Processor upgrade worth it?

Offer by one of our hosts......

[trillianjedi]

We have a small-ish (25k page views/day) site on a dedicated server with a particular host that has offered us a processor upgrade from the current 1.7ghz Celeron to a 2.4ghz P4 for $100 (one off - no change to monthly rate).

I'm just trying to weigh up whether it's worth it or just to wait until the site is a bit busier and upgrade the whole machine. It has 1 gig of RAM and only runs Apache and MySQL for one dynamic site.

Top shows most of the time the CPU is 87% idle. Would a processor upgrade make a noticeable difference to SQL queries/Apache speed, or is that more likely to be affected by RAM, HD speed and other bottlenecks?

In other words, is it worth the $100 or should I just wait until we outgrow the machine and need something meatier?

Thanks,

TJ

[carguy84]

Personally, I would jump on it. Those are two very different processors, that during busy times, you could notice an improvement.

That being said, when I'm constrained by hardware, I find myself writing better code :)

Chip-

[steve]

or is that more likely to be affected by RAM, HD speed and other bottlenecks?

As the processor isn't working very hard, swapping it for a more powerful one won't increase the responsiveness of your site very much. (Unless you are running very processor intensive scripts!)

As you already suspect, the amount of RAM, the bus speed, and the HD access time and data transfer rate are the determining factors for your server's performance.

What reason did your host give for the upgrade, is it just that they have a boxes of unused P4's kicking around ;-)

Would they ley you try one for a few days, so you can assess the performance jump for yourself?

[trillianjedi]

Thanks guys.

that during busy times, you could notice an improvement.

Probably worth it in itself I guess - I was more curious really as to whether a processor upgrade would improve MySQL speed, even though the current processor isn't really being pushed hard.

What reason did your host give for the upgrade, is it just that they have a boxes of unused P4's kicking around ;-)

Funnily enough, I think that's probably the size of it ;-)

It's a one-off fee, so the monthly stays the same. When you consider that, it's a good deal.

Would they ley you try one for a few days, so you can assess the performance jump for yourself?

To be honest, for the sake of $100 I've decided to do it as I can probably recycle the machine for something else when this site outgrows it anyway.

I'm thinking in the future I could perhaps use it for Apache with a seperate MySQL server box on the LAN for doing queries.

TJ