Re: PIII 550 or Athlon 950?

[Tor Roberts <tor@econsci.net>]

Derek,
I know that everyone is pushing the PII, but I would like to put my vote
in for the Athlon. They are fantastic cpus. I have a couple of rackmount
(4U) 750 Athlons running very large Postgresql databases, and I have never
had any problems with them. They have been running since June, very solid.
If you are planning on running a database on your machines, I would
absolutely get the fastest cpu possible, and lots of RAM. Just my opinion.

-Tor

On Tue, 2 Jan 2001, Derek Sivers wrote:

> Almost off-topic hardware question, but I AM asking because of 
> OpenBSD-specific issues.
> 
> I'm about to buy a server from Sera Systems.   A 1U rack space PIII 550 
> server with 128k RAM goes for $1400.
> They install and optimize OpenBSD (yay!) for your needs, all included in 
> that price.
> 
> But - I need to buy FOUR rackspace servers, and at that price, maybe I'd be 
> better off building them (cost: about $900 each) with an AMD Athlon 950.
> 
> I'd save $2000.  I'd have an Athlon 950 instead of a PIII 550.  And I could 
> ask an expert OpenBSD person to advice/help optimize the original setup.
> 
> Does OpenBSD work better with PIII 550 than Athlon 950?   Would there be a 
> big performance difference?
> 
> What would YOU choose?
> (if you don't mind taking 1 wee second to reply...)
> 
> #1 - A PIII 550 server setup by a pro, for $1400
> #2 - An Athlon 950 server, built yourself, with expert installation advice, 
> for $900.
> 
> 
> Sorry if this is too off-topic.
> If it was Linux, I'd know the answer.
> I'm just not sure if OpenBSD works better with one than the other.
> 
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 
>