Thread: Is the R210 Memory Restricted?

I read a thread comparing the R210 and T310.

The R210 had an X3460 whilst the T310 had an X3430. Obviously a big difference in CPU there but the poster says that overall the performance of the R210 was disappointing - possibly due to the memory channel / bandwidth being scaled back.

Either Dell has slightly BIOS crippled the memory on this machine or the motherboard has design issues. In a near similar configuration favoring the R210, the T310 tower server outperforms the R210. SQLServer 2008 SP1 Database testing was significantly slower on the R210, some test were 40-100% faster on the T310. Memory performance was 20-40% slower on the R210. Drive benchmarking was about 10% slower on the R210.

DELL Poweredge R200 vs R210 vs R410 - 6505180 - Post Count 30 - Web Hosting Talk

DELL Poweredge R200 vs R210 vs R410 - 6511664 - Post Count 34 - Web Hosting Talk

Can anyone confirm this? Is the R210 memory speed inhibited? I use the server for ram drives and caching. It would not be good if the full potential was not used.

BTW, is there any likelihood that an R310 will be released soon?

Looking at spec.org tests it does seem that the R210 is limited in some way. With identical hardware* the T310 beats the R210

T310 SPECfp®_rate2006 = 86.0
CFP2006 Result: Dell Inc. PowerEdge T310 (Intel Xeon X3460, 2.80 GHz)

R210 SPECfp®_rate2006 = 82.8
CFP2006 Result: Dell Inc. PowerEdge R210 (Intel Xeon X3460, 2.80 GHz)

*The only difference I can find is that T310 used RDIMM whilst the R210 used UDIMM. Is not registered ram supposed to be slower than non registered?

I'd say they are the best option for a 1 CPU server. Decent price.

They are supposed to be low power which is a bonus.

Ed. I understand the differences but UDIMM should be faster than the comparable RDIMM. If the UDIMM is running slower then it does point to Dell doing something to limit the speed. Maybe it is tied in with the low power draw.

There is no R310 out yet but I am pretty sure they will launch one soon. For the rack servers there are 6 2-sockets but only 3 1-socket. It makes sense to introduce a 310.

I'll try and hold on for a couple more weeks but I have a short window for testing and installing the server. The R210 looks the much better choice for performance and value.

I would be really disappointed if the RAM performance is poor. I will let you know.

BTW, I'd go with the T series but I prefer a co-lo server bolted in a rack rather than stacked up on a shelf where it can go tilt.

I ordered the R210. Looks like a 12 day turn around so will post some results in 2 weeks.

There must be some pecking order going on there. You hosting guys must be getting priority!

I went for the 2.8Ghz, 4x2Gb 1333, 2 x 250Gb, Rails and nothing else.

Status: In Production. Estimated delivery: 19/02

It arrived early!

Haven't finished configuring yet. Memory seems fine but disks I need to tune.

R210
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hdparm -T -t /dev/sda

cached reads: 19,338MB/s
disk reads: 34.95 MB/s

Happy with the cache but the disk reads are low. Here's the comparison with the R200.


R200
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hdparm -T -t /dev/sda

cached reads: 13,337MB/s
disk reads: 76.10 MB/s

I remember I had to tune the R200 when I first installed it. I got notes somewhere on how to tune the disks, turn off noatime, etc. Hopefully I can get more throughput out of it.

Tried with centos 64 bit.

Disk performance improved by 10% but ram performance dropped by 20%.

There is a firmware update for the seagate drives since 2-feb-10 which fixes amongst other things performance issues for small files. I think this may be what is causing hdparm to report low bandwidth.

I can't install it though. The Dell systems build and update says that the bin file is not readable (usb drive, dvd drive). Running from the command line in linux it says the file is not compatible.

Can someone with an R210 run a hdparm and report the disk speeds. And has anyone successfully installed the firmware update via linux?