[gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[P.V.Anthony]

Hi,

Need some more advice.

Now the question is, is it better to go with 2 core or 4 core?

The reason for this question is, that I heard there is a diminishing 
return with more cores. Not sure if this is true with kernel 2.6.21 and 
running at 64bit.

The server needed to built is for the following apps.

Hardware.
1. Tyan Tank GT20 (B5191)
2. 2 x Sata drives
3. Software raid 1
4. 4Gb ram ecc
5. Intel Core2Duo E6420 or Intel Core2Quad E6600

Apps.
1. Gentoo linux 64bit
2. Apache 2
3. MySql
4. Postgres
5. Qmail
6. Pure-ftpd
7. Mod_perl
8. php
9. ruby

Will all the instances of the apps be shared among the cores?

Please share the comments.

I would really like to save some money. If the 2 core can do the job 
there is quite a bit of savings buying just the 2 core.

The other option is just to go with Pentium D with 2 core. That one is a 
real saver.

Please advice.

P.V.Anthony

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[Wil Reichert]

On 8/1/07, P.V.Anthony <pvantony@singnet.com.sg> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Need some more advice.
>
> Now the question is, is it better to go with 2 core or 4 core?
>
> The reason for this question is, that I heard there is a diminishing
> return with more cores. Not sure if this is true with kernel 2.6.21 and
> running at 64bit.
>
> The server needed to built is for the following apps.
>
> Hardware.
> 1. Tyan Tank GT20 (B5191)
> 2. 2 x Sata drives
> 3. Software raid 1
> 4. 4Gb ram ecc
> 5. Intel Core2Duo E6420 or Intel Core2Quad E6600
>
> Apps.
> 1. Gentoo linux 64bit
> 2. Apache 2
> 3. MySql
> 4. Postgres
> 5. Qmail
> 6. Pure-ftpd
> 7. Mod_perl
> 8. php
> 9. ruby
>
> Will all the instances of the apps be shared among the cores?
>
> Please share the comments.
>
> I would really like to save some money. If the 2 core can do the job
> there is quite a bit of savings buying just the 2 core.
>
> The other option is just to go with Pentium D with 2 core. That one is a
> real saver.
>
> Please advice.

Whether a dual core will work well for your situation completely
depends on the load and usage patterns.  Is this for a server or
development machine?  Whatever you do, DO NOT buy a pentium 4 dual
core.

Wil
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[P.V.Anthony]

On this day, 01-August-2007 11:27 PM,  Wil Reichert wrote:

> Whether a dual core will work well for your situation completely
> depends on the load and usage patterns.  Is this for a server or
> development machine?  Whatever you do, DO NOT buy a pentium 4 dual
> core.

This is for a web and email server, with multiple domains.
It will be running content management systems, accouting applications, 
static websites and some php applications with database.

Thank you for the advice about the pentium 4 dual core.

P.V.Anthony

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[Bob Sanders]

P.V.Anthony, mused, then expounded:
> Hi,
> 
> Need some more advice.
> 
> Now the question is, is it better to go with 2 core or 4 core?
> 
> The reason for this question is, that I heard there is a diminishing 
> return with more cores. Not sure if this is true with kernel 2.6.21 and 
> running at 64bit.
>

As far as the kernel is concerned, there are no issues.  I've run on
a 1024 shared memory ccNUMA system and regularly started up and killed
1024 jobs withiout problems.
 
> The server needed to built is for the following apps.
> 
> Hardware.
> 1. Tyan Tank GT20 (B5191)
> 2. 2 x Sata drives
> 3. Software raid 1
> 4. 4Gb ram ecc
> 5. Intel Core2Duo E6420 or Intel Core2Quad E6600
>

The Intel platform does not scale all that well.  Plus it has
limited I/O abilities.  You will find a lot of issues with
high i/o bandwidth simultanous applications.

That said, it compiles like a screaming banshee.  We currenly
run ongoing testing on a small cluster of something like the
above - 16 blades with quad core cpus (128P), running diskless
over dual Infiniband links to lead and login nodes, dual core
1U boxes with hardware raid.
 
