# CPU for new FreeBSD system



## kdemidofff (Nov 1, 2012)

I think making new FreeBSD system and have trouble choosing between
Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz and Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4GHz
i heard that they've removed HT from ivy cpu and added some instructions.

What do you suggest for new setup? Purpose: general system setup, ports, no graphics, headless console, some system and application servers, game servers. Maybe jails.
:stud


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## SirDice (Nov 1, 2012)

Any of those two will do what you want to do.


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## lambda (Nov 2, 2012)

Consider one of the Ivy Bridge Xeon models, they are (counter-intuitively) cheaper than the i7 variants.
Also the Xeons/i7s have HT.

The -K Variants lack the VT-d Feature which enables you to use PCI passthrough in XEN/KVM (both linux)


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## Martillo1 (Nov 2, 2012)

The VT-d feature is also necessary for VirtualBox to emulate 64-bit machines.

However, I tested it on Vindows Vista, so who knows. I am testing OpenBSD and NetBSD in place of FreeBSD while waiting for 9.1-RELEASE, and I can not test VirtulaBox without VT-d on FreeBSD at this time.


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## CanOfBees (Nov 7, 2012)

There's a good chance that I'll be getting a Dell workstation during our hardware refresh. I'm looking at a choice between the following Intel processors: i5-3470 (3.2 GHz), i5-3570 (3.4 GHz), and i7-3770 (3.4 GHz). The first two models come with HD2500 graphics, and the i7 uses HD4000. I hope to be using an Nvidia GPU instead of the built-in Intel.

Generally speaking, is it better to avoid the i7 models with FreeBSD right now [1]? Is the same true for the more recent i5s? I don't think I'll really have an option to test FreeBSd on the hardware beforehand, but I may be able to request an older i5. 

Thanks, in advance, for any light you can shine on the matter.

[1] Full disclaimer: I tend to use PC-BSD day-to-day (I'll be sure to post this question in their forums!), but also maintain a small FreeBSD partition to learn/experiment. I'm using 9.1-RC2 in both cases right now, and will move to RELEASE as soon as it's available.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Nov 7, 2012)

Searching the forum for "mainboard" may bring a a post with a hardware possibility for the i5, and has some detail you may wish to read about before proceeding further... (I've used ghostbsd on a comparatively recent AMD motherboard, but I've issues always with the disk prepartion, etc. For instance, today or yesterday a backup "lost its bsdlabel" and could not be mounted. Fdisk showed two varying results depending upon how it was called. By chance I fsck_ffs'd it and it suddenly was back with all its data... (fixing the 'journal could not be read' problem.)   Fortunately those resolve favorably in the majority of cases (vs other operating systems...) ).


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## CanOfBees (Nov 7, 2012)

@jb_fvwm2: Thank you for the pointers!


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## Beeblebrox (Nov 7, 2012)

Almost all intel or amd CPU's work well.
The mobo is another issue due to the variety of the "controller chips" used on the board - and this is a more difficult issue IMHO than the CPU.
However, I think that you neglected to ask a related (and equally important) question: What is the best processing power for the money? Well, here you go then:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/
I use this site all the time...


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## Uniballer (Nov 7, 2012)

Just beware that there is more to CPU performance than Passmark numbers.  Did you see this CPU Selection thread?


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 7, 2012)

Beeblebrox said:
			
		

> Almost all intel or amd CPU's work well.


Multi-core and multi-threading performance


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## akil (Nov 8, 2012)

If you are going to use BHyVe you should consider to chose i7-3770 over i7-3770k because '*k' series doesn't support "IntelÂ® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d)" but has only higher Clock Speed. On the BSDCon 2012 I've asked about support BHyVe for new Intel IO Virtualization, and Michael Dexter promises to implement support for mentioned technology but I don't remember when...

Hence, if you are going to serve/using virtualization on your host in near future, i7-3770 would be a better choice in this respect, please keep in mind that VirtualBox is going to include  Intel Virt IO  technology too. I think that technology is a better choice than additional extra 100Mhz in cpu, but this is a subject for another discussion.

Currently I have i7-3770 which works excellent for me.


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## CanOfBees (Nov 9, 2012)

I wanted to say thanks to everyone else who posted in the thread - despite not being the OP, there's a been a bunch of great information shared. These forums are wonderful!


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## kdemidofff (Nov 12, 2012)

thanks all for pointers


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