Hi everybody

I'm building a machine right now to server as a host for my webhosting business, I've decided in every single aspect of it except one ..

Should I go with:

Dual PIII 700 Mhz 256K cache or
Dual PIII 600 Mhz 512K cache ?

would it be wiser to have a little less speed but more chache ? since this is a host machine ...

Any suggestions would be appreciated

Well the 256k cache will be running at 700mhz as opposed to the 512k cache running at 300mhz.

As far as performance the 700s would be faster, but not by very much.

I'm taking a wild guess but I'd say more cache is better, Why is Xeon range so expensive compare to standard PIII? Why are they the preference for servers? Why do they have large caches? Why was the Pentium Pro 200 so expensive? Heck it's still expensive and available (not new) in the UK?

Anyone shine some proper info on this. I too would like to know about cache benefits and their relatively against mhz.

I agree ..

I was allways under the impression that for servers the more cache the merrier ... maybe someone else could enlighten us ;-)

cache = one of the last thing s I don't fully understand about computers. If some one can explain the benefits/function or whatever you want to call it, I'd appreciate it as well.

Cache holds a subset of the code/data the CPU is currently working on. (Or, in ideal cases, the entire set.) Typical cache, at 300-700MHz, is a helluva lot faster than your 100 or 133MHz RAM. The more cache you have, the less often the CPU has to go out to slower system RAM to get the code or data it needs, and the faster things proceed.

Newer PIIIs only have 256K cache, versus the 512K of older chips. BUT, it runs at processor core speed rather than half of that, and it's also on a 256 bit bus rather than 64. So overall, even with less of it, you'll probably see performance improvements.

I have some 2MB cache Xeon 450's on the way. I'm curious to see how they perform - they ought to be great in a database server.

In regard to the server choices that started this thread - I'd go with the 700s.

Thank you Travis ... err .. too bad I just bought the 600's 5 minutes ago .. how well, a Dual 600Mhz with 512MB should hold 300 customers (don't intend to put more than that on it)

Carlos,

Don't worry about the 600's - they'll do fine.

It's always hard to answer the "how many customers can I put on this machine?" questions. But as a point of reference, I currently have a machine with a single PII 350 serving about 260 domains. It runs a load average of .3-.4, so it's not exactly overloaded.

Ok, next question: How do you determine a computer's cache?

In Linux, cat /proc/cpuinfo

Some systems will show it to you in the BIOS boot process.

the best way is to look at the CPU itself, look at the top of the CPU and you will see something like 450/100/512 (that's a xeon 450 .. 100mhz FSB and 512K cache .) great pic Here: http://abacus.sj.ipixmedia.com/abc/M28/1c72d7ce2448e086336933a8d/i-2.JPG

I'll see if I can catch it in the bios, or at startup, since this is a server, but I happen to have it mounted under my desk (gotta love 1U servers) and am running win98 on it. (Just until I need it for something else)

when deciding whether to go for more cache or more bandwidth, it is important to consider the uses of the server

a database server needs more cache whereas a web server would benefit more from the speed.
I confirmed this with benchmarks : )

for all you people building web servers, I would seriously consider the athlon and thunderbird as a solution. They will work just as well and cost less : )