October 16, 2002 at 1:42 pm
I am looking to replace a 2-processor Pentium III Server running at 600Mz with a newer box. It is possible to buy 2-processor boxes running Pentium Xeon chips at speeds as high as 2.8 GHz, but the 4-processor boxes seem to top out around 1.5 GHz. This is easy to understand since all those processors are sharing the same RAM which can only fetch data so fast.
So the question arises, is it as good (or almost as good) to use a 2-processor box with about the same number of raw cycles as a 4 processor box? The reasons for using the 2-processor box are
(a) The hardware is somewhat cheaper
(b) I get to save ~$10K by not buying 2 additional internet connector licenses.
Added into the above calculation is the fact that Xeon processors use "hyper-threading" which helps each processor do more. The 2-processor boxes have it; the 4-processor boxes I looked at don't.
Does anyone have any insights?
October 16, 2002 at 4:00 pm
I have not seen any benchmark on this and you might want to see if the company you are looking at has anything specific (probably will try to get you to buy the costlier machine). However Normally I would go for the 4 processor machine, especially if you have a high number of transactions in your environment as you will see higher simultaneous queiry processing. Sure threads are nice but they do not on normal processors run at the sametime, they take turns. However, if yoy look here the hyper-threading model does the same thing as multiple processors in allowing multiple thread to actually execute simultaneos on the same CPU. http://webferret.search.com/click?wf,xeon+hyper.threading,,www.intel.com%2FeBusiness%2Fproducts%2Fserver%2Fprocessor%2Fxeon%2Fwp020901_sum.htm,,aol
So the 2 in this case should give you the same result as the 4 anyway and save you money.
"Don't roll your eyes at me. I will tape them in place." (Teacher on Boston Public)
October 16, 2002 at 4:17 pm
Just gone through eactly the same process.
The quad processor server I looked at also had faster memory and subsystem.
I went for the dual processor option, and spent some of the extra cash on disks in RAID 10 configuration, I have to install 49 disks tomorrow.
In total bought 2 dell 2650 servers with 2Gb of memory with 20 disks each, os is on one raid 1, log on another and the data on a 14 disk raid 10 config.
It does depend on the app, is it memory, cpu of disk intensive. You can improve performance elsewhere using large L2 cache faster buses.
Also the quad boxes generally cost more due to having more storage on the box. Using Dual processor boxes you can move the storage off, which means that upgrading the server is easier.
Not much of an answer really but.
Simon Sabin
Co-author of SQL Server 2000 XML Distilled
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904347088
Simon Sabin
SQL Server MVP
http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/simons
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