SB Celeron vs Atom
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I'm seeing a lot of people building SB based systems. Why choose that rather than an Atom system?
1. Atom boards aren't that cheap.
2. Sandy Bridge CPUs, are very efficient.
3. You can do more with your SB system (openvpn, snort, squid, etc)For instance:
Supermicro X7SPA-HF-D525 $240
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Intel G620 $73
Intel S1200KP $163
Total: $236I don't know how to justify an Atom board. The Intel G620/S1200KP runs at 34 Watts. I know because I built one.
Side note: When I talk about Atom vs Sandy Bridge, I limit my product selection to DUAL INTEL GIGABIT NICS ON-BOARD. I don't waste time with other nics, or adding PCI-E cards, because I want to keep the device in a small case.
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Side note: When I talk about Atom vs Sandy Bridge, I limit my product selection to DUAL INTEL GIGABIT NICS ON-BOARD. I don't waste time with other nics, or adding PCI-E cards, because I want to keep the device in a small case.
It depends on your needs. I have a much slower internet connection, so my needs are less. But I can pick up a whole Atom netbook for <$200 that has a battery, screen, and keyboard all integrated together in a small package. For me that's much cheaper, and consumes less power and space while having better functionality.
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Totally agree. Curious, with an Atom Netbook, do you use usb nics?
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Perhaps he is using VLANs. Is what I did when I used an old Thinkpad[T23].
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Side note: When I talk about Atom vs Sandy Bridge, I limit my product selection to DUAL INTEL GIGABIT NICS ON-BOARD. I don't waste time with other nics, or adding PCI-E cards, because I want to keep the device in a small case.
It depends on your needs. I have a much slower internet connection, so my needs are less. But I can pick up a whole Atom netbook for <$200 that has a battery, screen, and keyboard all integrated together in a small package. For me that's much cheaper, and consumes less power and space while having better functionality.
What do you do about a second Ethernet port? I'd assign my old Latitude C600 (P3) laptop to the firewall role except that it only has one E'net port.
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What do you do about a second Ethernet port?
USB ethernet adapters and PCMCIA adapters are possibilities.
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Or use a smart switch like the Netgear GS108T-200. This should help on using/setting up VLANs:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,28379.0.html -
This has always been the great debate for whether or not atom even needs to exist. The power savings difference has always been there, but the performance hasn't. Atom would no doubt be a killer cpu if it performed better, but it's kind of hard to want one if you're going to be giving up performance. If you had a P4 system it costs more to run it, but since atom isn't outperforming it by much you're not really gaining anything by upgrading it. The best way to describe it is that atom has great performance per watt, but poor performance per dollar. The SB celeron has both which is what makes it more attractive than atom.
Like NexusN said, a lot of single users will probably choose to pay a bit more for sandy bridge even if atom could do what they needed. We're all enthusists here because otherwise we would just be using a soho router that costs less and uses less power than even atom (least power and least performance). So given the choice between SNB (performance) or atom (price) it's not hard to see what people pick. If you were setting these up for a business price comes before performance so atom would likely win. If both processors were able to accomplish the job, atom is still going to do it for less. Let's say it costs $15 per year less to run atom. If I were building 100 of these setups that would mean each year it's operational we're saving $1,500. So you could lower your TCO by $4,500 over a 3 year period.
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Regarding cost, a quality Atom motherboard with dual Intel NICs will cost a bit more than the cheap Atom boards that everyone talks about and the price starts to even out with a SB/1155 solution.
Regarding performance, Atom vs Sandy Bridge could be summarized this way:
- If you want to do firewalling only, Atom is fine.
- If you want to do anything more than firewalling, you will need SB or better.
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Regarding cost, a quality Atom motherboard with dual Intel NICs will cost a bit more than the cheap Atom boards that everyone talks about and the price starts to even out with a SB/1155 solution.
Regarding performance, Atom vs Sandy Bridge could be summarized this way:
- If you want to do firewalling only, Atom is fine.
- If you want to do anything more than firewalling, you will need SB or better.
+1 And since the cost difference and running costs are not much different. I really don't see why anyone would choose a Atom setup over a SB one. But to each their own.
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- If you want to do anything more than firewalling, you will need SB or better.
By that logic before Sandy bridge was released no one could use any features of pfSense other than firewalling? ;)
You need to qualify that statement with a bandwidth requirement. Clearly if your WAN connection is, say, 10/1Mbps you can easily use a Alix board and have plenty of cpu cycles spare.I really don't see why anyone would choose a Atom setup over a SB one. But to each their own.
Probably the number one reason is that you can build a completely passively cooled Atom system quite easily as it's maximum power dissipation is low. Although the average dissipation of a Sandy Bridge cpu is similar, perhaps even lower, the maximum is far higher so you must allow for that in your cooling solution.
Steve
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Indeed I have a number of Atom 330 1U pfSense boxes in the wild running squid, squidGuard, ntop, etc, and they are great performers.
The CPU requirement depends completely on the amount of throughput you need (in PPS, or more generally, Mb/s), along with the number and type of services you want to run.
Sweeping generalizations like that really aren't helpful to anyone.
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By that logic before Sandy bridge was released no one could use any features of pfSense other than firewalling? ;)
You need to qualify that statement with a bandwidth requirement. Clearly if your WAN connection is, say, 10/1Mbps you can easily use a Alix board and have plenty of cpu cycles spare.
Indeed I have a number of Atom 330 1U pfSense boxes in the wild running squid, squidGuard, ntop, etc, and they are great performers.
The CPU requirement depends completely on the amount of throughput you need (in PPS, or more generally, Mb/s), along with the number and type of services you want to run.
Sweeping generalizations like that really aren't helpful to anyone.
True, I stand corrected :)
Probably the number one reason is that you can build a completely passively cooled Atom system quite easily as it's maximum power dissipation is low. Although the average dissipation of a Sandy Bridge cpu is similar, perhaps even lower, the maximum is far higher so you must allow for that in your cooling solution.
Yes, but can also be done with a SB setup. I still think a SB setup now is a better choice.
