December 30, 2006 at 6:33 am
BACKGROUND:
I have a SQL database that gets a million new records a day. There are 30 or so stored procedures massaging the data. On my PIII it takes 1 ½ hours!!! It takes 4 minutes on a server with a Xeon processor and 3 gigs of ram. I want to replace my PIII which is a development machine, no users pounding it.
QUESTIONS:
Any other suggestions?
COMPUTER #1
Dell Precision 390
$914
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=39032min&s=bsd
Intel™ Core®2 Duo E6300 1.86GHz/1066MHz/2MB L2/Dual-core/VT [Included in Price]
1GB, 667MHz, DDR2 SDRAM Memory, ECC (2 DIMMS) [Included in Price]
COMPUTER #2
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=490d32min&s=bsd
Dell Precision 490
$1,314
Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 5110 1.60GHz, 4MB L2,1066 [Included in Price]
1GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 533MHz, ECC (2 DIMMS) [Included in Price]
OPTIONS:
Processor:
Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 5140 2.33GHz, 4MB L2,1333 [add $260]
Memory:
2GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 533MHz, ECC (2 DIMMS) [add $155]
2GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 533MHz, ECC (4 DIMMS) [add $214]
January 2, 2007 at 8:00 am
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January 2, 2007 at 9:19 am
Not sure about the technical specs, but it shouldn't use a lot more power or heat to you. It might be more heat, but I'd be surprised if you noticed.
Server or workstation does not matter.
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January 2, 2007 at 11:17 am
Let me bring everyone up-to-date. I bought a dell Core 2 Duo, the E6600 (4MB L2 Cache,2.4GHz,1066 FSB) . It will be a week or so before Dell ships it. When they do I'll run my SQL app on the Dell and on the other Xeon server and report back.
If the Dell is slower, I'll use it for an everyday machine. I'll go out and get a dual Xeon for my SQL machine. Never can have too many computers, LOL.
January 2, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Not that it matters now (since you have already ordered a new system), but you don't mention 1) how much memory and how fast your disks are in the PIII system, and 2) if the one million records are added in one large batch, or individual inserts (or something in between).
If you are adding a large number of rows at once in a batch, limited memory (like only 128mb) can drastically affect its performance. If, in addition to low memory, the drives are slow and/or fragmented, then writing/reading to tempdb and logs will make it much worse.
But to answer you question, I don't know that there will much noticable difference between Xeon and Core Duo. I'm sure someone with more tech detail on the new Core 2 Duo system might have more info (like perhaps Core 2 Duo are bound or limited by shared L2 cache or esoteric something like that), but it may not make that much difference. Lots of RAM and lots of fast disks (and avoiding Raid5) always work best for database servers.
Hope this helps
Mark
January 3, 2007 at 3:43 am
You might have done better getting a dual core 64bit amd and moving up to 64bit. Workstation and server o/s have obvious differences but as a sole user it probably won't matter, as a developer however then you should develop and test against the same o/s sql version as deployed against ( this is why i have a true dual proc test box as well as a dual core and a HT box )
Peformance is a whole different ball game and you'll always have a bottleneck, 2Gb ram isn't much for sql server, I'd have thought 4Gb would be a minimum. On a home pc the disks are usually the bottleneck, as pointed out above, you might want to investigate scsi disks + hardware raid which will make a difference. On procs often the amount of cache makes a greater difference than the raw speed - any new proc should run rings around a P111 anyway ( I still have P111 test servers so I'm not knocking them - but the difference between my dual P111 and dual core 64 bit is absolutely immense )
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January 6, 2007 at 6:20 am
whew .... just got my new Core 2 Duo, it is very fast .... what was taking me 4 minutes on a xeon is taking a minute on this machine
i'm impressed
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