Core 2 Quads in general are quite a bit slower than iX.

Core 2 Quad 8400 has less cache than most Core 2 Quads (only 2 x 2MB).

So a Core 2 Quad 8400 will be quite a bit slower than iX or iX based xeons.

Thanks.

EDIT:

Quite means? x2 or x3 times faster?

How much slower a core2quad would be in comparison to a iX would depend on which core2quad version is being compared to which iX version, and what program you were running.

With the only virtualisation benchmarks I know of I dont normally see tests on desktop level machines, its normally 'server' hardware-

http://www.vmware.com/a/vmmark/

*edit 'quite a bit slower' means that the Core2Quad is slower, not iX (I think you knew that, but just in case.....)

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Hi,

According your budget you can select the following configuration for virtualization which is the best.

3ware BIOS,
Intel board
4*1TB RAID 10 Setup
50GB RAM
Use SAS HDD storage as LVM to creating VM's.
250HDD and 4GB ram enough for host machine HDD (if its Xen Virtualization)

As per the above specification you can create max 80VM's in this host machine.

You didn't list the specs of your desktop or what you're doing with your VMs, but in my very little experience I've found that hard disk performance is likely the 3-VM limiter. If you're running only 1 hard disk then that's the bottle-neck, not your screamin' fast i7. At school we have pretty stout workstations, but we only get a single junky drive in a eSATA dock. More than 2 VMs on my school workstation chokes it. I was playing with a much slower computer from my work with dual disks and found that it could run 3 virtual machines without too much of a performance hit (1 VM on the same disk as the host OS and 2 more VMs on the second disk). For comparison the school machines are Intel E8600s with 8 gigs of ram and a 250 gig 7200 rpm disk, the work machine was a Intel E5200 with 2 gigs of ram and dual 500 gig 7200 RPM disks.

Install another hard drive or two (whatever you have laying around or whatever is cheapest at your local computer store) and limit yourself to a maximum of two operating systems per physical hard disk. For example your host OS plus 1 VM on your primary disk, two more VMs on a second disk, two more VMs on a third disk.

Yeah, that may be it. I'll look info raid 01 or 10.

If linksep is right, then moving to RAID 0+1/1+0 will not help that much. Better off experimenting with single discs, rather than RAID arrays. Unless you've got a decent RAID controller, RAID probably wont help you much anyway, and if you do have a good controller, RAID 5 or RAID 6 would be a better way to go.

Hi,

I add to what other members have said: I would use a SSD or RAMDISK since no overhead from the mechanical drives. Sure the cost would be more than a mechanical drive but would show better performance.

With the information you gave us it is simply impossible to answer your question:
Information from you:
- You want server hardware
- Your budget for CPU + motherboard is 1000$ maximum
- You run at minimum 4 virtual machines on it

Information we need:
- How many VMs run at maximum on it?
- What is the workload of that VMs, do they idle most the time, do they run 100% all the time?
- Which resources do you give to the VMs (amount of RAM, number of CPU cores, etc)?
- What features are a must for the motherboard?

More info. I need:

3 VM's that do not do much - e.g. LAMP serves, 5-20 simple pages per minute
1 VM for typical desktop use (linux, users connect via ssh -X into it)
3 VM's that are actually used: e.g. LAMP + DB with 60+ pages/minute, DB with 1-20 milions of records of record size ~1 KiB
very lightly loaded SVN/GIT server and few other lightly loaded servers (e.g. ejabber) - all just for few users otherwise idle