Dual Core or Quad Core?

[Warren Luebkeman]

I asked for a quote on a server yesterday from our hardware provider, and the 
sales guy told me about a great new deal.  For the same price as a Dual Core, 
2 Ghz Xeon processor, I can get a Quad Core 1.6ghz Xeon processor.  My first 
impression was four must be better than two, but is it really?

The server is supposed to be a 50 user Linux terminal server.  Our current 
specs for this system are:

Dual Processor Dual Core (4 Processors)
6 GB Ram
15K SAS Hard Drives

So now I can build the same system, but with 8 processors vs. 4, for the same 
price.  My thought is because its a terminal server, the speed of the 
processors is less critical to the number of processors you have, because you 
need to distribute the load of 50 users across one server.  I can't imagine a 
word processor running at 1.6 Ghz vs. 2 Ghz should perform any differently.  
So by moving to more processors, I should have less processes running on each 
processor, which according to my very rudimentary logic suggests that the 
performance should be better, or at least, more efficient.

What do you think?  Aside from the cool factor of having 8 processors, I would 
like to make the RIGHT decision regarding what server I buy.  

I defer to the wisdom of the LUG to show me the way!


-- 
Warren Luebkeman
Founder, COO
Resara LLC
1.888.357.9195
www.resara.com