> Apps.
> 1. Gentoo linux 64bit
> 2. Apache 2
> 3. MySql
> 4. Postgres
> 5. Qmail
> 6. Pure-ftpd
> 7. Mod_perl
> 8. php
> 9. ruby
> 
> Will all the instances of the apps be shared among the cores?
>

Good question.  Without something like cpu sets, the sharing won't
be equal amoung all cpus.
 
> Please share the comments.
> 
> I would really like to save some money. If the 2 core can do the job 
> there is quite a bit of savings buying just the 2 core.
>

Regardless of Intel platform, FSB saturaton will ocur due to the
ancient bus.  Additionally, unless you run 4-dimms, max memory 
bandwidth will not be achieved.  Typically for the Intel 5000
chipset the motherboards have 8 DIMM slots.  I see the one in the
tank only has 6.  Intel's northbridge came split the data up
over 4 dimms to maximize bandwidth.  It's important to performance.

Additionally, there are other power savings issues to note -

   Woodcrest (dual core)  does not support EIST (enhanced speed step)
   Clovertwon (quad core) does support EIST
   Memory should be run in performance mode.  Allowing memory to 
     be set into dynamic power mode (power savings) will decrease
     the max available bandwidth.
   Of the power saving software, powernowd allows better tuning and
     response to load changes.  Much better than cpufreqd.


 
> The other option is just to go with Pentium D with 2 core. That one is a 
> real saver.
>

   And it's a crappy cpu.  Don't waste you're money.  Any AMD cpu running 
   at half it's speed will eat it alive.

Bob 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[Martin Nielsen]

P.V.Anthony skrev:
> Hi,
>
> Need some more advice.
>
> Now the question is, is it better to go with 2 core or 4 core?
Hi,

Are you absolutely certain that your server can even max out cpu-wise? 
I've found in 99.99% of the cases it's usually other problems; not 
enough ram, io or simply wrongly configured services.

With the services you list I'd say if you simply have enough ram, the 
cpu really wont matter a thing. Since you'll seem to be doing some 
database applications I can only recommend an amd opteron. You dont even 
need a dc, but I guess the price difference these days are so small 
anyways :).

I'd prolly save the money on the Core2 CPU's and grab an amd opteron 
instead, dump software raid 1 and get something like 3ware SATA 
controller ( The 8000-model - 
http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata8000.asp ). Around here these 
things sell for roughly €175 or likewise but it's so much worth it. They 
come with in-kernel drivers as well as extra goodies in form of a 
service which can send you warnings/info/error so you'll always know the 
second a disk is fried. They come stock for debian, so I guess it's 
there for gentoo as well. They are even hotswappable if I remember 
correctly.

Sorry, sidetracked a bit.

I just don't think you'll ever max your cpu with the apps you listed. If 
you really have money to burn, smack in 4gb more ram instead - you'll 
take advantage of that way more than that extra cpu-power you'll never 
really use anyways (Im guessing tho - I dont know your actual usage 
patterns with the server)
>
> The reason for this question is, that I heard there is a diminishing 
> return with more cores. Not sure if this is true with kernel 2.6.21 
> and running at 64bit.
I dont have any factual data to back this up, but my coworker has stated 
on numerous occasions something like:
dual-core intel: 180% performance
dual-core amd: 190%
quad-core intel: 300%

Like I said, I dont have a clue whether that is true or not, so use that 
information with care :).

/Martin
>
> The server needed to built is for the following apps.
>
> Hardware.
> 1. Tyan Tank GT20 (B5191)
> 2. 2 x Sata drives
> 3. Software raid 1
> 4. 4Gb ram ecc
> 5. Intel Core2Duo E6420 or Intel Core2Quad E6600
>
> Apps.
> 1. Gentoo linux 64bit
> 2. Apache 2
> 3. MySql
> 4. Postgres
> 5. Qmail
> 6. Pure-ftpd
> 7. Mod_perl
> 8. php
> 9. ruby
>
> Will all the instances of the apps be shared among the cores?
>
> Please share the comments.
>
> I would really like to save some money. If the 2 core can do the job 
> there is quite a bit of savings buying just the 2 core.
>
> The other option is just to go with Pentium D with 2 core. That one is 
> a real saver.
>
> Please advice.
>
> P.V.Anthony
>

-- 
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Is there any difference with 4 core?

