Re: All else equal - Dual 800 MHz or Quad 550 MHz Xeons - on NT4.0?

Stephen,

You haven't told us about your transaction mix, number of concurrent processes running, etc., but here is a stab at it:

I have an NT box, sp4, with dual 550 Pentium 3s. The box screams for us, but the system is i/o intensive, not cpu intensive. I rarely see above 40 percent cpu usage. The database is about 52 gig allocated, just under 40 gig used.

I have another box with dual 600's, less memory, and slower disks (7200 rpm ultra-2 scsi vs. 10,000 rpm), and see about a 5% reduction in performance from it. However, our machines never run out of ram, I don't see any swapping, and due to the nature of the system most data will be pulled in by the multiblock read count settings.

So, which is better, faster CPU's or a better subsystem? For us, I think additional memory made the discussion worthless. The CPU's are fast enough to provide near-instantaneous transaction response times.

One caveat, however. A Xeon chip with 2meg of cache will blow a P3 chip away at similar clock speeds. If your processing is CPU intensive, start with a dual xeon and grow it. Otherwise, P3 chips should get the job done. That said, Oracle does love CPU power.

Good luck,

Brent

Stephen Wellman wrote in message <89pcp4$cr6$1_at_gaddy.interpath.net>...
>I have a client who is wants me to help size a sever for their Oracle
>database (probably 10 GB in 2 years). They can't decide to buy a dual 800
>MHz
>PIII system or a quad 550 MHz Xeon server running NT 4.0 SP5. Can anyone
>help? All else equal, which system configuration would be faster? I realize
>this is somewhat of a lame question, but any help would be appreciated.
>
>Thanks
>
>Stephen
>
>
>
>
Received on Sat Mar 18 2000 - 00:00:00 CST