I thought the sales associate’s response was pretty entertaining. He said “Well, there are just three different types of processors you can choose from. There is an i3, and i5, and an i7. The higher numbers are better. I like to call the i3 yesterday’s technology, while the i5 is today’s technology, and the i7 is tomorrow’s technology. The i7 is much more future-proof than the others”. Then he started telling her about how the processor is like the engine in your car…

Next, he moved on to the subject of memory. He said “Windows 8 really needs at least 4GB of memory or it will really bog down. Having 6GB is better, and 8GB of memory is the best.”

Finally, he moved on to the subject of storage. He said “Storage is not such a big deal anymore, since all of these laptops have plenty of it. I think the smallest drive in any of these is 500GB. How much storage do you think you need?”

In this guy’s defense, nothing he said was really glaringly wrong (and I have heard far worse explanations of computers at Best Buy). Most of what he said was just over-simplified, perhaps because he did not know any better, or perhaps because he did not want to get too technical for his audience.

I think a better approach might have been for the sales associate to ask her what she was planning on doing with her laptop, what her preference was about size, weight, screen resolution and battery life, and maybe what her budget range was. I probably would have asked her what kind of computer she currently had. Then based on those answers, make a few initial recommendations, and gauge her response.

I spent several years in retail during college and grad school, so I have quite a bit of sympathy for retail sales people. I still remember an acronym they taught us at one of my retail jobs, which was ANPOCS, which stood for:

Approach the customer

Determine the customer’s Needs

Present the merchandise

Overcome any objections

Close the sale

Suggest add-on sales

Since I am “in computers” all of my family and friends like to get free computer advice and technical support from me. I am sure that this is a familiar situation to many of you! Scott Hanselman wrote a great post about this back in 2011.

Given my knowledge and interest in the gory details of different processors and solid state storage, I might have quickly gotten far too technical for the average person. I would have probably tried to explain that there are different generations of processors, where the latest versions are slightly faster and have better battery life. I probably would have explained the actual differences between the Core i3, i5 and i7 lines, and maybe even pulled up Task Manager to show her how to look at the difference in the number of cores in a machine and how fast they were running. I probably would have told her about hyperthreading and Turbo Boost….

And then, I would have probably noticed her eyes glazing over from an overload of information. Who knows? Perhaps the over-simplified method is better in that situation!

And just to be very clear, the genders of the sales associate and the customer have nothing to do with this story (just in case you are wondering about that). I just hate to see people not do some research before they buy something like a computer, placing themselves at the mercy of a sales associate, who may or may not know what they are doing.

They are pin-compatible with the older Sandy Bridge-EP processors, so they will work in existing two-socket servers, such as the Dell PowerEdge R720 or the HP Proliant DL380p Gen 8. This means that you should be able to get an Ivy Bridge-EP in an existing server model fairly quickly.

Once this happens, the question will be which exact E5-2600 v2 processor you should pick for SQL Server 2012 or SQL Server 2014 usage? Since SQL Server 2012 uses core-based licensing, you really want to get the most performance possible from each physical core that you buy a SQL Server core license for.

There are several different choices available, based on your budget, performance and scalability requirements, ranging from four physical cores without hyper-threading to twelve physical cores with hyper-threading.

Remember, only physical cores count for licensing purposes (on non-virtualized servers). If there are two or more models with the same physical core count, you should prefer the one with the highest clock speed (since the license cost is the same).  You also want to avoid the low-power models (that have the L suffix at the end of the model number). They save a relatively small amount of electrical power at the cost of a pretty significant performance penalty.

This leaves five viable choices, depending on your desired physical core count, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Recommended Xeon E5-2600 v2 Processor Models for SQL Server 2012/2014

In my opinion, there is no good technical reason to select any of the other available models from this product family for SQL Server 2012/2014 usage.

I think it is interesting that the new eight-core E5-2667 v2 has higher clock speeds and slightly better single-threaded performance than the previous generation, eight-core E5-2690 processor. The new four-core E5-2637 v2 also has higher clock speeds and slightly better single-threaded performance than the previous generation, four-core E5-2643 processor. Getting better performance for the same SQL Server 2012 license cost is always a good thing!

