# Web performance (E3 or E5)



## abyssis (Sep 12, 2013)

Hi, I can't decide which "option" should I choose. I was looking into RamNode's offer and I can see that they offer E3 and E5 running VPS's. I know that there won't be much of difference but still I was kinda curious in terms of web performance which one would be a better solution in terms of performance? It's pretty much just a basic game panel (http://sourceforge.net/projects/brightgamepanel/)running on LEMP. I'm not that experienced and I was hoping I could find some answers here. Thank you.


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## Reece-DM (Sep 12, 2013)

Honestly I don't think you will notice anything major. 

Ramnodes services are reliable  & fast from what I know -- On either CPU you should be rocking along just fine


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## drmike (Sep 12, 2013)

I don't care  a lick about CPUs... It's not as if you are getting full access to the CPUs 

Anything oh Intel 54xx onward is more than sufficient as an end customer considering a VPS host.


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## Reece-DM (Sep 12, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> I don't care  a lick about CPUs... It's not as if you are getting full access to the CPUs
> 
> Anything oh Intel 54xx onward is more than sufficient as an end customer considering a VPS host.


Providing its not oversold to the extreme of course.

You should be in good hands with Ramnode


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## concerto49 (Sep 12, 2013)

The E5 is more consistent / stable since there are many cores to distribute. However in terms of raw performance, the E3 will be faster. It comes down to if you want stable performance or burst performance. E3 with only 4 cores is likely to be more utilized than a dual E5 build.


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## HalfEatenPie (Sep 12, 2013)

Ok well while everyone's answers are true I don't think they answer abyssis's question .  

Ignoring the fact that you don't get the use of a full core, let's focus on the two CPUs. 

Now for your purposes (LEMP stack is it?), either cores would be more than sufficient for any task.   

For this "breakdown", I'm going to assume E5s are 2.0 GHz cores while E3s are 3.3 GHz cores (most common cores from each "group").  

E3s usually provide higher GHz, definitely helpful for unoptimized software which haven't been designed to run on multiple cores.  The unoptimized software would have a max GHz "capacity" of 3.3 GHz in comparison to 2.0 GHz.  Most software (even gameservers) usually are optimized for multi-core performance, (used to be an issue in minecraft though but I think they took care of that (anyone want to correct me?)) so I don't see that being a major issue unless you're running old code.  But comparing single cores (one against the other), E3s win due to single core capacity.  

If I recall, E3s have a limit to around 32GB RAM, while E5s can have (if I recall, I am a bit intoxicated at the moment) up to 768GB of RAM (although most of them I see are around 128 GB or 256 GB).  This also means E3s have less density (clients per server, unless you're buying from YOU KNOW WHAT provider in which case then your SOL), but on the flip side the nodes are more fragile (in terms of your next door neighbors), therefore it's easier for the node to be affected by a single user.  E5 nodes usually have higher server capacity, which of course means higher density, but also means the servers can take more "hits" before your next door neighbor's operation affects your own performance.  It's a two way street here, but I'm going to give this one to the E5.  

Provider side, E5s are much more economical, easier to maintain, and provides higher levels of profit allowing them to invest more in growing the company.  For clients, this generally means the provider has a less change of suddenly disappearing in the night (less cost for colocation, less energy costs, etc. but of course higher initial costs but if they already bought it then this is usually isn't that big of an issue).  

Of course this is all very general talking and depends on numerous factors (provider's business plan, profit margins, server administering habits, etc.), but in terms of RamNode you can't go wrong with either or.  For your uses I'd suggest E5s specifically (in my opinion, less percent chance for noisy neighbors to be a problem).  Nick runs one solid operation so you can't go wrong 

*Edit:* haha damn you concerto49!   Beat me to it! 

*Source:*  I work for Catalyst, and majority of our nodes are Dual E5s for this exact reason.


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## abyssis (Sep 12, 2013)

Thanks for all the answers! By the way the part with E5s being much more economical. I thought most of them (in this case E5-2630) are like 2 times more expensive if not more and the power consumption is much higher as well, isn't it? I might be wrong though or most likely I'm just looking at it from the wrong point of view.


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## peterw (Sep 12, 2013)

You should consider the SSD options

RAID10 SSD              * 3.3GHz+* CPU

RAID10 SSD-Cached *2.3GHz+* CPU

I would prefer the SSD offer.


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## HalfEatenPie (Sep 12, 2013)

abyssis said:


> Thanks for all the answers! By the way the part with E5s being much more economical. I thought most of them (in this case E5-2630) are like 2 times more expensive if not more and the power consumption is much higher as well, isn't it? I might be wrong though or most likely I'm just looking at it from the wrong point of view.


Ehh I'd think of it this way.  Roughly speaking, would you rather have 4 E3 servers or 1 E5 server (Colocation costs, Hardware costs, Electricity costs, etc.)?  



peterw said:


> You should consider the SSD options
> 
> RAID10 SSD              * 3.3GHz+* CPU
> 
> ...


For a panel like that I'd suggest SSD as well.  I doubt it'd use a ton of space anyways, so rather get the SSD boost.


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## Deleted (Sep 12, 2013)

E5's have AES-NI. If you're doing lots of crypto (SSL), you can't go wrong.


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## OSTKCabal (Sep 14, 2013)

I run my SSL-secured company website on a RamNode KVM 512MB SSD-Cached VPS in Atlanta. It runs -great-.


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