Which processor is a better choice for a web server?

Question

I am purchasing a web application server for our company. There are two processors I am trying to decide on:

Dual Core Intel® Xeon® 5050, 2x2MB Cache, 3.00GHz, 667MHz FSB

or....

Dual Core Intel® Xeon® 5130, 4MB Cache, 2.00GHz, 1333MHz FSB

The Xeon 5130 is a newer model, with higher FSB speed (1333MHz) than the 5050 Xeon, but the 5050 has a higher overall clock speed, 3Ghz.

Which is better? The 5130 model will cost about $245 more, but doesn't the faster clock speed on the 5050 mean it's faster?

Answer 1

No, that significant FSB speed increase will make the 5130 faster. Not to mention the fact that the 5130 is based on Intels new Core Microarchitecture, the same stuff the the new desktop Core 2 Duos are based on. The 5050 is still based on the old architecture. The 5130 will easily outperform the 5050, and it will use less power doing so.

EDIT: I found some benchmarks that might help further my point. While I couldn't find the exact two in question, you can compare 5080 and 5160, just faster versions of the two you are looking at, and you can see that while the 5160 has a lower clock speed, it easily wins out because of its better architecture.

http://www.intel.com/performance/server/xeon/hpcapp.htm
http://www.intel.com/performance/server/xeon/intthru.htm

Answer 2

The faster bus speed means it will be able to send data back and forth to the processor faster if your motherboard can fully support this speed. This is usually better for web applications seeing as the data does not need transformed much, but needs to get where its going fast. The 3 ghz model would be a clear choice having an equal fsb but there is a possibility that a lot of that speed will be wasted waiting for data to be pulled of the ram due to the slower fsb.

Answer 3

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Good luck!

Answer 4

choose 5130. iT is the newer architecture... low power consumption but better performance

Answer 5

Was gonna ask this too

Answer 6

It depends..