The 14 cores are really attractive, so I’d rather not get something like a e5-1650v3 - what would be the best way to get as much single thread performance as possible?
I’m thinking:
- hyperthreading off
- using ThrottleStop to improve clock speeds
- disabling spectre & meltdown mitigations
The 2667, 2687w and 2697A have the best boost clocks of the range without hitting the uner expensive skus
E5-2690 also has those 14 cores and slightly higher clocks. There may be some Chinese boards and/or bios hacks that allow removing constraints from boosting so that it can boost at max clocks indefinitely, but generally I would not recommend running server parts out of spec. Mainly your options are to buy higher clocking chip, making sure there’s sufficient cooling and maybe using governors that boost more aggressively. I also generally would not recommend removing security measures such as side channel attack mitigations.