Upgrade to dual-core (Pentium D) processor - Does it worth it?

[Mike Sturdee]

Here's an article you might be interested in..

http://www.overclockers.com.au/article.php?id=489587

-Mike


On Fri, 14 Jul 2006, Tobias P. Santos wrote:

> Hello!
>
> We have a server running FreeBSD 5.4 i386 (which we plan to upgrade to 6.1) 
> with a single Pentium 4 2.8GHz processor without SMP kernel.
> This machine basically serves web pages that may or may not use MySQL server 
> (also run in this server).
> Usually, we have low usage and load average is ~ 0.2 which is ok, but 
> sometimes, one single process (e.g., mysqld) begins to use all CPU cycles, 
> loading up the system and leading the other smaller processes (in terms of 
> CPU usage) to have a high response time.
> As this server's motherboard doesn't support an additional processor, we are 
> wondering whether a Pentium D processor (830) might help to minimize this 
> problem.
> In our understanding, one core would be busy with mysqld for example, while 
> the other one would be free to handle other processes like httpd and serve 
> pages that don't even need mysql resources.
> Is this correct? Did someone have similiar (successful or unsuccessful) 
> experiences?
>
> Thank you in advance,
> Tobias.
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-performance at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-performance
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to 
> "freebsd-performance-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>