[Duncan]

"P.V.Anthony" <pvantony@singnet.com.sg> posted
46B0A3D5.6080203@singnet.com.sg, excerpted below, on  Wed, 01 Aug 2007
23:16:37 +0800:

> Now the question is, is it better to go with 2 core or 4 core?
> 
> The reason for this question is, that I heard there is a diminishing
> return with more cores. Not sure if this is true with kernel 2.6.21 and
> running at 64bit.
> 
> The server needed to built is for the following apps.
> 
> Hardware.
> 1. Tyan Tank GT20 (B5191)
> 2. 2 x Sata drives
> 3. Software raid 1
> 4. 4Gb ram ecc
> 5. Intel Core2Duo E6420 or Intel Core2Quad E6600
> 
> Apps.
> 1. Gentoo linux 64bit
> 2. Apache 2
> 3. MySql
> 4. Postgres
> 5. Qmail
> 6. Pure-ftpd
> 7. Mod_perl
> 8. php
> 9. ruby
> 
> Will all the instances of the apps be shared among the cores?
> 
> Please share the comments.
> 
> I would really like to save some money. If the 2 core can do the job
> there is quite a bit of savings buying just the 2 core.

Your application is server, and others have dealt with it.  I'll answer 
for desktop/workstation use, however, since that's what I'm doing here, 
and other readers may be interested.

I've been running a dual socket Opteron for some time now, originally 
with Opteron 242s.  I've upgraded memory to 8 gig (2x2 gig for dual 
channel off of each CPU/memory-controller, NUMA so each CPU tries to 
localize memory access to its own 4 gig), and run a 4 spindle kernel RAID 
(1, 6, 0).  /tmp (with /var/tmp a symlink to it) is on tmpfs, so making 
use of some of that 8 gigs of RAM.  RAID-1 /boot, RAID-6 main system, 
RAID-0 striped for speed swap (4x4GB=16GB swap), ccache, $PORTDIR, and 
/usr/src.  Thus, there's little needing upgrade on the general system.

This was my first dual CPU system (before dual-cores came out), and I 
really appreciate the flexibility it gives me.  That said, now that I'm 
used to it, the dual CPU (single cores) is definitely a bottleneck at 
times, and I could really use a quad system.  That in fact is what I'm 
planning.  I've money set aside for upgrading to dual dual-cores, maxing 
out the system with Opteron 290s, but at a going price of $1400+ for the 
pair on pricewatch.com, I'm hoping to wait until Barton comes out and 
that it will lower the price on the old socket 940 Opterons.  I'm hoping 
it'll drop the pricepoint to about the current one of the 285s, saving me 
$300-400.

I'm definitely looking forward to the upgrade, tho.  It's nice to be able 
to run two CPU hogs, CPU affinity set so each is scheduling on its own 
CPU, without seriously affecting responsiveness.  However, the two CPUs 
is definitely a limiting factor, now, particularly since other than 
memory, the rest of the system's all attached to socket 0, so apps such 
as X run more efficiently on it.  By upgrading to dual dual-cores, I'll 
have two cores able to schedule on that direct-connected socket 0, plus 
two cores on the less well connected socket 1.  Where now I can run X on 
CPU 0 and my other CPU hogging app on CPU 1, I'm quite looking forward to 
being able to run both on separate cores on socket 0, while the two cores 
on socket one could be doing a full emerge -e world for example, without 
affecting my CPU intensive interactive stuff on the two socket 0 cores 
/at/ /all/. 

So yes, I appreciate the dual CPU, but while the popular press is still 
asking if desktop tasks can scale to dual-core, let alone quad-core, I'm 
on dual-CPU right now and definitely could use the quad-core or 2 by dual-
core system right now!  I can't at this point say that I'd be able to 
make good use of 8 cores, but four, certainly, as two is feeling a bit 
constrained at this point.

