Re: intel vs amd benchmark for pg server

Also, DMA settings on IDE drives can have HUGE effects on performance.

If you really want to benchmark the AMD versus Intel CPUs, then get a good
PCI SCSI card, a stack of 10k RPM hard drives, and two machines that are
about evenly matched otherwise (memory, et.al.) and run something more
like pgbench or OSDB tests.

Or, just write a .sql file with a few choice, ugly, slow queries from your
current system (we all have 'em :-) and run it like so:

time psql -e <mytestfile.sql >/dev/null

and see what kind of execution times you get. Make sure you are running
the exact same dataset (pg_dump and restore a fresh install to be sure.)

My experience is that CPU speed is only a small part of what makes a fast
postgresql server, and total memory, memory access speed, number of
drives, and speed of drive connection are much more important.

Having TWO CPUs seems more important that one fast one though. My dual
PIII 750 machines are MUCH faster than my single Celeron 1.1Ghz machine,
even with nearly identical drive and memory setups.

On Fri, 26 Apr 2002, Mike Castle wrote:

> In article <20020426093655(dot)A16995(at)amd(dot)universe>,
> <pgsql-general-owner+M23830(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:
> >To my great surprise I have to conclude that intel is the winner.
>
> Does the SIS mother board use VIA chip sets for the harddrive?
>
> If so, that is probably your problem.
>
> As pointed out, DB stuff is IO bound, not CPU. On the other hand, a kernel
> build is more CPU bound.
>
> The VIA chip sets, more or less, suck. See various posts by Andre Hedrick
> for the Linux view point. I'm betting you'll see similar analysis on the
> *BSD sides, though I've never looked.
>
> mrc
>