DDR2 performance in FreeNAS

[EvilLeprechaun]

I came across a decent deal on a Tempest i5400PW (S5397AG2NRF). It looks great for FreeNAS -- IPMI, ECC RAM, multiple Intel gigabit Ethernet ports, seems great. The only tricky thing is it takes DDR2 RAM instead of DDR3.

I know the obvious answer is "DDR2 is slower than DDR3," but I'm wondering if I would even notice the performance hit if I threw enough RAM at it.

Any thoughts or advice is appreciated!

 

[Ericloewe]

Memory speed isn't really the issue. It's the rest of the system. DDR2 means it's Core 2 era stuff, which can be rather slow with ZFS. Also, DDR2 is crazy expensive these days. It's often cheaper to build a new system.

 

[marbus90]

to be exact, it's the FSB which slows don ZFS. so be sure to grab at least Xeon [L/E/X]55xx/[L/E/X]56xx or X34xx systems.

Newer ones would run Xeon E3, E5 or E7, if it comes with a Pentium G16xx or G32xx or Core i3 it's fine too. Just no i5 or i7.