As for Intel vs. AMD, with the hypertransport interconnect system AMD 
has, with AMD's hardware IOMMU for DMA access above the 4 gig boundary 
(Intel has to emulate it with software bounce-buffers on most of its 
hardware, kinda nullifying the point of DMA), and with the vaunted Intel 
performance lead mostly a 32-bit phenomenon, dual dual-core AMD is often 
more efficient on 64-bit than quad-core Intel.

The biggest down side for AMD here is the severe lack of open source 
support for anything faintly modern, GPU-wise.  Unfortunately, Intel's 
the only real option for anything even half modern in terms of open 
source driven graphics chipsets.  For an x86_64 Linux desktop/
workstation, that more than cancels out the lead AMD would arguably have 
in multi-core/multi-CPU support, and if I were buying now, it'd be Intel 
for that reason.  AMD simply has to get its act together, and release at 
least enough specs for its ATI graphics product so the community can 
build the drivers itself.  Or sponsor its own open source drivers.  
Either way.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[Pascal BERTIN]

P.V.Anthony a écrit :

<snip/>
>
> Apps.
> 1. Gentoo linux 64bit
> 2. Apache 2
> 3. MySql
> 4. Postgres
> 5. Qmail
> 6. Pure-ftpd
> 7. Mod_perl
> 8. php
> 9. ruby
>
<snip/>

aren't you forgetting the app that you will run the most :
emerge.

This one will really benefit from quad core, and during time where you
will work on the server.
So, facing such a choice, I would also consider my comfort/time, and
give quad core a +1.

Pascal


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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[P.V.Anthony]

On this day, 02-August-2007 4:58 PM,  Pascal BERTIN wrote:
> P.V.Anthony a écrit :
> 
> <snip/>
>> Apps.
>> 1. Gentoo linux 64bit
>> 2. Apache 2
>> 3. MySql
>> 4. Postgres
>> 5. Qmail
>> 6. Pure-ftpd
>> 7. Mod_perl
>> 8. php
>> 9. ruby
>>
> <snip/>
> 
> aren't you forgetting the app that you will run the most :
> emerge.
> 
> This one will really benefit from quad core, and during time where you
> will work on the server.
> So, facing such a choice, I would also consider my comfort/time, and
> give quad core a +1.
> 
> Pascal

What I am really interested is, how the server will perform most of the 
time. Will the instance of the apps go to each core in a balanced way?

 From the previous posts, I gather that the amd chip is really good.

I must say that I love the intel drivers for the network and sata. If 
only amd has some chip sets for their own cpus and good open source 
drivers for their chip sets. Intel has that covered and I think the 
intel drivers are open source.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

P.V.Anthony

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[Bob Sanders]

P.V.Anthony, mused, then expounded:
> 
> I must say that I love the intel drivers for the network and sata. If 
> only amd has some chip sets for their own cpus and good open source 
> drivers for their chip sets. Intel has that covered and I think the 
> intel drivers are open source.
>

It's more the chipset than the drivers.  The Intel GigE chip controller
has a built-in tcp offload engine that removes cpu loading of network
traffic, if enabled in the Linux kernel. 

Of the available chipsets for AMD support, only Nvidia has a proprietary
driver, thus the need for the reverse engineered driver.  Most non-Nvidia
chipset platform for AMD use either Broadcom or Intel GigE chips.  And the
Broadcom drivers have been well tested over the years.  So, other than
TCP offload, I wouldn't avoid evaluating a specific option due to a concern
about drivers.

SATA - again with AMD you have some options - nVidia or Broadcom, either work fine,
as does the Intel SATA controller.  That said, be cautious of using the Intel
software raid from the bios.  I've not found it to be consistantly implemented,
nor for it to always work well.  Generally, unless a real hardware raid is offered,
such as a LSI 1064 or 1068 SAS/SATA chip, stay with kernel supported software raid.

And SATA in general, in rack mount enclosures, can suffer in performace, especially
in 1U enclosures due to fan vibration.  Inspect the fan mounting and insure that
the fans are isolated from the chassis with rubber mounting bushings or grommits.

And make sure the latest bios, bmc, and other firmware is installed and up to date!
It's important.

