From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 4 08:33:28 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 90BCF16A4CE for ; Thu, 4 Mar 2004 08:33:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail1.acecape.com (mail1.acecape.com [66.114.74.12]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 31ED743D39 for ; Thu, 4 Mar 2004 08:33:28 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from francisco@natserv.net) Received: from p65-147.acedsl.com (p65-147.acedsl.com [66.114.65.147]) by mail1.acecape.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id i24GXKVi013600; Thu, 4 Mar 2004 11:33:25 -0500 Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 11:39:52 +0000 (GMT) From: Francisco X-X-Sender: fran@zoraida.natserv.net To: "Marc G. Fournier" In-Reply-To: <20040209141200.K13061@ganymede.hub.org> Message-ID: <20040304112453.W11547@zoraida.natserv.net> References: <20040209121420.G13061@ganymede.hub.org> <20040209141200.K13061@ganymede.hub.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: AMD vs Intel ... X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2004 16:33:28 -0000 On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > Server environment, Dual Processor ... web/mail/ftp generally ... all our > current servers are Intel based, but looking at the costs, the AMD are so > much cheaper, just figured for next one I'd check out what AMD had to > offer as comparable ... > > Just trying to do some comparison shopping ... :) Marc, Although nothing I have ever worked with comes even remotely close to what you are going to torture this new machine with I wanted to throw in my $0.02.. and mostly subjective testing at that.... I had been using nothing but AMD for a few years. Recently I bought a few machines from a local vendor and they are an Intel shop. These machines have faster CPUs that most of my other AMD machines yet felt less responsive with FreeBSD. I think that the entire subsystem should be taken into consideration: chipset, ECC memory, memory speed, disk subsystem, etc.. Just so you get a feeling for what I am talking about... Most of my AMD machines FreeBSD/Windows were 500Mhz to 1Ghz. The two Intel I bought for 2 clients were 2+Ghz Intel Pentium 4. Although I have not done custom kernels for those machines I find it interesting that they would "Feel" slower than machines that are half as fast. I can only guess that something in the subsystems of these new machines is slower than in the AMD machines. Given your environment I think 2+ CPUs with ECC and a good disk subsystem would be good. Raid 1+0 makes a huge difference in performance (at least in my testing). Perhaps you could do your DB 1+0 and everything else Raid 5 (which is what I think you have). Hope things work out with this new machine.. who knows I may end up having a VM in it someday. :-)