Server CPU

[DannyJ]

My forum has outgrown its current host so I'm building a new server for it. I was wondering whether dual P3's in the 800-1000mhz range or a single P4 2400mhz with hyperthreading would be better? I'd appreciate any input you can give me. Thanks.

[eva2000]

My forum has outgrown its current host so I'm building a new server for it. I was wondering whether dual P3's in the 800-1000mhz range or a single P4 2400mhz with hyperthreading would be better? I'd appreciate any input you can give me. Thanks.
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[DannyJ]

It's currently a phpbb board but after the move we plan on buying VB and converting over. I just wanted some insight as to what kind of server to configure. I don't know if this is the right forum to ask this (I hope it is). I'm sorry if I posted in the wrong forum.

[eva2000]

i see generally any newer hardware/cpu would be better... but since i only know of vB performance usage for server recommendations, i'm not sure about phpbb

but dual p3 1.13, 1.26 or 1.4 would probably do better than a single P4 2.4ghz desktop cpu

[DannyJ]

Thanks for the info. I don't know if you can answer this but how many concurrent users do you think a desktop P4 2.4ghz could handle given it's running both web and db on it and has 1gb ram with a 10k rpm scsi HD? How about on the same setup with dual P3 1.26's? I know that there's probably no accurate answer but a rough range would help me a lot.

Oh and the server would be running linux and be on a 100mbit pipe.

Thanks in advance.

[AWS]

Go with the new P4C 2.6GHz. This is the new gen of P4s. They come in 2.4 to 3.0Ghz. All have improved hyperthreading enabled. In the early benchmarks in the reviews I read they beat dual P3s and dual AMD MPs by a rather large margin.
Price is inline with current P4s, but, the motherboards are a little higher.

[alexi]

I would like to see some facts on that for server usage. The P4 was never optimized as a server (notice there are no dual P4 motherboards)
As a desktop system it would win hands down.