Server 2008 R2 vs Server 2012 in Workstation configuration

[ExpertUser]

Hi,

I finally decided last weekend to change OS on my PC’s at home after lots of testing in VM’s and obviously reading our members reviews posted here, as I do consider this forum as an absolute reference in what refers using Microsoft Server Operating Systems as a workstation OS.

I was very skeptic about Server 2012 as we discovered that it was incomplete in certain ways, referring to Superfetch, that a fully new desktop philosophy was introduced that was not really my cup of tea, that some of you had some issues with it and so on.

What got me to change OS is simply that my test PC (XFX nForce 780i 3-Way SLI Motherboard, 2 Nvidia GTS 450 2 GB RAM GPU’s, 8 GB RAM, Quad 9650) needed an upgrade. Willing to keep my 2 GPU’s I decided to upgrade to a AMD solution and I bought a ASUS Sabertooth 990FX (4 SLI/ 4 Crossifire) Motherboard, AMD FX 8350 CPU and 32 GB RAM.

I installed Server 2008 R2 without any issues though even after upgrading all drivers, removing every single error from Windows Event Logs (damn, some are real crap to fix….. LOL) the global performance of the PC with a SSD drive was not to my expectations and discovered some System Interrupts of less then 1% CPU usage. Also the mouse stalled once in a while and/or had network issues to the web, and so on. 😈 👿 R2 did not run the way it should……

I experienced those issues whether R2 was updated or not, with all drives connected or just OS SSD, plus all other tests I ran to check the problems mentioned above.

So as last solution I decided to install Server 2012 and just enabled the Workstation features that I use and all done manually, funnily I never use MSC or previous tools to convert Server to workstation.

I must be honest and admit that the whole PC runs on steroids now and after setting everything up, I did once more check for System Interrupts and to my pleasure they used less then 0,10% CPU usage. 😆 😆 😆

Pleased with that result I also decided to change OS on my other PC, equipped with 2 Xeon CPU’s, 48 GB RAM and 2 Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 that was running without any glitches with R2 and there too System Interrupts were irrelevant.

To my surprise, though hardware is not of last manufacture, overall results with Server 2012 were above my expectations and the whole system is a little more “nervous” and faster. There too OS was installed on a SSD drive but running RAID 1 via Intel IHCR controller on Supermicro motherboard.

To get back Start Button, though being fan of Classic Shell, I opted for Stardock’s Start8 and it does the job.

I do admit that my “benchmarking” technique may be odd and not satisfactory and/or valid to your standards. It’s unconventional. 😆 😆

I have set different priorities for OS testing such as checking Event Logs for errors, System Interrupts,…. basically trying to get the OS working without any single error and most important flawless, fluid.

The purpose if this post is not to boast around on the hardware I have at home, the purpose if this post is to somehow give at last my positive feedback on this Operating System that has suffered since it was released due to some “lack of maturity”. I still consider R2 as the best OS I have used till now and will still use it in VM’s for Windows Imaging and other software testing.

You are not obliged to answer this post but maybe you have also changed OS lately and wish to share your experiences with Server 2012.

N 🙂

[Author]

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