Dual Core 5160 vs Quad Core X5335

[supertle55]

Its a Dell PowerEdge 2950 I'm spec'ing out. Dell recommended that I go with a single Quad core X5335 2ghz (Clovertown?) instead of the 5160 (woodcrest) 3.0 ghz.

On another Dell system, I was getting dual 5160 and again I was recommended to get dual x5335 (8cores). This is going to be running Red Hat ES 4.0 along with Asterisk 64 bit edition software. I don't know if the having the raw ghz power is better then to go with all these extra cores that the application may not be utilizing. Anyone know??

 

[lyssword]

well, one thing I can tell you, core for core, conroe-based processor @ 2.0ghz is faster than p4-based 3.0 ghz woodcrest. I don't know much about server processors tho..

 

[JackPack]

Originally posted by: lyssword
well, one thing I can tell you, core for core, conroe-based processor @ 2.0ghz is faster than p4-based 3.0 ghz woodcrest. I don't know much about server processors tho..

Ouch. Reading that was like hearing fingernails on a chalkboard. Good thing you put that disclaimer at the end.


Regarding the OP's question, I think it's a safer choice with the faster Woodcrest. Most of the multithreaded workloads like transaction processing and mail server tend to gain around up to 40% at best. It's going to be tough making up for a 1 GHz decrease in frequency with an application that isn't likely to be well multithreaded.

 

[supertle55]

Its a tough decision. Its approx. 21 servers we are ordering. The quad core choice would make it $7k cheaper then the dual core. I think we are going for the quad core because I think either choice is more then sufficient for our current and future needs. Its a system that can be scaled out so worse is I can always take the $7k I saved and buy another server I hope that's a good choice. I still really don't know which would give it the better edge in performance

 

[HopJokey]

Originally posted by: supertle55
Its a tough decision. Its approx. 21 servers we are ordering. The quad core choice would make it $7k cheaper then the dual core. I think we are going for the quad core because I think either choice is more then sufficient for our current and future needs. Its a system that can be scaled out so worse is I can always take the $7k I saved and buy another server I hope that's a good choice. I still really don't know which would give it the better edge in performance

Did you factor in power? I don't know what the numbers are, but I'm guessing the 3.0 Ghz dual core DP systems would use less watts than the 2.0 Ghz quad core DP systems. You may want to factor in how much extra per year you would spend on the power difference. Though I doubt it would make up $7k.

 

[f4phantom2500]

hm...well a clovertown is basically 2 woodcrests sandwiched together if i'm not mistaken. if you guys expect to use these for heavy multitasking go with the clovertown. if not, go with the woodcrests; they'll do much better with single threaded things (or more basic multitasking), and, I suspect, will consume less energy (2 extra cores put out a lot of extra heat, even though they're 1GHz slower), which means less electricity cost on the dual cores.

 

[supertle55]

Hmm I have never ever taken into consideration electrical cost when I priced out these things
You're absolutely right that clovertown is basically 2 woodcrest together and the power consumption. I'm skeptical on these quadcores but a lot of marketing out there that is saying equalivent performance to the dual core or huge increased if software is optimized. So being that they actually cost less, it would make sense to go quadcore if I just went by what Intel marketing is telling me ..

I never got a clear answer from Digium whether Asterisk will fully utilize the 4 cores. Asterisk is a multi-threaded application that depends heavily on the linux kernel multithreaded ability. Each server will handle 100 calls simultaneously with mostly likely little codec transcoding but a lot of IVR / MusicOnHold functionality which can be cpu taxing. Other then that, it servers no other purpose.

Out of these 21, 4 of them will be purely mySQL Database and from my research, quad core isn't really supported. Dual core is supported. These db server are going to be 2 physical processors and i'm also pondering on dual core or quad core on them.

Think I should go with the dual core instead? Still have time to decide ... decisions decisions

 

[f4phantom2500]

In general I think the dual cores would perform better, since more apps would be optimized for dual cores instead of quads, and they're 1GHz faster. Also remember the electricity. And you could always upgrade to quad core later down the road if you wanted I guess. Hm...I wonder why the quad cores are cheaper though?

Well, each has their plusses and minuses (quad core cheaper, dual core 1GHz faster). I would find out if the apps you will be using are optimized for quad cores; see if you can't find some kind of benchmark results on them between the 2 processors you're considering (or at least similar processors). Then decide.

EDIT: If the apps you'll be using are only optimized for dual core chips, you could get slower dual core xeons to save money (and you'll have closer performance to the quad cores, since the programs wouldn't be optimized for quads), it'll help make up for that $7k difference. You could use that money towards a LOT of extra RAM lol.

 

[lyssword]

Oh sorry I'm clueless about servers I thought 3.0 ghz woodcrest wasn't core duo-based. I'm gona be reading up on those procs on wikipedia now

*edit: yeah both of those are core-based, I somehow was misled by the 3.0ghz number as they don't make those for regular desktop, so I thought it was netburst-based