Hardware 201: Selecting and Sizing Database Hardware for OLTP Performance

The foundation of database performance is the underlying server hardware and storage subsystem. Even the best designed and optimized database application can be crippled by an inadequate hardware and storage infrastructure. Recent advances in new processors and chipsets, along with improvements in magnetic and SSD storage have dramatically changed the evaluation and selection process compared to the past. Many database professionals struggle to keep up with new technology and often simply let someone else make their hardware selection and sizing decisions. Unfortunately, the DBA usually gets the blame for any performance issues that crop up later. Don’t let this happen to you! This session covers current and upcoming hardware from both Intel and AMD and gives you the tools and resources to make better hardware selection decisions to support SQL Server OLTP workloads.

Attendance was quite good for a hardware-related session, and there were a lot of interesting questions after the presentation.

Just in case this session whetted your appetite for a much deeper level of knowledge about SQL Server Hardware, you should consider attending the upcoming two-day IEHW: Immersion Event on SQL Server Hardware course that I will be teaching in Bellevue, WA on September 18-19, 2013.

Table 1: Tick-Tock Release Milestones

Figure 1 shows the Tick-Tock release relationship, with the Tocks in blue and the Ticks in orange.

Figure 1: Tick-Tock Model

The next major Tock processor release from Intel will be Haswell. Haswell is the next Tock release after Sandy Bridge. Haswell is supposed to be released for the desktop and mobile space in the March-June 2013 time-frame. Based on past experience, that probably means that we will see the server oriented Haswell-EP and Haswell-EN server microprocessors show up one to two quarters later in 2013.

According to various Intel roadmap slides that have been leaked, Haswell-EP will have 10-14 CPU cores, with 2.5MB of L3 cache per each core, for a total of up to 35MB of shared L3 cache for the entire processor.  The Haswell-EP processors will also have a quad-channel DDR4 memory controller, supporting transfer speeds 1333, 1600, 1866 and 2133 MT/s. They will also have two quick path interconnect (QPI) channels, and PCI Express 3.0 with 40 lanes on Haswell-EP, and 24 lanes on Haswell-EN. They will also support Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost.

If this is true, you could see up to 28 physical cores or 56 logical cores in a two socket server with Haswell-EP. If Intel continues what they started with Sandy Bridge-EP, there will also be a four socket version of Haswell-EP that would have 56 physical cores or 112 logical cores in a commodity four socket server by late 2013!

Since Haswell is a Tock release, we can expect a big performance boost over Sandy Bridge. Historically, Tock releases have shown anywhere from a 50-100% performance increase for various workload types. Haswell requires a new processor socket and different chipset, so the server vendors will have to release new model servers (for example a Dell PowerEdge R730) to accommodate it.  This is pretty exciting stuff!

There are a lot of available good choices for high end mobile workstations and choosing one comes down to several main factors:

1. Your intended usage
2. Your budget
3. Your tolerance for size and weight
4. Your desired screen resolution
5. Your vendor preference

A common usage request in the SQL Server community is that someone wants to be able able to run multiple, concurrent virtual machines on a laptop so that they can start learning about SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups.

From this usage description, you would want a relatively powerful multi-core machine with lots of RAM and multiple drive bays if possible. This means you will need a 15″ or 17″ laptop that will be pretty large and heavy (6-8lbs). These larger machines will usually have four memory slots instead of two, and they will have two or three internal drive bays instead of one. The HD4000 integrated graphics in the Intel Ivy Bridge processor will be more than sufficient for this scenario. Using integrated graphics will give you more battery life than discrete graphics.

Remember, you are going to be stuck with the screen that you pick and with the processor that you select for the life of the laptop. Unless you choose an Ultrabook, it should not be too difficult to upgrade your RAM and to install a fast SSD.

