[CS-FSLUG] [OFB Cafe] Xeon Comparions

[Kris Deugau]

Timothy Butler wrote:
> Anyone know the difference between two 2.8 GHz older, single core  
> Xeons and one multicore Xeon 3040 (1.8 GHz)?
> 
> I'm debating which one to put in the aforementioned web server. I  
> can't find any real benchmarks comparing the two, but I can get the  
> dual processor system for just a bit more than the single, multi-core  
> system. Yet, the single multi-core system is the newer Conroe Xeon.

I can't point to any hard evidence, but the older chips are likely 
P4/Netburst (not sure if that's even the correct microarchitecture 
codename) and the newer chip is likely a branch of the Core architecture.

Loosely speaking, everything I've read indicates that the Core line is a 
derivative of the P3, and runs about the same computing power for about 
2/3 the clock.

There's also the issue of "peripherals" - memory controller, PCI vs 
PCIe, etc - the newer chip likely has more up-to-date support components 
  and should reduce some of the bottlenecks the older chips will be more 
or less stuck with.  (Or reduce the cost of some of the support 
components;  old ECC memory to use in interleaved banks will probably 
set you back more than even last-generation DDR.)  Cost out the whole 
thing;  add in a bit of headroom, and consider if you're going to want 
to do trivial upgrades like extra RAM later on.

-kgd