4x(400MHz xeon PII) SMP and 1.4G PIIII workstation, a rough guess:which one is better?

Z

Zhang Weiwu

Hello. I got a chance to get a retired computer from my friend. He has
two boxes, one is running as an old server with 4x(400MHz xeon PII l2
cache 512KB) SMP (not sure of the mother board), another one is his new
server, one PIV 1.4G CPU with DDR memory. Both with 512MB memory. He is
moving to another city and he cannot carry all of the two, he will give
one of them to me. The two boxes are already packaged so I don't have
chance to do benchmark.

I had too little knowledge on hardware. I wish to use the gift run Linux
as web(light-weight)/rsync/ipp server. It looks to me like the PIV box
will be more powerful, but I am not sure. From your experience, which
one box is likely more powerful?

Thank you.
 
S

Steve

Hello. I got a chance to get a retired computer from my friend. He has
two boxes, one is running as an old server with 4x(400MHz xeon PII l2
cache 512KB) SMP (not sure of the mother board), another one is his new
server, one PIV 1.4G CPU with DDR memory. Both with 512MB memory. He is
moving to another city and he cannot carry all of the two, he will give
one of them to me. The two boxes are already packaged so I don't have
chance to do benchmark.

I had too little knowledge on hardware. I wish to use the gift run Linux
as web(light-weight)/rsync/ipp server. It looks to me like the PIV box
will be more powerful, but I am not sure. From your experience, which
one box is likely more powerful?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

Hi,

Just a guess mind you. I am by no means an expert. I look forward to other's
answers.

If you have a very high demand server then the 4 X 400MHz would be faster. For a
low volume server the 1.4G would be faster.

Either would be plenty fast for a low end server and the single would have less
quirks you'd need to worry about.

$.02
Steve
My real email address is dealsgalore[A-T]earthlink.net

www.cheap-land.com
 
G

General Schvantzkoph

Hello. I got a chance to get a retired computer from my friend. He has
two boxes, one is running as an old server with 4x(400MHz xeon PII l2
cache 512KB) SMP (not sure of the mother board), another one is his new
server, one PIV 1.4G CPU with DDR memory. Both with 512MB memory. He is
moving to another city and he cannot carry all of the two, he will give
one of them to me. The two boxes are already packaged so I don't have
chance to do benchmark.

I had too little knowledge on hardware. I wish to use the gift run Linux
as web(light-weight)/rsync/ipp server. It looks to me like the PIV box
will be more powerful, but I am not sure. From your experience, which
one box is likely more powerful?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

The 1.4GHz P4 is about as fast as a 1GHz PIII so the 4x box will
probably have a litte more throughput but individual single threaded jobs
will be much slower. The P4 box has the potential to be upgraded, the PII
box doesn't. SDRAM memory is more expensive than DDR memory (because it's
obsolete and not produced in modern processes) so it will be prohibitively
expensive to add memory to the PII box. You can probably upgrade the P4 to
a faster speed grade than 1.4GHz, you'll need to look at the motherboards
specs to see what the fastest processor that it can take is but I expect
than you can drop in a significantly faster processor. A 2GHz P4 is $100,
a 2.6GHz 400MHz FSB is $150 (you can't use the 533 or 800MHz FSB buses in
a machine that old). PIIs weren't made in speed grades much faster than
you already have, 450MHz was the end of the line, so you can't upgrade
those. If I were you I'd take the P4.
 
K

kony

Hello. I got a chance to get a retired computer from my friend. He has
two boxes, one is running as an old server with 4x(400MHz xeon PII l2
cache 512KB) SMP (not sure of the mother board), another one is his new
server, one PIV 1.4G CPU with DDR memory. Both with 512MB memory. He is
moving to another city and he cannot carry all of the two, he will give
one of them to me. The two boxes are already packaged so I don't have
chance to do benchmark.

I had too little knowledge on hardware. I wish to use the gift run Linux
as web(light-weight)/rsync/ipp server. It looks to me like the PIV box
will be more powerful, but I am not sure. From your experience, which
one box is likely more powerful?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

Frankly, it may not matter, either should have enough performance
for the job. From a reliablility standpoint, not knowing the
exact hardware, the younger age of the P4 box puts it ahead.
Similarly, it may have newer hard drives but that can vary a lot,
if the old box had all drives replaced in the last couple years
then it might be a better alternative.

Then there's the case, if it looks like either case is reusable,
for $100 you could throw a cheap new board and Athlon in there
and exceed performance of either by a large margin... GOOD
server cases are pretty expensive and in the end the case may be
the most valuable part.
 
H

Hamman

Zhang Weiwu said:
Hello. I got a chance to get a retired computer from my friend. He has two
boxes, one is running as an old server with 4x(400MHz xeon PII l2 cache
512KB) SMP (not sure of the mother board), another one is his new server,
one PIV 1.4G CPU with DDR memory. Both with 512MB memory. He is moving to
another city and he cannot carry all of the two, he will give one of them
to me. The two boxes are already packaged so I don't have chance to do
benchmark.

I had too little knowledge on hardware. I wish to use the gift run Linux
as web(light-weight)/rsync/ipp server. It looks to me like the PIV box
will be more powerful, but I am not sure. From your experience, which one
box is likely more powerful?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

I'd take the quad P2.

I currently have a dual 233MHz P2 server with 512MB PC100, running Advanced
Server 2000. Its handline everything that i'm throwing at it perfectly fine.
The limiting factor isn going to be the server, but the line you put it on.
A 256k up line like mine will not drain such a powerfull system.

I'm using it to generate PHP by the way.

hamman
 
D

David Wang

Tale the P4 box. Unless you are planning to run a huge database application,
Quad Xeon system is not going to help you much on running your average
applications.


David Wang - Tech Support
Extreme Node - Blade servers based on the standard ATX form factor
http://www.extremenode.com
 
M

~misfit~

Hamman said:
I'd take the quad P2.

I currently have a dual 233MHz P2 server with 512MB PC100, running
Advanced Server 2000. Its handline everything that i'm throwing at it
perfectly fine. The limiting factor isn going to be the server, but
the line you put it on. A 256k up line like mine will not drain such
a powerfull system.
Click to expand...

I'd take the quad Xeon box too, but then that's me.

It's a classic bit of machinery and I'm a hardware man. I've always
considered the P4 to be a dog of a chip, and a 1.4Ghz is a slow dog. My
Tualatin P3 Celerons are faster. Once Intel stopped production of the
Tualatin line I switched to AMD and haven't looked back. (Although the
Banais and Dothan chips look good if they ever make it to desktop PCs.
They're basically souped-up Tualatins with a lot more L2 anyway)

What's the difference between a PII and a PII Xeon? Zhang mentions that they
have 512KB L2 cache, well, so did the standard PIIs, only running half-CPU
speed. Is the L2 full-speed on the Xeons or something. It was my
understanding that Xeons usually had big L2's.

Cheers,
 
H

Heinz-Dietrich Saupe

Take the QUAD-Zeon System, using windows you will always run multi-threaded
applications, which do better one a SMP-system.

If you dont like it then, give it to me, I give you a 2.8G Athlon with 1 GB,
big harddisk plus some gimmicks.
 
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