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Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 14:02:19 +0100 (BST)
From: Stephen Roome <steve@visint.co.uk>
To: hardware@freebsd.org
cc: Tom Gidden <gid@visint.co.uk>
Subject: Pentuim or Pentuim Pro ?
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I have to build two identical servers here.
These machines are going to be identical as
it makes my life a lot easier, both for
purchasing and upgrades/kernels etc.

They both have to do:
DNS, WEB serving (for clients), Samba , CAP
and web serve about 60 virtual hosts.

The web serving is for clients, and one of the
more important things is that prospect clients
are impressed with the server (god knows why they
think we need more than a 286 =)

Anyway, I'm stuck on which processors to go for.

So, I have a list of questions and if anyone can
answer any or all of them I'll be very happy.

1) Is the Pentium Pro 200 much faster than the
Pentium 200 and if so, what sort of %age gains
can I expect.

2) Is the Pentium 200 with 512k cache much better
than the 256k cache version and again what sort
of %age gains can be expected with the 512k version.

Overclocking:
3) Is overclocking the motherboard viable/safe ?
Has anyone actually had experience with m/b clocked
at 83MHz ?

4) Is overclocking the processor sensible?
e.g. If I overclock the motherboard to 83MHz then
I can run the processor at 207.5 MHz at *2.5,
in theory this should give me faster memory access
(with SDRAM) and a faster PCI bus. Is this worth it?

5) As far as I can tell, Pentiums allow the 
motherboard to be overclocked to 83MHz or more
and Pentium Pro's don't. Is this correct ?

6) Dual Processor, what are the options like ?
I was thinking of going for a dual processor m/b
and only using one processor with the option to
upgrade. (clients might like this idea)

Many thanks for any comments.

Steve Roome