Celeron, Pentium III, Pentium 4, AMD Duron, or AMD Athlon

Which one of these cpu would be a good choice for a dedicated server. I've seen some dedicated server using Celeron, is that good enough ?

Need everyone input on these ..


Cheers,

The faster the better. But it depends on what your site will have on it. Will it it mainly static HTML or have lots of scripts/databases? You obviously need more power for scripts. But for the minimal price difference from celeron to pIII it would be best to at least get the pentium.

Celeron sucks unless you're just serving static content. Look for a cpu with decent cache sizes.

Not always the faster the better. I would rather have a PIII 1.4 Ghz than a P4 2.0Ghz as a server.



Originally posted by JeremyV
The faster the better. But it depends on what your site will have on it. Will it it mainly static HTML or have lots of scripts/databases? You obviously need more power for scripts. But for the minimal price difference from celeron to pIII it would be best to at least get the pentium.

Why would you prefer the PIII?

I've always been a pretty avid fan of Intel, so I'd probably take the Pentium III. I haven't had the chance to use a P4 yet but, it would probably be my second choice.

:)

Originally posted by 311
I've always been a pretty avid fan of Intel, so I'd probably take the Pentium III. I haven't had the chance to use a P4 yet but, it would probably be my second choice.

:)
Intel.....Celeron.....Intel Celeron. :D

I'd go with the P3, then the P4, Athlon, Celeron, Duron. Sure the Athlon and the P4 may be the fastest but they aren't the best in cooling or stability. And those P3's were real horses too. Could take some serious stress.

as always, it will depend on what you need it for and what your personal preferences are. there is no "right" configuration, only a configuaration that suits your needs.

Celeron - Static websites, mail servers and DNS servers.

Pentium III - Work horse systems. PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, perfect for them.

Pentium 4 - Only when the customer wants the latest and greatest and requires Rambus RDRAM.

AMD Duron - When the customer wants better then Celeron but doesn't want to pay for it.

AMD Athlon - Another workhorse. PHP and ASP fly on it, for some reason I've found ColdFusion doesn't work as well as it does on P3s.

I personally prefer the PIII or PXeon. The Celeron works great for some applications where cost is also an issue.

We have customers who stream video using a Celeron and the server performs wonderfully pumping out over 1Mbps constantly. On the other hand, I would never dream of setting up a database server on a Celeron. It really depends upon your needs and what you are doing as to what is best, for you.

I have heard mixed reviews and feedback on the P4. Most of what I have heard is it does not perform any better than a PIII and in some cases does not perform as well. The PIII is a proven product as is the Xeon.

If cost is not the issue, go for the Xeon as it will outperform all of them.

I cannot speak personally for AMD. Some people love them, mostly because of cost. I don't think it outperforms the Intel.

I dont understand all of you...

When you are getting a dual PIII 1.4, I'm getting a dual P4 Xeon at 2.4 GHz. That gives me a total of 2 GHz more processing power then you and allows me to serve up much more dynamic content, bandwidth, etc. GHz wise, thats 1 more processer then you have.

Same goes for a standard P4 compared to a PIII. Same for dual versus single CPU too. A 2.4 compared to a 1.4 is always going to outperform. I would only contemplate if you gave me a Celeron 2.4 compared to a PIII 1.4.

You have to think cost effective though. A P4 2.4GHZ is, what $300 cheaper than the 2.4GHZ Xeon? So $600 cheaper for a dually. I think the only time a Xeon would really show it's grunt as a database server.

Yes, but if you are only ever using one third of the power of that processor, it's not worth it. You just paid probably twice as much as I did for the same results. You need to look at the overall use of the system. You don't need to through a ton of processor performance at PHP. I'm running, on my personal server, a nice PHP based gallery site that used to, when I still worked for Verio and had 100Mbit access to the backbone, put 60 to 100GB of traffic in a day. The server is a Pentium 200 with 256MB of PC100 RAM and two 20GB ATA66 IDE drives. Everything is in PHP and mySQL is the back end.

Think about it.

When you are getting a dual PIII 1.4, I'm getting a dual P4 Xeon at 2.4 GHz. That gives me a total of 2 GHz more processing power then you and allows me to serve up much more dynamic content, bandwidth, etc. GHz wise, thats 1 more processer then you have. But do you need it for the price?

Yes I need the power. I run large databases and highly dynamic web sites in Cold Fusion.

I don't build servers myself. I leave that to those who do it best. So, yes, its a bit more money if building it yourself, but when looking at some of the best server builders, P4 Xeon seem to be priced just slightly above PIII.

www.qsol.com is more then an example. Build a Q13.i and a Dual PIII 1.4 machine costs $130 more than a P4 Xeon 2.4 Ghz. This I can not understand.

PIII or Athlon would be my pick- I would stay away from a P4 or Duron :)

JDT

Originally posted by inogenius
Sure the Athlon and the P4 may be the fastest but they aren't the best in cooling or stability.

?:confused:?

For clarification purposes only (not arguing!;))...I'm assuming the stability issues are related to the cooling issues?

When would cooling ever be a problem? I would think a modern datacenter would have air conditioning unless of course the datacenter is someguy's garage in Phoenix! :D

Same with the comment that

"I would rather have a PIII 1.4 Ghz than a P4 2.0Ghz as a server."

Could you please explain?

I'm interested in the thought process behind this. I'm sure a lot of it is economical but why would you take a slower processor? Also doesn't Rackspace use Athlons (maybe Durons?). With their reliability record I doubt they would use something that would give them problems. Right?

Originally posted by jazz
I'm interested in the thought process behind this. I'm sure a lot of it is economical but why would you take a slower processor?

Ditto. For those of you who would prefer a PIII 1.4 over a P4 2.0, please explain why that is. (if price was the same that is)

If you wanna get a P4 cpu, make sure you get the one with 512kb L2 cache and not the 256kb L2 cache.

AMD
I'm AMD's fan. :cartman:

I would stay away from a P4

If you don't want to get one off the best cpu for servers...

you can ask for a extra fan..our get a p3 1.0 our 1.1

I run both Intel P3 and P4 servers. They're very fast and reliable, no complains about speed. Never tried Athlon yet. As for Celeron/Duron, I don't think it's a good choice for server. They're more suitable for playing games :D