Better Performance? Dual PIII 1Ghz or (1) Athlon XP 1900?

[Stealth]

I will be configuring an additional webserver soon, and was wondering which performs better: a dual PIII 1Ghz (256KB L2 cache/133 FSB) with 512MB ECC PC133 SDRAM or (1) AMD Athlon XP 1900 with 512MB PC2100 DDR RAM?

Are there any resources/comparisions on the web that you recommend me to look at?

Thanks a million.

 

[ndee]

Which webserver? I would bet a dual machine would perform better, just my guess.

 

[CraigRT]

I'd only get the dually rig if the tasks are going to be SMP intensive.. if not, the XP1900+ will out perform 2 PIII's.

 

[Stealth]

It'll be used as a frontend webserver running Apache on RedHat 7.3. The pages are mainly PHP, though we might switch to ColdFusion. Currently we have a backend database server with dual 1800 MP's.

With this current setup, which is recommended? Dual PIII's, or (1) Athlon XP 1900? How does the memory bandwidth come into play?

 

[Stealth]

bump...

 

[AluminumStudios]

A dually will generally give you more consistant, low lag throughput when under a heavy load, even if the sum of the CPU power is a little less than the single cpu option.

If you're having server side processing, then the XP1900 will give you faster response, but will trail off faster as you get more simultaneous users.

The Pentium III tualitins with 512 kb of cache make outstanding webservers. Especially Unix based Apache which spawns of multiple processes as it needs them.

My dept. at work runs more than 20 websites for the Schools of Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. We have a variety of machines, and the dual PIIIs have worked the best IMHO.

 

[Stealth]

Thanks alot for the informative posts. I've decided to go with the dual Tualatin route.

 

[dawks]

Just a note, for the Anandtech Forums.. they run two Quad PIII 500Mhz 2Meg Xeons (I believe) for the database servers, and something like 10-12 Dual Athlon MPs at 1.2Ghz or something similar.. Thats not exactly the setup but relativly close.. along the same lines.

 

[Sunner]

Another reason fpr going with the P3's for a server is stability.

While there are some mobos for the XP's that are supposedly very stable(Tyan's dually mobos speficically), it's far easier to get hold of stable Intel mobos.