What would be better in a heavily loaded server? Dual Xeon, or Dual PIII. I'm getting about 13,000 hits an hour, and I'm tired of my RaQ melting down.

What do you think would be the minimum processor required to handle this load?( My RaQ's CPU Load Average would get up to 60-100.)

I would say Dual Xeon ... or soon, there will be Dual P4.

I have a client using 35000 hits an hour and he is hosted on a P3/850 with 2GB memory. Typical server load is at 6-8 at peak hours, but the sites still load very fast. So, Dual P3 would probably be sufficient ... just add enough memory to the server, 2GB would be great.

cheers,
:beer:

Assuming otherwise equal configurations (including processor generation/speed), the Xeon will always return better results, especially on dynamic sites, due to the dramatically larger cache of the Xeon, as to what would be best for your situation varies a lot based on the types of pages being served and the other subsystems (which I can't really get into personally).

Xeon definately because it's just a P3 with more cache. I would not host on a P4 - and after having owned a P4 I'm not impressed at all with that chip. If dual AMD 1800 or so is an option they are really sweet chips.

the pages being served are fairly simple; plain html with the odd php include. The site is mainly based around a php script that serves up images, thumbs and html to go along with them.

I am wondering if going with a dual chip system would be overkill.

Would a single chip system with lots of ram be a good alternative?

Something simple like that is comparatively processor non-intensive (for the same number of page loads), you'd probably do find with a single processor, but with plenty of RAM and a fast HD subsystem (SCSI would be best).

Ok. All I know is that I need something a lot better than my RaQ 4 (which was crashing every 2 hours or so, and had a processor temp of 49 degrees C)

What would a IBM Netfinity 7000 M10 quad PII Xeon 450MHz 2Mb cache be good for? Are these kind of systems mainly for databases? I am planning on using it for pay hosting account.

Originally posted by WoodShedd
the pages being served are fairly simple; plain html with the odd php include. The site is mainly based around a php script that serves up images, thumbs and html to go along with them.

I am wondering if going with a dual chip system would be overkill.

Would a single chip system with lots of ram be a good alternative?

Why not get a dual server board, put 2 - 3 GB RAM in it and a single chip....

when it starts getting noticible again, whack in the other chip ;)

Cheers,

i'm handling 65,000 - 75,000 server hits per hour fine with php/mysql based sites and my vB forum on a dual p3 866 with 768mb ram and scsi disk

dual cpus maybe overkill for normal site usage periods but for those peaks that's what they're good for

if you're like me and are paranoid and backup your server and 2+ GB of mysql databases every 12 hrs then dual cpus and ALOT of memory is the way to go

I don't think he'll need dual Xeon monsters with 2 gigs of ram guys. He's running on a 450 mhz amd k6 at the moment with a max of 512 mb of ram. I think that a 1 ghz processor with 1 gig of ram with a decent scsi drive will be great. He can get more ram if he needs.

So a single p3, one ghz or higher will be great. Better yet and athlon mp 2000 (1.6 ghz).