Fastest pc for windows

This actually have little to do with photgraphy but since I know there are many pc geeks among us I thought I ask this question here anyway.

My problem is workrelated. An application currently running on AIX is running extremely slow. A specific task took more than 25 hours to run on AIX but on a P4 3,2 GHz pc with 2 GB ram the same task only take 2 hours to complete.

If You had to buy/build a pc that should run windows server and a client/server application that need to serve 500+ simultaneous users what would You get?

You should find out why it's running so slow on AIX. What's the bottleneck - the processor, disk, or memory? If there's not enough memory, for example, things might take forever because the computer will constantly be busy with swapping memory areas to and from disk.

At my work, in the project I'm working on now, we're developing web applications and a back-end system which is going to run on HP OpenVMS servers. OpenVMS was made to be rock solid, but it wasn't made for performance. My development PC (3.2 GHz hyperthreading P4, 1.5 GB RAM) is much faster than the servers.

In a previous project I've been working with a HP Superdome server. That was a really big, fast monster, but it had lots of CPUs and lots of RAM.

You didn't mention any budget, but HP also has some interesting Windows servers.

There is no budget this was just a thought I have. But if it comes to this I doubt the money will be any kind of issue (its not a small company I work in )

The TEST AIX have 1 CPU and 2 GB ram. And there is no disk performance or memory issues, no swapping occurs and no alarming io wait time, while the application is running it is possible to copy 1 GB data in the same filessystem in less than 5 minutes. It is more an application specific issue that the application simply does not run well enough on AIX.

The production AIX has 4 CPUs and 8 GB ram. So the specs really is good.

I'd look at a multi-CPU AMD Opteron setup with 2-4GB of RAM if performance was an issue.

Sometimes you can take some short-cuts. If a huge budget is available, then you can get really nice toys. Try talking with several venders and usually when sales people smell the large budget, they will definitely try selling the latest greatest possible. Let THEM do the running around. You still need to do your homework because you don't want to get something just because it's expensive. But there are many technology that you and I may not know that exist or information readily available to public yet. Certain hi-tech toys are sold to large corporations because they know it's a waste of time advertising in the general public where people only ask question but never buy.
The way a CPU process the information is important because eventhough there may not appear no bottleneck the information may not be processing efficiently. IE.. this holds true between Intel and AMD.
Hope this helps.

Haha, you mean if price weren't an issue.

Most computers these days are blazing fast, people just don't realise they are bottlenecking their computer. 2GB of RAM and a RAID0+1 or 5 array of 10k raptors or SCSI would definitely speed up many things.

Multi-CPU Opteron is crazy fast, but I'd also consider the new dual core computers too.

Not sure how large is your company because many people define large differently and tasks may vary. IE. sometimes a small company (maybe under 1000 employees) that does High resolution graphics and animation may require more CPU power than large global corporations (maybe over 30000 employees).

Many large companies go with Clustering and as for hardware would be switing over to blades, etc.
Most tasks would be hardware based or assised to increase performance.
Even larger such as governments can go for CPU farming such as the SETI project.

The best thing you can do is talk with the software vendor and see what is the optimal requirement for the application.

Problem is that they are not very good in the support department so they are not really helpfull.

More than 50.000 but less than 1.000.000 But not relevant for this application .... Yet! Number of current users about 150-300 soon to go up to something like 400-600.

Yeah and my pc that ran a task faster than the AIX only have 2 GB ram and use slow 7200 rpm drives. If I had the option to put 4 SATA Western Digital 74 GB disks (2 stripes, one for system and one for application) in that pc I am sure it would run even faster.

FYI.. the latest Hitachi and Seagate high capacity SATA hard drives (400gb and 500GB) running at 7200RPM are FASTER than Raptors due to the MUCH higher aerial density. Raptors are extinct...

Multi Opteron Rigs can be had for less than the cost of a G5...

And of course with the new Dual core CPUs one can have the advantages of multiple CPUs on low cost single CPU motherboards...

The disadvantage to using dual-core vs. actually using Dual opterons.. is that the Dual opterons "numa" memory archetecture will be left out.. So Dual CPUs still has significant advantaqges over Dual core where opterons are concerned.

Of course one can really go hog wild for about $4k U.S. and get a a Pair of Dual Core opterons on a dual Opteron Mobo.. resulting in 4 processor cores on a dual board.. each pair of cores with it's own dedicated memory... and with XP64bit.. you can serve up 8GB of memory easily..

tommykjensen wrote:
Problem is that they are not very good in the support department so they are not really helpfull.

More than 50.000 but less than 1.000.000 But not relevant for this application .... Yet! Number of current users about 150-300 soon to go up to something like 400-600.

If currently using 300 users and already experiencing such slowdown, then it's definitely an issue should worry about. It sucks dealing with no support from the support department.

CyberDyneSystems wrote:
Of course one can really go hog wild for about $4k U.S. and get a a Pair of Dual Core opterons on a dual Opteron Mobo.. resulting in 4 processor cores on a dual board.. each pair of cores with it's own dedicated memory... and with XP64bit.. you can serve up 8GB of memory easily..

Yum.

But I wouldn't trust XP64 with that. Maybe Gentoo

Do You have any model numbers or links to tests of these disks?

Hello,



I have 6 computers in the house plus a Dell XPS II laptop. I am a computer buff to say the least with my first bite being a Commodore 64.
See my info below on my main setup.
That said I highly recommend a X2 AMD cpu. I like Intel cpu's, however nothing from Intel comes close. I am a avid computer builder with only the best in my main machine and was skeptical at first of the dual cores but no more. Plus given that you are here you probably edit your pics in photo editing software and Photoshop loves Dual Core AMD's.
I can also attest to the Hitachi drives. The new SATA 3g drives are very fast, quiet, and give off little heat. Check Google for reviews.


Lee

DFI LPUT NF4 SLI-DR,A64 X2 4400 @286*10=2860mhz @1.59v,2x512 OCZ DDR 600@2.5,4,4,8, 2xBFG 7800GTX @ 510,1.40 ,Ultra XConnect 500w PSU ,30" LCD , 2xPlextor SATA DVD burners, Koolance Exos w/cpu blk, Lian Li V2000 case, 2x160GB Hitachi SATA II Raid 0-16k,16k. Klipsch 5.1w/2 subs.Windows Pro 64bit
3DMARK01-32578 and climbing,3DMARK05-13435 and climbing, 3DMark03-31264 and climbing.

I'm lucky in that the software vendor I need to work with on our servers is very good at releasing sizing charts based on real world testing. For us its simply a matter of figuring out the potenial max load and then buying a machine that will suit our needs. Not that it applies directly to you but the machine we just ordered will be a dual 3.6GHz Xeon with a 15K SCSI drive for the OS and two RAID arrays (1,0 and 5) for the index's and data. We've only got 4 gig of RAM for now but can expand as the number of users increases. This system wasn't cheap but its a true server with redundant everything and excellent support both of which are critical in an enterprise environment.