We have two identical "big" database servers at work with the following
specs: 4x Xeon MP 3.0 (unknown cache) with 16GB. We have tempdb, transaction
logs, and data volumes all split. To be honest, I haven't been that
impressed with the performance of either. While I can only speculate, I
think the real reason they appear to be such underperformers (for what they
are) is that the Xeons all share a single bus.
Personally, I would strongly encourage that you look at some Proliant 4-way
Opteron machines. The processor bus and memory architecture should allow
more "raw" speed to become "useful" speed. Opterons have historically proven
to be better database servers--quite possibly for this reason.
I'd also run Win2k3 Server x64.
Greg
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "The Hardware List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 10:45 AM
Subject: [H] What's fastest ?
Am building a database server for SQL Server 2005 Enterprise edition. OS
will be Windows 2003 Server Enterprise edition. Server is probably going
to be a Dell 6850
(http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pedge_6850?c=uk&l=en&s=lca&~tab=specstab#tabtop)
Although I can get older IBM servers (hence the 4MB L3 cache option below)
for a very good price.
Basic spec is 4 CPU's, 24 GB of RAM and an external disk array. Just
wondering how much performance difference there is between the followoing
CPU's:
4 x Xeon MP 3.0 GHz 4MB L3 cache (400 MHz FSB ?)
4 x Xeon MP 3.0 GHz 8 MB L3 cache (667 MHz FSB)
4 x Xeon 3.6 GHz 1 MB L2 cache
4 x Xeon dual core 2.6 GHz 2 x 1 MB L2 cache
My gut reaction says the 8 MB L3 cache chips will be faster than even the
dual core chips in real world performance. Anybody else have a view ?
Thanks, Steve
