Choosing a dedicated server... Pentium D930 vs Opteron150

I have found a rather sweet deal with the french host OVH, but now I have to choose between an Opteron 150 2.4 GHz (single proc) and a Pentium Dual 930 2x 3.00 GHz for the config...

Both configs would feature HDD 2x 80 Gb, SATA RAID 1 and 1 Go RAM DDR (both would be priced at 60 euros/months + VAT, with a 100Mbps bandwith but, this explain the price, a 300Gb traffic limit).

Which would you go for, D930 or Opteron150 ? I’d tend to think dual processor is better for servers than single proc, but some people told me the Opteron would perform better...

Thanks for your input !

It’s hard to say without knowing more about your site, what kind of things it does, and how it’s used.

Generally for web apps, on a typical site, you will be much more constrained by the amount of RAM rather than the processor speed. Give us more details on what the load on your server looks like and if you can do any monitoring of actual CPU and memory usage -- that’ll give us enough info to make a suggestion.

Well, I don’t have a lot of input to provide, since I am just starting this kind of business... the RAM part I can understand, since it will prevent the server to use the swap file (making the HDD life longer too). Same for RAID 1 and multiproc, should help dealing with handling page request, wouldn’t it ? I just have four clients at the time, plus my websites... it’s not like I’ll have to handle heavy duty hosting either...

I think then in your case, go for the cheaper option and get as much RAM as you can afford

If you’re not trying to run a site with a million page hits/day, then the network latency will still be the bottleneck for the client. So stock up on RAM, geta decent CPU and you should be alright. It sounds to me like SMP and RAID is probably overkill for your situation.

Yeah I figured it was a little overkill, thanks a lot for the advice ! I’ll get a lesser proc and the RAM up then !

Thanks again Victor !