On 6/29/07, Warren Luebkeman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I asked for a quote on a server yesterday from our hardware provider, and the sales guy told me about a great new deal. For the same price as a Dual Core, 2 Ghz Xeon processor, I can get a Quad Core 1.6ghz Xeon processor. My first impression was four must be better than two, but is it really? The server is supposed to be a 50 user Linux terminal server. Our current specs for this system are: Dual Processor Dual Core (4 Processors) 6 GB Ram 15K SAS Hard Drives So now I can build the same system, but with 8 processors vs. 4, for the same price. My thought is because its a terminal server, the speed of the processors is less critical to the number of processors you have, because you need to distribute the load of 50 users across one server. I can't imagine a word processor running at 1.6 Ghz vs. 2 Ghz should perform any differently. So by moving to more processors, I should have less processes running on each processor, which according to my very rudimentary logic suggests that the performance should be better, or at least, more efficient. What do you think? Aside from the cool factor of having 8 processors, I would like to make the RIGHT decision regarding what server I buy.
A few points: The Macintosh community had debates in the past about SMP vs single. Generally they think a dual 500 MHz is roughly like a single 700MHz. From that subjective information, I'd say more cores that are slightly slower are better. I've felt that dual CPUs have lower latency when multitasking. The OS runs on one CPU, software raid (why spend more for a dedicated hardware raid card?), your App on another, etc. IMHO latency is more important then throughput for interactive use. I've been looking at a VMware ESX server. it's licensed per 2 CPUs. A 4 core is the same as a single or dual core in their licensing. I'm finding with that, a dual quad core is cheaper then adding ram + 1 cpu to 2 systems with 3 single core cpus between them. Those 1.6GHz CPUs might use less power & generate less heat. The real limit on your application will likely be I/O. Bus speed (FSB), network, disk speed, memory speed, etc. How much data are they moving around? More RAM will help more then CPU GHz also.
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