Which SMP CPU for FreeBSD 6.2?

[Darcy Buskermolen]

On Wednesday 18 July 2007 06:05:00 Jack Toering wrote:
> >You probably don't need to follow every move, but it might make sense to
> > do
>
> some actual research if performance matters to you?  You don't even say
> what your performance critical server is going to be doing ;)<
>
> At the moment I'm not too sure either. :)  The reason I say this is we have
> a 246 Dual Opteron that is handling 15,000 unique visitors an hour pulling
> data from around the world, generating weather maps, and pounding MySQL. 
> It has no problems.  There is host a large hotel site on the same server
> that is doing 900 and hour.  2/3 of the bandwidth is inbound to make the
> calculations.  It took us a lot off tweaking to get it where it is today.
>
> >but K8's are still pretty good with many workloads thanks to their far
>
> superior interconnects.<
>
> Which is why we went with dual 246s at the time.  The second processor on
> the Intel was a waste of money and it dual chip at the server level
> couldn't hold a candle to their laptop chips and the cost more than AMD. 
> That decision was a no-brainer.
>
> >Most numbers I've seen have been more based on games and media encoding in
>
> single socket configurations, and in 32bit mode at that;<
>
> Yes, I'm quite skeptical about benchmarks even on web servers having
> learned the hard way.  We tried 3 big names on Linux where the site fell
> down before 9AM.  A 4th, Rackspace, the salesman didn't return my calls
> after they had an engineer check out what we were doing.  Before and after
> we tried 3 versions off Linux ourselves with lots of configurations.  Based
> on all of the benchmarks, FreeBSD didn't make sense which is why it took us
> so long to get here.  Our competitors are running 5 box server farms to do
> what we accomplish with this setup and we have better response times.  We
> are running SCSI raid.  There is no measurable user response difference
> between a load of 17 or .7.  Due to optimizations, our current load doesn't
> exceed 6 or 7 with normal being more around 2.
>
> Then the NOCs hated us because we used the bandwidth they promised and we
> were told to move along one way or another 3 times.  The best NOC we've
> ever had is SAVVIS, Texas.  They could not handle it either where the
> server was at first, but after I proved to them with a packet sniffer that
> there was a problem, they worked hard for us to get us a place in the DC
> that could handle it.  We've lived happily ever after there.  That's where
> the next one is going also.  We've had all we can handle of being a
> fugitive and a vagabond.
>
> Naturally, my thoughts are drifting toward, "Hey, the new site should be
> doing the 246s and the old site something new."  In the mean time I've kept
> up off and on, on the issues with AMD code not being nearly as efficient as
> the Intel code due to optimization for the Intel due to its far greater
> numbers.  Next, the abosolute 180 degree change in the market between now
> and then concerning AMD and Intel.  I've read the Tom's hardware and
> AnandTech (I think) comparisions.  However, a lot of beautify theories get
> beat up by ugly realities and I have the scars to prove it.  That's why I'm
> here fishing.  I'm not expecting to find someone else with traffic and
> loads like this, but any insights are welcome when it comes to rolling the
> dice again because anything you can do to cut down the number of tries you
> need to throw the dice is a huge help.


Another site you can look at for reviews which is far less game/windows/office 
oriented is tweakers.net,

http://tweakers.net/reviews/661/7 for a good test of a woodcrest based server.

>
> Thanks!
>
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