Intel or AMD

[NeedScripts]

I am getting a new server.. which one would you recommend ::

Options One
Dual Intel Xeon™ 2.0GHZ
1GB DDR RAM
120GB IDE
1000GB Bandwidth / MONTH
75 IP Addresses
Port: 10/100MBPS SWITCHED VLAN
Management: FULLY MANAGED

Option Two
Dual AMD Athlon MP™ 2400 2.0GHZ
512MB DDR RAM
120GB IDE
1000GB Bandwidth / MONTH
75 IP Addresses
Port: 10/100MBPS SWITCHED VLAN
Management: FULLY MANAGED

Right now I am thinking of getting Intel.. what do you guys think?

NS

[chris_f]

Go with Intel due to the RAM but check out the Hard Disk speeds. That may sway your decision.

ATOB
Chris

[NeedScripts]

I think HD is 10k RPM.. I doubt it would be 15K RPM.

[Poweroid]

15K would be a SCSI drive and the 120 GB doesn't sound like one.

It's impossible to make an informed recommendation based on such limited technical information. The two options can't really be compared fairly till all the other technical details are known from the make/model of motherboard, to type/spindle speeds/access and transfer times of the hard disks, speed and latency of the ECC RAM (it is ECC, isn't it!?) and various others.

Which of these two cars is better?

A Ford

B Honda

[NeedScripts]

Honda, any day, any moment.. unless you talking about Mustang ;)

lol.. Ram is not ECC.
I don't know much about motherboard, but the servers are *fully* managed.. so I don't have to mess with anything if anything breaks down or so.. (but it is better if things don't break).. I have seen their support, it rocks too.

P.S. It is 120 GB IDE

NS

[zeus]

Hello Needscripts

Motherbord is the most value thing in a computer, so look at it, you can forget everything ells if the motherbord is not good or dossent fit to the other hardware, then you got nothing good.

zeus

P.s Intel rules right now.

[killroy]

I'd wager that for a server other things are even more important, such as cooling, power supply, fail safety and air filtering.

I've just spend a week with our server crashing once in 20hours, and usually in the early morning where we had nerve wrecking hours trying to get hold of somebody to restart it. I added a bunch of grey hair trying to "de-bug" my software which had caused regular crashes about a year ago in an older version.

Then on tuesday it went BOOM and didnT' even boot anymore.... Turns out hte motherbord fried and hte power connector was a smoldering lump of plastic. Seems like the weeks of crashes were harbringer of this doom, as now everything works fine without glitch for days.

So make sure your server runs, before you make it run well, before you make it run fast. (personally I like AMD ;)

SN

[Poweroid]

Not ECC?! And it's a dual processor machine? Ouch

[diddlydazz]

Why the big difference in RAM?

is there a big difference in cost between the two?

Dazz

[killroy]

not that great, and shouldn'T make a diff for a server. ECC will save you downtime, simple as that.

SN

[NeedScripts]

Ok here is the deal..

Ram is not ECC, and the Motherboard is something asus..

NS

[mole]

on the basis of the spec. given, the Intel box is better 'cos it has more RAM

[ggrot]

The dual xeons are going to be faster than the dual athlons at the same clock speed, hands down. Xeons make a huge difference, especially if you have an operating system that knows how to use the hyperthreading (Read: newer Linux kernels). And of course, the more RAM the merrier. This is assumming nearly everything else is equal. Also, if your website is low on processing, high on bandwidth, RAM+processor doesn't matter much, so just go for the cheaper one. But if you are doing database or scripting stuff everywhere - definitely get the xeons.

[ggrot]

Let me add that I am assumming you are doing the normal server thing with lots of different threads running around, instead of say - scientific computing. Single threaded apps are going to run faster on the AMD.

[NeedScripts]

Yup, I will be doing normal stuff and not *toooo* much of scripting.

Oh Yeah, I forgot to mention, I will be using Red Hat 8.0 + CPanel/WMH

The cost for both the servers is almost same..

Will let you guys know in few minutes what I will be using ;)

P.S.. Thanks for the great help.

NS

[NeedScripts]

Hello Friends.. I just got my new Dual Intel Xeon™ 2.0GHZ Server and from what I have seen so far... it is cooooooool.

Well thanks for all the help.

NS

[ggrot]

Run top and see the '4' processors. Now thats cool.

[A_Amin]

Hello,

The Specifications for the Intel box is quite good but you had better use SCSI hard drive rather then IDE.

:o)

Best Regards

[NeedScripts]

Hi A_Amin,

I had a choice of getting 73 GB SCSI or 120 GB IDE... and after thinking about all the stuff I am gonna use on the server, I didn't really found any need for any special need for SCSI drive. Actually I am getting an additional 120 GB IDE HD for the backup purpose (daily backup on the server). Most of the sites on this server has static files and while very few MySQL DB.

What is the reason you would choose SCSI drive?

Thanks

NS

[Poweroid]

NeedScripts, people normally go for SCSI on servers

A. Because it used to be a lot, lot faster than IDE. That has now changed. A 15K, 8MB cache, 36 GB Maxtor with under 4 ms access time rocks but IDE and SATA have improved dramatically in speeds

B. Because it is believed to be more reliable. Hmm. Maybe, maybe not true

C. It does lend itself to more functionality via hot-swappable facilities (i.e. you can remove the drive without shutting the PC/server down) etc. But most of what it does you can do with IDE.

D. The SCSI chain takes more devices i.e. you could have half a dozen SCSI drives on one cable using one socket on your server motherboard. The max limit for IDE is 2 and Serial ATA is currently 1.

Hope that helps.

I know a brilliant site where all hardware and technology questions are covered. I can't post the URL here, can I?