Data on 2.8 P4 w/HT vs Dual 2.4 Xeons ?

[Stachel]

Am trying to decide between a single P4 vs Dual Xeon server.

Specifically - a 2.8 GHz P7 server, 1024mb RAM vs a Dual 2.4 GHz Xeon, 1024mb RAM.

1) Thinking about it purely based on performance

Some data makes it look like there's very little actual performance difference - http://qcdhome.fnal.gov/benchmarks/xeon_p4.html But performance is so application dependent that I thought I should ask.

I'll be running a 150 simultaneous user vBulletin + PhotoPost forum. I think it will be there twice a day. Steady state would be some point lower than that.

What diff do you think it would make?

2) Other considerations.

I could get dual Zeon for an effective $40 extra / month at ServerMatrix, but I would also get 1 more 80gb hard drive.

$129 /mth = 2.8Ghz P7 + 80 GB drive
$179 /mth = dual 2.4Ghz Zeons + 2, 80 GB drives

With the 2'nd hard drive, I wouldn't get the $10/month backup option. I would backup to the 2'nd drive weekly and offsite monthly. So effectively I could get dual Xeon for $40 / month.

What do you think.

Stachel

[RichM]

The Dual Xeon. In my opinion I think that any server that has more than 150 simultaneous users online should have Dual CPU's.
Many people would probably argue with that. But my 2.8Ghz Super Server from SM was in it's 2's (server load) when it had more than 100 users online.

Also, I have only briefly looked at that site, but I think they are comparing it against a single Xeon cpu.

[Shining Arcanine]

Dual Xeon. That data showed a single 2.4GHz Xeon against a 2.8GHz P4. Dual 2.4GHz Xeon would have mopped the floor with the 2.8GHz P4.

[Stachel]

OK.

re: dual vs single Xeon - Shining and HostOrbit, thanks for noticing that! I've been doing too much reading between midnight and 3am while bleary-eyed.

Final question I think:

What would be an ideal partitioning for the 2 80gb IDE drives?

What I have seen posted is this:

1) What cPanel recommends:
001 GB /
050 MB /boot
001 GB /tmp
010 GB /usr
007 GB /var
001 GB swap
Remaining space to /home

2) From JoshS
Code:
root@sonar [~]# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 74580400 2549960 68180868 4% /
/dev/hda1 101089 24425 71445 26% /boot
/dev/hdb1 38464340 32828 36477608 1% /backup
none 513996 0 513996 0% /dev/shm

Plans right now are to run only vBulletin and PhotoPost.

Someone said something about log files overrunning the /var area, but I didn't see what that partition should be set to as a result (?).

Stachel

[Joshs]

Dual Xeons > Single P4 w/ HT