and help out. Keep in mind, this will have a 500gb SSD and 128GB DDR4 Ram. If you'd like to see my full build that i'm planning to start building soon, you can see my wishlist at the link below. Please let me know if these are good specs.

I"ve been looking at 3 processors which are listed below:
* AMD FX-9590 (8 core)
* Intel i7 6700k (4 core)
* Intel i7 5820k (6 core)

Based on reviews, they all say intel i7 is best. But these were only for gaming.. Please help. Thanks!

Machine Build
{URL deleted}

For VMs you want as many cores as possible, along with loads of RAM and disk space. Running a modern OS really IMHO requires two cores, not shared by any other OS.

I don't trust AMD's claims for number of cores. They invented their own definition of "core" which isn't shared by the customer's expectations (to me a "core" is a complete single core CPU. If you put 8 of those inside one package then you have an 8 core CPU. This CPU does need architecture to arbitrate access to external I/O, but otherwise each core is completely independant). That AMD CPU is not genuine 8 core. The "cores" are not independent in the sense I just described. Benchmarks indicate that the AMD is closer to a 4 core by normal standards.

So yes, I'd say the i7 is the best of the CPUs you list. It would allow you to run two VMs plus the host OS, each with 2 cores, which should work well provided the rest of the PC can handle the I/O load. If you can keep disk sizes moderate and locate them on an SSD, that would help too. Obviously you can also go with 5 single core VMs leaving one core for the host, giving you slower performanance. If you try to go much beyond then then I think you'll have severe problems: you really can't fit one liter in a 500cc pot.

I deleted your offsite link. We tend to dislike new posters adding links to non-VirtualBox related sites. In any case the link led nowhere useful for people not signed up to NewEgg.

Based on reviews, they all say intel i7 is best. But these were only for gaming.. Please help. Thanks!

Actually this is just a selling trick. The i7 is just powerful and they stick the name gaming on it to appeal to a special group. I can say that the 5820K is stable and works great. I have one in my dev unit. I considered the 8 core i7 but the price point was higher than I wanted to spend at the time for a development unit.

mpack wrote:an't fit one liter in a 500cc pot.

I did research on this but I couldnt find anything relevant about cc pot. Can you explain what you mean by this?

Perryg wrote: I can say that the 5820K is stable and works great

What do you use yours for? HOw mnay virtual machines do you run on it?

You can't fit one liter into a half liter pot (500cc == half of 1000cc). I wouldn't think you need to research that.

What do you use yours for? HOw mnay virtual machines do you run on it?

It varies. Some are for building and compiling, some are for hosting. Here's the details.

Yes you can over commit the processor *if* the guests are not doing a lot. Meaning I can start 10 and even 20 guests and leave them idle, but you can not expect too much from that many guests as you simply don't have the processor power to handle the load. So if you are hosting a guest that is under load most of the time you need to take the amount of processors out of the equation for other guests. RAM is your real stopping point. You can over commit to a point using ballooning, or pagefusion ( see the manual ) but you always run the risk of the guest/host performance or even hangs.