Re: Which processor runs better for Postgresql?

On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 13:02, Steve Poe wrote:
> I have a client who is running Postgresql 7.4.x series database
> (required to use 7.4.x). They are planning an upgrade to a new server.
> They are insistent on Dell.

Do they have a logical reason for this, or is it mostly hand-waving? My
experience has been hand waving. Last company I was at, the CIO bragged
about having saved a million a year on server by going with Dell. His
numbers were made up, and, in fact, we spent a large portion of each
week babysitting those god awful 2600 series machines with adaptec cards
and the serverworks chipset. And they were slow compared to anything
else with similar specs.

> I have personal experience with AMD dual Opteron, but I have not seen
> any benchmarks on Intel's dual core Xeon. I've seen in the past Dell and
> not performed well as well as Xeon's HT issues.

Dells tend to perform poorly, period. They choose low end parts (the
2600's Serverworks chipset is widely regarded as one of the slowest
chipset for the P-IV there is.) and then mucking around with the BIOS of
the add in cards to make them somewhat stable with their dodgy hardware.

> Can anyone share what their experience has been with Intel's dual core
> CPUs and/or Dell's new servers?

Haven't used the dual core Dells. Latest ones I've used are the dual
Xeon 2850 machines, which are at least stable, if still pretty pokey.

> I am hoping the client is willing to wait for Dell to ship a AMD
> Opeteron-based server.

Let's just hope Dell hasn't spent all this time hamstringing a good chip
with low end, underperforming hardware, eh?

My suggestion is to look at something like this:

http://www.abmx.com/1u-supermicro-amd-opteron-rackmount-server-p-210.html

1U rackmount opteron from Supermicro that can have two dual core
opterons and 4 drives and up to 16 gigs of ram. Supermicro server
motherboards have always treated me well and performed well too.