hardware appliance performance compair to software install on regular server?

Question

In general if i use the same cpu model found in hardware appliance and use some decent network card, will hardware appliance still have much better performance? 
 In my case i am compairing xg210 to dell r230 with e3 1220V5 and some intel i350 nics.

MichaelBolton · Answer

The XG210 and a Dell R230 are comparing apples to oranges. The XG210 is made by a company called Caswell. That box is only running a Celeron G1820 which is a 2 core/ 2 thread CPU at 2.7 GHz. 
 http://ark.intel.com/products/78955/Intel-Celeron-Processor-G1820-2M-Cache-2_70-GHz 
 http://www.portwell.com/pdf/ca/CAR-3040.pdf 
 
 The R230 processor you are referencing will be much faster as it is 4 core at 3 GHz. Note you must have a software license that will support 4 cores and 8 GB of ram to take advantage of the hardware. 
 http://ark.intel.com/products/88172/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1220-v5-8M-Cache-3_00-GHz 
 FYI the home license only supports 4 core and up 6 GB of ram but with that size box, I can't imagine you would be running on a home licence. 
 I would suggest you get with a Sophos partner to properly size your environment. A software license to support the Dell server will be significantly more than the XG210. 
 
 Thanks, 
 Mike