A single fast 6Gbps SATA III SSD would probably have more than enough performance (both random and sequential) to support this scenario, but you might be worried about disk space unless you get a larger and more expensive SSD, such as a 512GB model.

The latest models will have 22nm Intel Ivy Bridge (3rd Generation Core) processors, with 6Gbps SATA III and USB 3.0 support, and support for up to 32GB of RAM (with four memory slots). You will also want a 1080P screen (1920 x 1080), rather than a 720P screen (1366 x 768).

I think the sweet spot for mobile processors right now is the Intel Core i7-3820QM. Going for the top of the line, Intel Core i7-3920XM does not make economic sense, since it is double the cost of the i7-3820QM while only offering maybe 10% more performance.

Rather than ordering a machine fully populated with RAM from the system vendor, you should just get a single 2GB stick of RAM from the system vendor and then buy 8GB sticks of RAM from someplace like NewEgg. This will save you several hundred dollars. Here are some 16GB memory kits from NewEgg.

Depending on your comfort level with hardware and whether you want to install a fresh copy of an OS, you should consider buying your own SSD(s) from NewEgg instead of buying them from the system vendor. This would save you even more money, plus you can pick the SSD that you want. The 256GB OCZ Vertex 4 is one of the better choices right now.

Vendor selection comes down to personal preference, really. Most people (including myself) actually only have anecdotal experience and evidence regarding vendor and specific model selection. For example, perhaps you bought a Dell laptop a few years ago, and you had some problems with it, so you are not likely to be a Dell fan. I would argue that your personal  experience is only anecdotal (unless you were a desktop support technician, and your company bought 100 of that model laptop, and a high percentage of them had problems). Even then, your experience would be only be valid for that particular model.

Ideally, you would want to be able to actually play with the specific model before you ordered it, to check the build quality, the ergonomics, etc. That is usually not possible with Windows laptops, since most brick and mortar retailers only carry poor quality, entry level laptops. That is one huge advantage that Apple has, since you can go into an Apple store and play around with the latest model MBP before you buy it.

Here are a few candidate, workstation class laptops:
Dell Precision M4700
Dell Precision M6700
Lenovo W530

The TPC-E benchmark is an OLTP, database-centric workload that is meant to reduce the cost and complexity of running the benchmark compared to the older TPC-C benchmark. Unlike TPC-C, the storage media for TPC-E must be fault tolerant (which means no RAID 0 arrays). Overall, the TPC-E benchmark is designed to have reduced I/O requirements compared to the old TPC-C benchmark, which makes it both less expensive and more realistic since the sponsoring hardware vendors will not feel as much pressure to equip their test systems with disproportionately large, expensive disk subsystems in order to get the best test results. The TPC-E benchmark is also more CPU intensive than the old TPC-C benchmark, which means that the results tend to correlate pretty well to CPU performance, as long as the I/O subsystem can drive the workload effectively. My assumption here is that any hardware vendor that takes the time and expense required to submit a TPC-E Benchmark result is going to make sure they have enough I/O capacity to properly drive the workload for the benchmark.

When I am assessing the relative OLTP performance of different processors, I like to take the raw TPC-E tpsE score for a system using that particular processor and divide it by the number of physical cores in the system to get an idea of the relative “per physical core performance”.  When you do this, you should also be aware of how many physical sockets are in the system, since you will not see 1:1 scaling as you add additional sockets, even with NUMA (which is a huge improvement over the old SMP architecture). This means that a four socket system would not have double the performance of a two socket system that was using the exact same processors and components. This is further complicated by the fact that Intel has a different release cycle for their processors that are primarily intended for two socket systems, where newer models become available in the two socket space about 12-18 months before the roughly equivalent four socket processor. I say roughly equivalent, since the two socket models usually have higher base and turbo clock speeds than the four socket models from the same processor generation. A good example is the two socket Intel Xeon X5690 (Westmere-EP) compared to the four socket Intel Xeon E7-4870 (Westmere-EX).  The Intel Xeon X5690 has a significantly higher base clock speed (3.46GHz vs. 2.4GHz) and a higher turbo clock speed (3.73GHz vs. 2.8GHz) compared to the Intel Xeon E7-4870. There are more than clock speed differences to consider here, since the X5690 only has six physical cores, and a 12MB L3 cache, while the E7-4870 has ten physical cores and a 30MB L3 cache.