Don't confuse yourself by thinking that because Intel makes it's own chipset, that
it's a better platform than anything available for AMD.  Intel has two goals for
making it's own chipset - vertical control of it's market, thus maximizing it's profit,
and because OEMs don't want to have to think about having to do any real engingeering
when putting their logo on a platform.  AMD's being forced into the platform direction
because of OEMs.

ALso, consider that while Intel does have very good engineering, it's entire platform
is proprietary.  Only recently did it open up it's socket to counter AMD with
programmable, pluggable ASICs.

AMD on the other hand runs on an open bus architecture.  So anyone can add things to it,
with minimal licensing - making something for HyperTransport requires joining the
consortium (and it's not part of AMD).  So it open source is important, I'd think
you'd want an open platform, where you get to choose the best infrastructure
for your computing needs.

Tyan offers both platforms to best meet what you think you're needs are.  And you should
look at those needs in that perspective.  From your mix of apps, I'm not so sure the
Intel platform is going to be the best.  It really depends upon the overall mix.  If
you have more active database access than network traffic, then something with a higher
sustained memory bandwidth, along with higher i/o bandwidth is going to provide much
better performance.  If the mix is mostly crunching on data retrieved, thus lots
of FP or integer activity, than cpus with large caches and speed are more important.

Typically, when compute power is more important to the mix, the Intel Core2 platform
will perform the best.  When memory and i/o bandwidth are important - database
transactions, the AMD platform delivers a higher sustained bandwidth.  And if
the job mix is very peaky - lots of variations with long periods of lull time, 
the AMD platform will deliver overall power savings and require less cooling for
a decrese in peak performance.

Bob
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[P.V.Anthony]

Thank you very much for sharing.

P.V.Anthony

On this day, 03-August-2007 1:41 AM,  Steve Herber wrote:
> The point of Unix has always been to manage resources.  In the old days, 
> where you only had a single CPU, the kernel had to time share among all 
> the different processes.  The ps command shows you all the different 
> processes.  Your system will have many processes.
> 
> Once you go to a multiple-cpu system you actually get to take advantage 
> of the original Unix choice of fork/exec to create new processes.  Each 
> process can run on a different cpu core.  Now instead of timesharing a 
> single core across every process, you can have 2 or 4 processes running 
> on their own core.
> 
> In you sample below, I could see apache running on one core, mysql on 
> another, postgres on another, while the applications written in perl, 
> ruby, and php running on the 4th.  Of course you will really have 
> hundreds of processes running at a time so all 4 cores will have to 
> timeshare.  As others said, you don't get 100% from each new core.  
> There is overhead from the kernel to figure out where to put a process 
> for the next slice and there will be more memory contention because you 
> have 4 CPU's talking to memory.  A 4 core system will have almost twice 
> the cpu power of a 2 core system.  Most of your processes look like they 
> will be IO bound but when a CPU bound tasks runs, it will only take over 
> one core leaving the other three to handle the IO bound ones.
> 
> Your initial issue is cost and rightly so.  A 2 core system is cheaper 
> than a 4 core system.  If you build equivalent 2 core and 4 core systems 
> then you could test them against you real workload and see if the 2 core 
> system is better.  You might discover that you should really have 2 two 
> core systems for the load you have and for redundancy.  Or you might 
> discover that you really need to address the IO bottleneck and get 
> multiple SCSI data paths.  I would buy a 4 core system with lots of 
> disks. Then I would run a test to benchmark my system, probably just 
> running top to see the 15 minute load average.  Then I would use the cpu 
> control software to disable one, two, and then three cores while my 
> normal load was running and I would again look at the 15 minute load 
> average.  I would expect to see it rise as the number of CPU's was 
> reduced.  My next computer would have the number of cores that met the 
> sweet spot.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Steve Herber    herber@thing.com        work: 206-221-7262
> Security Engineer, UW Medicine, IT Services    home: 425-454-2399
> 
> On Thu, 2 Aug 2007, P.V.Anthony wrote:
> 
>> On this day, 02-August-2007 4:58 PM,  Pascal BERTIN wrote:
>>>  P.V.Anthony a écrit :
>>>
>>>  <snip/>
>>> >  Apps.
>>> >  1. Gentoo linux 64bit
>>> >  2. Apache 2
>>> >  3. MySql
>>> >  4. Postgres
>>> >  5. Qmail
>>> >  6. Pure-ftpd
>>> >  7. Mod_perl
>>> >  8. php
>>> >  9. ruby
>>> >
>>>  <snip/>
>>>
>>>  aren't you forgetting the app that you will run the most :
>>>  emerge.
>>>
>>>  This one will really benefit from quad core, and during time where you
>>>  will work on the server.
>>>  So, facing such a choice, I would also consider my comfort/time, and
>>>  give quad core a +1.
>>>
>>>  Pascal
>>
>> What I am really interested is, how the server will perform most of 
>> the time. Will the instance of the apps go to each core in a balanced 
>> way?
>>
>> From the previous posts, I gather that the amd chip is really good.
>>
>> I must say that I love the intel drivers for the network and sata. If 
>> only amd has some chip sets for their own cpus and good open source 
>> drivers for their chip sets. Intel has that covered and I think the 
>> intel drivers are open source.
>>
>> Please correct me if I am wrong.
>>
>> P.V.Anthony
>>
>> -- 
>> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>>
> 
> !DSPAM:6,46b21781197995167217508!

