Building server. AMD Opty 248's or Intel Xeon 3.0s?

needhelpnoobie

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I'm rdy to build a server for co-location. Going to run a dedicated server for my clan for our game servers and rent a couple out to other people to make a profit back.

What do you recommend? Dual Xeon 3.0ghz CPU's, or Dual AMD 248 Opterons?

Right now I'm leaning toward the Opterons. So if anyone has an educated opinion I'd like to hear it. Please don't comment if you don't actually know which is better.
 

maury73

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Woodcrest is another class: you may compare it with the 280, not with the 248. It's a little faster in Winsucks and a little slower on *nix than the 280.
And it's 2 times faster than the 248 but i costs 3 times the 248 price!
Do comparisons only on the same class or they don't make sense.

Answering to NeedHelpNoobie: if you plan to have many clients (that is many concurrent threads) go with the 248, it scales better on heavy multithreaded environment, as in Winsusks as in *nix.
Besides if you have single threaded server model the 50xx 3.0GHz Xeon would be a little faster with Winsucks, and equivalent with linux due to better SMP support.
 

needhelpnoobie

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Well I'm stuck with these brands/models as I can get them brand new for under a $100 a piece (overstock for the company i work for).

Here is all I know on the Xeons:

The 3.0Ghz is model 7320
(2 x 3.0GHz Processors with Hyperthreading - 2 x 2MB Cache)

Let me know what you think of that model of Xeon processor, compared to the 248's.

thanks for the help.
 

Heyyou27

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Uhh oh, those are old Netburst based Xeons which are considerably slower than their Opteron counterparts. I would however recommend getting dual Opteron 265s or better. If you're truly stuck to those two choices, the Xeons may be better off thanks to the number of cores. You'll be comparing 2 single core processors to two dual core processors.
 

needhelpnoobie

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I already said its between the two models i listed. I dont want to spend a ton on this. I can get two brand new opteron 248's for $140 dollars ($70 a piece). I can get the Xeon 3.0's I listed for $160 dollars ($80 a piece).

Thats why I'm asking between the two. If someone could say, A is better than B because: And confirm that the XEON 3.0 I listed is in fact dual core and not single core it would help a lot.
 

needhelpnoobie

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Just to add this will run win 2003 server edition and host as many game servers as possible for my clan. So whichever would fair better running games like CSS/FEAR/Quake4 then I'd like to go with that.
 

49ers540

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I already said its between the two models i listed. I dont want to spend a ton on this. I can get two brand new opteron 248's for $140 dollars ($70 a piece). I can get the Xeon 3.0's I listed for $160 dollars ($80 a piece).

Thats why I'm asking between the two. If someone could say, A is better than B because: And confirm that the XEON 3.0 I listed is in fact dual core and not single core it would help a lot.

Go with the xeon. If you buy the right motherboard, you can plug in the new xeon later when it is cheaper.
 

maury73

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Use the Opeterons: as I said in multithreaded server environment they are superior than Intel couterpart. The Xeons you can buy are very old CPU, they'll run half the performance of the 248.
I verified that in real servers.