Keeping all of this in mind, I found some recent TPC-E results for several of the latest processors from both AMD and Intel, and divided the actual raw score by the number of physical cores in the system. I decided to divide by physical cores, since SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition is licensed by physical processor core instead of the old familiar per socket licensing that was used in previous versions of SQL Server. This means that people should be focused on getting the most performance and scalability possible from each physical processor core from a hardware selection and licensing perspective. As you can see by looking at the Score/Core column of Table 1, the new Intel Xeon E5-2690 (Sandy Bridge-EP) is the current champion, followed pretty closely by the Intel Xeon X5690 (Westmere-EP). We see a pretty big drop going to the Intel Xeon E7 processors, in a four and eight socket configuration. Finally, the latest AMD processors are bringing up the rear, with quite a gap between them and the Intel offerings. This does not look very good if you are thinking about using AMD processors for an OLTP workload, especially since you will have to pay for more physical cores (up to 16) in an Opteron 6200 series processor.  One factor that helps mitigate these scores and license costs somewhat for AMD is the new SQL Server 2012 Core Factor Table that Microsoft released on April 1, 2012. This table reduces the licensing cost for most new AMD processors that have six or more cores by allowing you to multiply the actual physical core count by a factor of 0.75 for licensing purposes.

Table 1: TPC-E Performance by Physical Core

At this point, I was a little annoyed. It was not clear whether I had a bad CPU, and bad motherboard, or simply a loose connection somewhere. I was busy with other things the rest of the day, but I was able to start troubleshooting the problem late last night. I had another system with a Core i7-2600K processor in an ASUS P8Z68-V PRO motherboard available, so I decided to do some component swapping to figure out what the problem might be. First, I decided to take the Ivy Bridge processor and put it in the ASUS P8Z68-V PRO motherboard. This worked, which proved that the new processor was fine. Next, I decided to put the older Core i7-2600K processor in the new ASUS Sabertooth Z77 motherboard. This did not work, which put suspicion on the new motherboard. Next, I decided to yank that motherboard out of the case to possibly return it to Micro Center. As I was removing the case fan for the Corsair H80 water cooler for the CPU, I noticed that one of the connectors from the power supply to the motherboard was loose, which was the real source of the problem (it was covered up by the fan and radiator for the CPU cooler). At this point, I decided to keep on removing the new motherboard, since I wanted to use the older ASUS P8Z68-V PRO motherboard in the new Antec 302 case to see how that would work out.

After this thrashing around, I put together all of the parts in the Antec 302 case, and everything worked as expected when I hit the power button. I got Windows 7 installed and patched, and then ran a few quick benchmarks last night. This little system is extremely fast, even using the Intel HD4000 integrated graphics. It only uses 51 watts at idle, while it has 32GB of RAM and a GeekBench score of 13167.  You can take a look at the various screenshots shown below for some more details.

ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has a blog post entitled Build your own “Ivy Bridge” desktop PC for another perspective on building a more modest system.

Figure 1: Intel Core i7 3770K processor under load

Figure 2: Intel Core i7 3770K processor at idle

Figure 3: Windows Experience Index Scores for Ivy Bridge desktop system

Figure 4: Mainboard tab from CPU-Z

Figure 5: Memory tab from CPU-Z

Figure 6: SPD tab from CPU-Z

Figure 7: Geekbench 2.3.1 Score for Core i7-3770K System

Figure 8: CrystalDiskMark scores for 180GB Intel 520 SSD

Figure 9: CrystalDiskMark scores for 1.5TB WD Black drive

If you already have a decent Sandy Bridge system, it is harder to make the case for an upgrade to an Ivy Bridge system. If you have something older, like a 45nm Core i7, or really anything else that is older than a Sandy Bridge, then an Ivy Bridge system will be a very nice upgrade. The Ivy Bridge processors actually cost slightly less than the equivalent Sandy Bridge processors. Ivy Bridge is pin compatible with Sandy Bridge, so many older Sandy Bridge motherboards will work with Ivy Bridge, after a BIOS update. You can also use a Sandy Bridge in a new 7-series chipset motherboard, although I am not sure why you would want to.

