Pentium Pro upgrade

Hi, I'm new to this forum and I apologise if this thread has been discussed to death in the past. I dont know how to search this forum quickly to find the different threads. (If there is a way I would appreciate being told how to).

I have a Digital Prioris XL 6000 Server with a Pentium Pro 200 CPU and 384MB RAM. I use it as a Terminal Server (WinNT4TSE) with Citrix Metaframe. 6 workstations hang off it. We will be adding another application which will make the server work a bit harder. Therefore the thought of upgrading the CPU and also increasing the RAM to 512MB (which is the max).

Does anybody have any experience or info about the various upgrade paths? viz: Intel's P Pro porcessor upgrade, Evergreen's PerformaPro's, or PowerLeap's PL-Pro/II, or getting a Pentium Pro 200 with 1 MB L2 cache.

Would the pure increase of processor speed despite a small L2 cache (Celeron's) far outstrip the Pentium Pro 200 with 1MB cache?

Does Windows NT 4 server utilise all the benefits of CPU speed, size of L2 cache etc?

Thank you all in advance.

Jim

Pentium Pro is old, slow and very very dead (I used to own a dual PPro 200 and this thing's mobo died on me after 3 years of service >< ). My suggestion would be to pull that piece of s*** outta there and get a 800Mhz+ Athlon an Asus A7V then shove in 768Mb (256MB PC133 x 3?) and be a happy camper again

I'm in a similar situation. I have 2 dual Pentium Pro servers and as much as I'd like to completely replace the computers, it's the Compaq SmartArray controller + Hotswap Cage + 72GB 10K RPM SCSI RAID storage residing in those custom Compaq cases with redundant power supplies that's the sticking point. See the processor/mb/memory cost is trivial to cost of the storage. It would take quite some jerryrigging to move that over to a new platform.

well goto evertech.com they have ppro overdrive processors at 700 MHz

I'm going to have to disagree with most or all of the other posts. That kind of processing power in a server is really just a waste with the load that you have. I'm not sure if you've already tested the new application, but if you haven't you should, I wouldn't be suprised if the performance returned by what you have now is acceptable. You only have 6 users using it, so I honestly believe that the load isn't very much. We have a dual PPro Compaq Proliant Server with 1Gb of RAM and 72Gb 10,000RPM RAID 5 serving 300 concurrent users accessing a 12GB DB with average query execution times of less than 1 second. I honestly don't believe you need more than you have, but check out memory consumption in NT, to see if it is way above the 384Mb of RAM. If so, then a memory upgrade would definitely be in order. If you're CPU usage is steadily over 80% throughout the day, then a second CPU(a PPro) would also be in order. Make sure it's absolutely necessary before you dish out $$$ to upgrade or replace the server.

To answer your other questions. The cache size vs. raw Mhz. As to which is more important, well, it really depends on what your server does. For a DB server, cache size is very important, but for a terminal server, I would have to say Mhz and cache size are both important. I would have to say that 2 Ppro's w/1Mb L2 would easily outperform 2 Celerons in a server environment. What most people don't realize is that the workload of a server is far different from the workload of a gaming machine, so most would expect a good gaming machine to be a good server...not the case at all. If any Microsoft OS takes advantage of both Processor and cache, it would definitely be Windows NT and Windows 2000. I hope this info helps you make a sound decision. Feel free to ask if you've got anymore questions.

Hey, I tell you what you can do. Just take a pencil and connect a couple of specific pins for a great overclock. Then add some DDR.

Agreed. Having cache period will help with any type of workload.

The necromancers are really taken it up a level lately.