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[P.V.Anthony]

On this day, 02-August-2007 10:27 PM,  Bob Sanders wrote:
> P.V.Anthony, mused, then expounded:
>> I must say that I love the intel drivers for the network and sata. If 
>> only amd has some chip sets for their own cpus and good open source 
>> drivers for their chip sets. Intel has that covered and I think the 
>> intel drivers are open source.
>>
> 
> It's more the chipset than the drivers.  The Intel GigE chip controller
> has a built-in tcp offload engine that removes cpu loading of network
> traffic, if enabled in the Linux kernel. 
> 
> Of the available chipsets for AMD support, only Nvidia has a proprietary
> driver, thus the need for the reverse engineered driver.  Most non-Nvidia
> chipset platform for AMD use either Broadcom or Intel GigE chips.  And the
> Broadcom drivers have been well tested over the years.  So, other than
> TCP offload, I wouldn't avoid evaluating a specific option due to a concern
> about drivers.
> 
> SATA - again with AMD you have some options - nVidia or Broadcom, either work fine,
> as does the Intel SATA controller.  That said, be cautious of using the Intel
> software raid from the bios.  I've not found it to be consistantly implemented,
> nor for it to always work well.  Generally, unless a real hardware raid is offered,
> such as a LSI 1064 or 1068 SAS/SATA chip, stay with kernel supported software raid.
> 
> And SATA in general, in rack mount enclosures, can suffer in performace, especially
> in 1U enclosures due to fan vibration.  Inspect the fan mounting and insure that
> the fans are isolated from the chassis with rubber mounting bushings or grommits.
> 
> And make sure the latest bios, bmc, and other firmware is installed and up to date!
> It's important.
> 
> Don't confuse yourself by thinking that because Intel makes it's own chipset, that
> it's a better platform than anything available for AMD.  Intel has two goals for
> making it's own chipset - vertical control of it's market, thus maximizing it's profit,
> and because OEMs don't want to have to think about having to do any real engingeering
> when putting their logo on a platform.  AMD's being forced into the platform direction
> because of OEMs.
> 
> ALso, consider that while Intel does have very good engineering, it's entire platform
> is proprietary.  Only recently did it open up it's socket to counter AMD with
> programmable, pluggable ASICs.
> 
> AMD on the other hand runs on an open bus architecture.  So anyone can add things to it,
> with minimal licensing - making something for HyperTransport requires joining the
> consortium (and it's not part of AMD).  So it open source is important, I'd think
> you'd want an open platform, where you get to choose the best infrastructure
> for your computing needs.
> 
> Tyan offers both platforms to best meet what you think you're needs are.  And you should
> look at those needs in that perspective.  From your mix of apps, I'm not so sure the
> Intel platform is going to be the best.  It really depends upon the overall mix.  If
> you have more active database access than network traffic, then something with a higher
> sustained memory bandwidth, along with higher i/o bandwidth is going to provide much
> better performance.  If the mix is mostly crunching on data retrieved, thus lots
> of FP or integer activity, than cpus with large caches and speed are more important.
> 
> Typically, when compute power is more important to the mix, the Intel Core2 platform
> will perform the best.  When memory and i/o bandwidth are important - database
> transactions, the AMD platform delivers a higher sustained bandwidth.  And if
> the job mix is very peaky - lots of variations with long periods of lull time, 
> the AMD platform will deliver overall power savings and require less cooling for
> a decrese in peak performance.
> 
> Bob
> -  

