Quoted: Ok, building a server for multitude of things. Lots of storage, neato stuff.
Here's a question. Should i run 1 or 2 processors. This isn't going to mission critical or anything like that. SO i'm curious if it's worth going with 2 processors or just stick with 1? What sayeth the hive?
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It depends on a lot of what you're doing and if you have the money to burn.
A file server is a very easy thing for a computer to do. You could do it on a single Pentium II. If you're purely doing storage, you could run it as a Network Attached Storage device from a used 486. That's a focused task though, and I'm guessing you'll be doing more. But it just gives you an idea how easy it is for the computer to serve files.
An SQL server, then we're getting somewhere. Still, running a SQL server from a single 1 GHz cpu will be fine with just a few users. If you get up to a dozen or more simultaneous users, then you'll start getting delays. Also load it up with a ton of memory.
Web server...same story as with the SQL server.
Ammo server....well, one doesn't exist yet, but I sure wish it did!
Share-point Services on Win2003 or another server product that has "automated" GUI features is the type of software where you may want a 2 GHz + machine. But again, it won't take advantage of a 2nd CPU.
Multi-CPU systems are a big advantage when (they're always a slight advantage):
* The software is multi-threaded
* You run multiple single-threaded titles simultaneously and the OS is good at dividing up the work between the CPU's
Very little single-user software is multi-threaded. I keep hoping, but it just isn't available yet. Likewise, current OSs aren't exactly breathtaking on dividing single-threaded applications on a multi-CPU system. WinXP does ok at it, but not great. I hear BeOS is really good at it. Still...even with WinXP Pro, if you're running multiple heavy-applications at once, a single CPU machine will definitely bog down before a multi-CPU machine. If you're running SQL Server, SharePoint, a Battlefield 2 server, and burning a DVD...a single CPU system will be crying for it's mama while a dual-CPU (say with each CPU with dual cores), you'll be sailing right along still. If you're running one or two applications at a time, there won't be much difference.
Oh, there's one more advantage too that I noticed when I had my dual CPU setup...bragging rights.
Maybe add RAID....and a sticker on the side that says "Type R" and people think it runs faster than it actually does.