Intel VS. AMD for a server?

[Jiff]

As a favour for a friend, I'm installing Small Business server 2000. However, I've a choice of PC's to use as a server. It's either P3 450 or Duron 800.Whichever board and processor I use, it's getting loaded with 512mb of memory and mirrored 20gb hard drives.
There's only going to be five users on the system, and my gut instinct is to go with the P3. Any thoughts?

 

[Karl Blessing]

Well since you compared it like that, A P3 would eh, proablly be a better choice, because it's more of a heavy service taker, a Duron, with it's lower Cache size, is more intended to be on the machine that your people will be working on indivisually.

I might take a look at monarchcomputer.com to see what kind of servers they have. Also what is the primary task you are going to have your server perform?

I know at my office, we have 3 servers, two of them are NT4 Webserver, which are two P3/333, which seem to do a good job, and one is a Domain controler, which is a mere Pentium MMX 166 , which surprisingly enough does a great job, as a domain, and network printer controler.

but it really depends on the task you are going to perform with the server. If you plan on a webserver your 450 seems ok for only 5 people, anything like SQL, or etc, I would sugest a tad higher, possibly more rams as well. Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}

 

[butchrecon]

I agree with kb244 all the way. With all the processor extensive services that Small Business Server has going you are going to need the extra cache to help it out. Dont let the speed differance between the 450 and the 800 fool you. The extra cache in the P3 will help a lot. And as kb244 suggested get more RAM for it as well. (if the P3 board supports more than 512.)

 

[Karl Blessing]

just a sugestion, if you want to start clean (new mobo and cpu and what not) , If you still want to stay economical, but still good for a small business, I recomend either a AMD Thunderbird (it has 256K of L2 Cache), or an Intel Coppermine P3 FCPGA (basically saying the socketed version).

now if you want to spend a little extra cash, and possible good investment for future usage (as we know, change is not always desirable) , you might want to look into the Xeon line of P3 , which are basically P3s, with anywhere from 512K to 4 megs of ondie cache, having more ondie cache is very useful for servers, where they're may be multiple user request, of course, I only recomend this if you plan on growing really fast.

Otherwise, something like a Tbird 1Ghtz , on say Asus KA7 (no audio) , is economical, and good (bout 200$ total just for the cpu and board) , but if you want something business wise (covers everything) , I belive the MSI K7T Master-SI is an ideal choice, a more expensive motherboard, but it carries almost everything, firewire, Ultra160 SCSI (very good for Server harddrives), etc, I just wish it had standard ATA/100 support as well, then you'd have all the bases covered.

Ok so enough with the hype rant, between your two chips, P3 would be my choice.

But if you do want recomendation on new hardware, just let us know what your goals are, that way you get something that suits your need, not something thats a monster (like that MSI board i recomended, or like that Xeon recomendation) you dont need. Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}

 

[Jiff]

Cheers chaps, the P3 it is. It's running everything on the Small business server package except SQL but even so, I've pursuaded my mate to go for a gig of memory