The Question and Answer Board

[wbmw]

Bob, Re: Seems to me each of the webservers has a pair of 400Mhz processors. Anyone know what that's roughly equal to in the Xeon world?

If you are comparing UltraSparc II to Xeon, there is a world of difference. Just look at the SPECint benchmarks, for example.

SPECint result with Sun UltraSparc II at 400MHz
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q4/cpu2000-20001020-00268.html
Base Score - 198
Peak Score - 212

SPECint result for Dell PowerEdge 1500SC (1.4 GHz Pentium III)
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2002q1/cpu2000-20020102-01165.html
Base Score - 648
Peak Score - 664

Specint result for Dell PowerEdge 2650 (3.06 GHz Xeon)
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q2/cpu2000-20030404-02021.html
Base Score - 1014
Peak Score - 1056

Of course, Sun doesn't sell many servers with UltraSparc II any more. Here is Sun's newer model. Sure, it has improved, but still not comparable with Dell's top model. Why else do you think that Sun has begun selling Xeon based servers?

Sun Fire 280R (1200 MHz UltraSparc III)
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q2/cpu2000-20030331-02002.html
Base Score - 637
Peak Score - 712

Sun Fire V65x (3.06 GHz Xeon)
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q2/cpu2000-20030520-02193.html
Base Score - 1024
Peak Score - 1066