Re: PIII 550 or Athlon 950?

[Nick Holland <nick@holland-consulting.net>]

I think I am agreeing with everyone else...however, I have some extra
reasons.

550MHz PIII...that's actually a rather slow, "old" chip. 
There is a connection between heat and speed.
I'm wondering if the manufacturer of the 550MHz PIII system chooses
that processor because they can cool it properly.

1U cases don't have a lot of "headroom" for the chip's heatsink.  Most
of the off-the-shelf heatsinks I have seen that are designed for
high-speed chips like the 950MHz are too big to even FIT in a 1U
case.  Of course, one could certainly design a heatsink which would
work just fine assuming sufficient air flow, but if you are building
this thing on your own, you *may* have trouble finding them
commercially (not sure, haven't looked).  Further, there are some
serious air flow and heat considerations in any small case, if you are
buying a pile of parts from different vendors, you aren't likely to
get a whole bunch of parts which cool well together.

You didn't indicate what the purposes of the machines are, but a
550MHz PIII is a LOT of processor for a web server, a firewall, and
just about ANY application I can imagine you not bothering to mention
the application of.  You haven't mentioned disk system, NIC, Ineternet
connection speed, etc.  At this point, you have LOTS of processor,
modest memory, and unknown disk and unknown link speed.  The slowest
of these things will determine your machine's ability to do
work...odds are, it won't be the processor.

Nick.

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!

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