SQL Server Performance Forum – Threads Archive

single Quad vs. 2 dual core?

We are looking at upgrading our production database to either 2 Dual Core Intel® Xeon® 5160 or a single Quad Core Intel® Xeon® X5355. We are also adding 4GB additional memory giving us 8GB total. The OS will be 64-bit Windows 2003 Enterprise and 64-bit SQL 2000 Enterprise. The application is an OLTP used by schools in our area and can have 5000+ plus users. We can have several transactions when users take attendance, grades, running report cards, etc… My question is which processor would be more benefical? Our current configuration is:
SQL 2000 Standard
4GB memory
2 Intel Xeon 3.73GHz Thanks,
Travis

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4 cores (2 x dual or 1 x quad) of the new Core 2 line (Xeon 51xx and 53xx) will be far more powerful than 2 of the old Xeon cores (HT does not matter much) going with W2K3 64-bit is a good choice period SQL 2000 on x86 is 32-bit only, 64-bit is only available on Itanium
SQL 2005 has 64-bit X86/AMD64/EM64T etc the 2 x 5160 might perform somewhat better than 1 x X5355
but if you are going to buy 1-processor S2K Ent Ed license,
i suggest buying 2 x X5355 anyways,
just restrict SQL to 4 cores (1 socket) then if you need more processor power, just get the additional license, the processor is already there, no opening the box etc

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Thank you for the info Joe. I will pass this on to my director.

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Using the above configuration, would a Dual Core with Larger Cache say 8mb or 16mb out perform say a Quad core with 4MB? (Xeon 51xx and 53xx) Is the key in the cache or the cores? Or both?

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there is not the option of a Xeon 51xx line with 8 or 16MB cache
the current generation is 4M per dual core only
the desktop core 2 line has a 2M option at the lower freq. the quad core (2 dual core dies in one package) has a total of 8M,
that is, 4M per die, shared by 2 cores each the next gen will have 6M per dual core the 71xx line has up to 16M shared L3, but this is the old Netburst in general, the first preference is to high on cores, followed by freq then cache, but it is complicated and depends on the app on tpc-c, a quad socket, dual core Xeon 7140 scored 318K
versus a dual socket quad core X5355 at 240K
with a total of 8 cores in each system technically, I think the Core 2 at 2.6GHz is better than the Netburst at 3.4Ghz, but my guess is the large cache is required for high number of total cores however, 2 Xeon 7140 has no chance against 2 Xeon X5355

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Great info Joe. Thanks.

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