Ron Peacetree wrote:
As others have noted, the current price/performance "sweet spot" for DB servers is 2S 2C AMD CPUs. These CPUs are also the highest performing x86 compatible solution for pg.
If you must go Intel for some reason, then wait until the new NGMA CPU's (Conroe, Merom, Woodcrest) come out and see how they bench on DB workloads. Preliminary benches on these chips look good, but I would not recommend making a purchase decision based on just preliminary benches of unreleased products.
If you must buy soon, then the decision is clear cut from anything except possinly a political/religious standpoint.
The NetBurst based Pentium and Xeon solutions are simply not worth the money spent or the PITA they will put you through compared to the AMD dual cores. The new Intel NGMA CPUs may be different, but all the pertinent evidence is not yet available.
My personal favorite pg platform at this time is one based on a 2 socket, dual core ready mainboard with 16 DIMM slots combined with dual core AMD Kx's.
Less money than the "comparable" Intel solution and _far_ more performance.
...and even if you do buy Intel, =DON"T= buy Dell unless you like causing trouble for yourself.
Bad experiences with Dell in general and their poor PERC RAID controllers in specific are all over this and other DB forums.
Ron
To add to this... the HP DL 385 is a pretty nice dual core capable
opteron box. Just don't buy the extra ram from HP (they like to charge
entirely too much).
Joshua D. Drake
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