Re: Help specifying new machine

William Yu wrote:

> Rory Campbell-Lange wrote:
>
>> The present server is a 2GHz Pentium 4/512 KB cache with 2
>> software-raided ide disks (Maxtors) and 1GB of RAM.
>>
>>
>> I have been offered the following 1U server which I can just about
>> afford:
>>
>> 1U server
>> Intel Xeon 2.8GHz 512K cache 1
>> 512MB PC2100 DDR ECC Registered 2
>> 80Gb SATA HDD 4
>> 4 port SATA card, 3 ware 8506-4 1
>> 3 year next-day hardware warranty 1
>
> You're not getting much of a bump with this server. The CPU is
> incrementally faster -- in the absolutely best case scenario where your
> queries are 100% cpu-bound, that's about ~25%-30% faster.

What about using Dual Athlon MP instead of a Xeon? Would be much less expensive,
but have higher performance (I think).

>
> If you could use that money instead to upgrade your current server,
> you'd get a much bigger impact. Go for more memory and scsi (raid
> controllers w/ battery-backed cache).