Thank you very much. Real cool advice. This information is really very 
useful.

P.V.Anthony

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[Nuitari]

> Thank you very much for sharing.
>
> P.V.Anthony

At the end of the day, what will matter is the amount of traffic and the 
efficiency of the applications.

If you are just serving static webpages, a pentium 1 would be enough.

If you are going to do a lot of virtual servers then you'd probably want 
to wait for the Barcelona chips.

What kind of loads do you expect?
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[P.V.Anthony]

On this day, 03-August-2007 11:39 AM,  Nuitari wrote:

> If you are going to do a lot of virtual servers then you'd probably want 
> to wait for the Barcelona chips.
> 
> What kind of loads do you expect?

Currently running on Supermicro 1U Pentium 4 2.8mhz with hyper threading 
for about two years. The average 15min load is only 0.31. The os is 
Fedora Core 1.

Thinking of setting up another server and move all the services to the 
multi-core server. Then have the Pentium 4 server as a backup.

Of course it will be gentoo and 64bit. And on kernel 2.6. Want to learn 
and try out Xen virtualization. More and more sites are now CMS based 
and I like WebGUI which runs on mod_perl. More clients want web based 
applications. So going to a more powerful server might help. I am hoping.

When is Barcelona coming out? Would it be expensive because it is new 
and a true 4 core chip?

 From reading the posts, it seems that memory is very very important. 
Wondering if it is better going with a 2 core cpu and put the savings on 
more ram. Originally thinking of 4g. Maybe the ram should go to 8g.

Plus it is paranoia. Just afraid that something on the Pentium 4 might 
fail. Since it is already two years old.

P.V.Anthony

PS: going with tyan because from this list, it seems that tyan has good 
support for linux.



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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Is there any difference with 4 core?

[Bob Sanders]

P.V.Anthony, mused, then expounded:
> 
> When is Barcelona coming out? Would it be expensive because it is new 
> and a true 4 core chip?
>

Initial ship in about two months.  It'll cost more, but get the Socket F
aka 1207 pin socket if you go AMD.
 
> From reading the posts, it seems that memory is very very important. 
> Wondering if it is better going with a 2 core cpu and put the savings on 
> more ram. Originally thinking of 4g. Maybe the ram should go to 8g.
>

Probably best just to start with 4 G.  More memory can be added later.
On the Intel plaform, get 4 dimms, on the AMD platform 2 dimms is fine.
Whichever you get, pay attention to the bios release notes and memory
RAS features.  You might wany to implement mirroring (doubling the number
of dimms) if uptime is important.
 
> Plus it is paranoia. Just afraid that something on the Pentium 4 might 
> fail. Since it is already two years old.
>

Typically, hard drives - IDE, then SATA, then SAS, and FC, fail first in the
described order from most likely to least likely.
 
> P.V.Anthony
> 
> PS: going with tyan because from this list, it seems that tyan has good 
> support for linux.
>

Tyan makes a very good stable product.  But there will be issues.  There are
always issues.  I've worked a lot with Intel and SuperMicro recently, and both
have strengths and weaknesses.  Personally, I'd stick with Tyan or SuperMicro.

And if you're going to need remote console access make sure you can return the
product if the BMC (Baseband Management Controller) doesn't work well.  You'll
have to pay for a decent BMC.  But one that works is worth every penny.  I haven't
had the opertunity to work with Tyan's BMC, so I really can't comment on them,
but all the others I've used have had issues that needed to be worked out with
the vendor, so the fixes are coming along with updated BMC firmware.

Bob 
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