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Jan FranekFlag for Czechia

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HW recommendation

Our server is typical OLTP (online brokerage system), current HW (dual Xeon 2.6 GHz, 5GB RAM) is under heavy load, mainly CPU and it seems that application is quite well optimized, so it seems like adding processors is way to go. So we want to upgrade to 4 way server, we want to stay on x86 and Linux OS.

As far as I know, we can choose between Intel Xeon, Intel Xeon MP and AMD Opteron. Xeon has smaller L3 cache than Xeon MP (2MB vs 4MB), but has higher bus speed (800 MHz vs 400 Mhz) and slightly higher frequency (3.6 GHz vs 3.0 GHz). Opteron has even higher bus speed (1.6 GHz), smaller cache (1 MB), I can use 64-bit ASE, but I'm not sure, if it's proven in production systems. Which option would you recommend ? What's more important for performance - bigger cache or faster CPU - RAM transfers ? Do you have experience with production systems on Opteron server ?
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Callandor
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Thank you guys for valuable input. I have found, that 4-way server with Xeons (IBM x445) can use only 3.0 GHz Xeons with 512K or 1M cache and with 400 MHz FSB. So there's no advantage against Xeons MP (well, there is one - lower price :-). But Dell just starts it's new server line - PowerEdge 6800 - that will use new Xeon MP 3.6 GHz with 666 MHz FSB and with 1 MB L3 cache (cheap) or 8 MB L3 cache (expensive). So we are probably going to buy this one (cheap one of course :-).
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Joe Woodhouse

Good call, I think, and it gives you an upgrade path to chips with the larger cache if you need to squeeze out a bit more CPU power without a major upgrade to the motherboard.