Here are some links to some of the reviews that were published today:

AnandTech: The Intel Ivy Bridge (Core i7 3770K) Review

Tom’s Hardware: Intel Core i7-3770K Review: A Small Step Up For Ivy Bridge

HardOCP: Intel Ivy Bridge Processor IPC and Overclocking Review

Overclocker’s Club: Intel Third Generation Core i7 3770K Review

The Guru of 3D: Core i7 3770K and 3750 review with Z77

PC Advisor: Intel launches Ivy Bridge processors

PC Advisor: Intel Ivy Bridge processors tested

PC Pro: Intel launches Ivy Bridge chips 

Apple Insider: Intel launches next-gen Ivy Bridge processors with 3D transistors

Daily Mirror: Intel’s Ivy Bridge chips launch using ‘3D transistors’

BBC News: Intel’s Ivy Bridge chips launch using ‘3D transistors’

Time: Intel’s Ivy Bridge Processors Launch at Last — How Do They Perform?

Unfortunately, the actual Ivy Bridge processors are not available until probably the last week of April. Normally, this would cause me to hold off on buying the components for a new system until then, but I gave in and went back to Micro Center on Tuesday, (dragging my very patient girlfriend with me), and bought some of the parts for the system so I could start putting it together in a leisurely fashion. I ended up getting an ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 LGA 1155 Z77 ATX Intel Motherboard , an Antec 302 case, a Seasonic X-Series SS-400FL fan-less power supply, an an OEM LG 22X DVD burner.

I still need to get an Ivy Bridge processor (probably a Core i7-3770K), some DDR3 RAM, and a 180GB Intel 520 SSD. I am planning on running off of the Intel HD4000 integrated graphics, which have much better performance than the HD3000 integrated graphics in the Sandy Bridge processors. This is because I want to build a fast, quiet system that uses the least amount of power possible. Using integrated graphics saves both power and noise (unless you get a lower-end, fan-less discrete video card).

I really like the looks of the ASUS Sabertooth Z77, with the plastic Thermal Armor that looks like military non-skid plating, and it comes with dust covers for all of the PCI-E slots. More importantly, it has four SATA-III ports, a USB 3.0 header that works with the front USB 3.0 ports on the Antec 302 case, and an Intel Gigabit Ethernet port (instead of some other brand).  The Antec 302 is a decent, no-nonsense case with front panel USB 3.0 ports, and a well thought out interior with six 3.5” drive bays that makes good cable routing pretty easy. It does not have any silly gaming features, like LED illuminated fans, clear side windows, etc.

I have built several systems in the past with the Seasonic X-Series SS-400FL power supply. It has an 80 Plus Gold efficiency rating, is modular, and is fan-less (so it is completely quiet). I purposely picked this 400 watt power supply instead of a larger 600-1000 watt power supply for several reasons. First, with the components I will be using, 400 watts is more than enough for the peak usage of the system. Power supplies are much less efficient when they are only putting out a very small fraction of their rated output, so getting a 600+ watt power supply is actually counter productive unless you really need that much power. I expect this system to draw less than 30 watts at idle, perhaps closer to 20 watts. It is modular, so I would not have the extra cable clutter you get from a cheaper non-modular power supply. Finally, it is a Seasonic power supply. Seasonic probably makes the best power supplies, in my opinion, and a number of hard-core hardware review sites seem to share this opinion.

I installed the motherboard in the case last night, along with the power supply, and all of the wiring that I could do until I get the rest of the parts. Once I get the entire system assembled, I will have couple more blog posts, with a number of benchmarks and some power usage data.

Figure 1: ASUS Sabertooth Z77 Motherboard