New server

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Dr Lobster*
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Joined: Sat 30 Aug, 2003 20.14

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i'm decommissioning an old windows domain controller and reconfiguring a new one.

we brought this server from dell (it was about £1200 excluding support). it has 3 x 300 gb sas disks, 4gb ram, dual quad core processor... just count them cores.

i can remember when £1800 got you a pentium p120 with 16mb of ram.

if i had £1200 to throw at a new desktop, i'd probably get a poweredge server instead, it starts windows 2003 enterprise r2 (64 bit) in about 8 seconds (after a 5 minute disk and drac initialisation, anyway).
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Sput
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Joined: Wed 20 Aug, 2003 19.57

Right, clear this up for me as I'm not down with the multi-core kids any more: dual quad core is 8 so why is it showing 16?
Knight knight
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Dr Lobster*
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Joined: Sat 30 Aug, 2003 20.14

it's a dual quad core. well - that's what i ordered, that's what it says on the shipping note. you know, i didn't even notice there was too many. i'll check tomorrow and see if it's been specd incorrectly - installing the os was about as far as i got today, but that does seem strange.
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Neil Jones
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Joined: Thu 11 Sep, 2003 20.03
Location: West Midlands

Sput wrote:Right, clear this up for me as I'm not down with the multi-core kids any more: dual quad core is 8 so why is it showing 16?
A Quad Core processor is 4 brains on one chip.
The majority of "decent" servers are dual-processor setups, which is basically two processors. Two quad-cores for eight cores.
The processors most likely support Intel technology called Hyper-Threading, which effectively causes the operating system to think and report there are two cores when in actual fact there's one one. Therefore eight "proper" cores, 8 "virtual" cores if you like = 16 cores. Hyper-threading is the art of doing more than one thing on an Intel processor (simultaneously) rather than one after the other in traditional fashion.
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Dr Lobster*
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you're right neil, each core has two threads.
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Sput
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Ah thought it might just be intel's weird trickery. My favourite part of this discussion is that you said "count them cores" when you hadn't yourself lobster :D

Actually having said that, the guy next to me in the office is running an Intel quad-core and it's only showing as 4 in task manager.
Knight knight
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lukey
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IIRC Hyper-threading was discontinued for the original Core Duo/Quad line because it was actually an architectural descendant of PIII, but has since returned for the newer i7 types. I...think.
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