Prescott vs. Northwood in small fileserver

[sharkeeper]

As subject implies...

Would the extra cache help in this case? I am being offered these processors (2.8G/800/HT) at the same price. The mainboard will accept a 90nm Prescott according to the manufacturer.

Server is running Windows 2003, Exchange 2003 Enterprise, SQ 2000, etc. It will also have 2GB ECC PC2700. 875P Chipset obviously.

The choice should be obvious given the price but I am using my own thermal solution (both chips are OEM) and I know NW TPS and PC PTS are different and generally not interchangeable but may work since there will be no overclocking whatsoever...

Cheers!

 

[Sheriff]

Isn't 2003 OS BETA? Mine is so that may be 1 problem.

 

[Derango]

Originally posted by: Sheriff
Isn't 2003 OS BETA? Mine is so that may be 1 problem.

2003 has been released for a while...

 

[Sheriff]

Damn my setups have been waiting for the 64bit BETA's as I build AMDers and still with XP on installs .

Oh yes I guess it should be so now that we are in 2004

 

[tart666]

vai pc2700?

 

[sharkeeper]

Crucial PC2700 ECC memory. Runs great in this setup.

The extra cache has to make a difference in performance.

Windows Server 2003 Enterprise. Guess I should've mentioned that.

Cheers!

 

[Dug]

I don't think you or anyone else would notice a lick of difference.

There isn't anything cpu intensive going on.

I would also wonder how 2700 is going to come into play, and does the motherboard even support the divider needed?
If you are running it at 200Mhz I would spend the money on different ram, no matter how well its running right this moment.

And unless this is SBS 2k3, I can't see running an enterprise edition of server with sql and exchange on the same system.

There's no benefit of enterprise over a lesser version, unless you are upping the cpu's, memory, etc. Which isn't the case here.

 

[mikecel79]

I don't think you'll see a big difference with either processor. If I may ask why are you putting all this on one single box? SQL and Exchange on the same box can cause problems, especially if one will be busy. How many users will be hitting this box? 2GB isn't much for both of those apps. Exchange and SQL are very very resource intensive.

 

[sharkeeper]

Yes the board supports both ECC and PC2700.

It's for a small workgroup of less than 20 people including most of the users' that are coming in through a VPN via 10Mbps Ethernet WAN handout.

There is only one site in on Exchange and the stores are well under 1GB on the current setup which is running a single 700MHz P3 and 640MB RAM. (The speed on this one is ok but the capacitors on the mainboard are swelling and oozing!)

This should handle everything fine. If not they will have no problem spending the money to get something that works. Nice thing as I usually get the stuff that doesn't work.

EDIT: Yes the Enterprise versions are overkill. I have been informed that they have all of these licenses already as the organisation is an open license customer. I will suggest they purchase licenses for SBS 2003 Premium.

Cheers!

 

[Dug]

So you have to underclock the cpu? Or is there a divider?

Memory bandwidth would be more of a performance increase than the cpu cache.

 

[sharkeeper]

So you have to underclock the cpu? Or is there a divider?

Memory bandwidth would be more of a performance increase than the cpu cache.

A divider supports 200FSB with any memory of PC2100 or faster. This CPU would have a locked multiplier of 14. This board has a i875P chipset and six DIMM sockets so a pair of 1GB DIMMS will run in dual channel. Four 512's would be far cheaper but the vendors are telling me this may be unstable.

The more I look at this the more I'm thinking of telling them they need a 7505 based solution and a pair of 2.4+ Xeons.

Cheers!

 

[Dug]

20-30 users do not need this type of speed. And I still question the use of software.
SBS 2003 would save them a bundle and include everything they need.

Just to let you know, Microsoft uses a dual 2gb system for 70 heavy users in testing and the server handles it just fine. It's all in the memory and hd's.

And 4 512 dimms shouldn't be unstable unless you are overclocking, which you won't be.