Dual Core or Quad Core?

[warlord at MIT.EDU]

Quoting Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>:

> Most of the previous posts have pretty well answered most everything.
> As Maddog points out, Linux scales well up to 8 CPUs, but much work is
> being done with 32, 64, and 128 by IBM, HP, and SGI.  In your case,
> it's not so much that you are going to stress the CPUs, it is more the
> I/O of loading the applications. Fortunately, Linux and Unix
> applications do a good job of mapping files to memory. So, as others
> have stated, quad core is definitely a win in your case.  The other
> thing to look closely at is the cache sizes. The 1.6Ghz vs. 2.0 Ghz is
> minuscule, but make sure you don't get less cache.

I wonder, has anyone profiled VMware (in particular the free VMware-server)
to see how it would perform on an Intel vs AMD quad-core?  If I want to
run a half-dozen VMs simultaneously am I going to get better performance
out of an Intel or AMD?  I SUSPECT AMD (due to the aforementioned memory
bus differences) but I have no real numbers to back up my estimates.  Anyone
else done that kind of profiling?

-derek