Re: upgrading processors

In article <395A160E.2B6D6267@bloomberg.net>, Art S. Kagel <kagel@bloomberg.net> writes >CKGeier@nwc.edu wrote: >> >> We have a few days to spend the rest of our budget this year. With a >> RS/6000 and two - 166 Mhz processors, one 5 Gig database spread across 6 >> disks, would it be better with IDS 7.31UC3 to upgrade our two 166 MHZ to >> two 332 MHZ or buy 2 more 166 MHZ for a total of four 166 MHZ processors? >> Our load is mostly queries, I would say 60%, and 35% is updates and >> inserts. 5% is compiling and misc. >> Any suggestions? >> Thanks so much, you all have been really great in responses in the past! > >It REALLY depends on your query load. More CPUS more parallelism and more >responsiveness to more users. On the other hand faster CPUS means each >query completes faster and so the system seems more responsive anyway and >more users are served faster. If your queries tend to be large and complex >but reference few tables and tables are not fragmented and you do not use >PDQ faster CPUS will TEND to be better, otherwise more CPUS will tend to be >better. > With 5Gb of data I would think this is OLTP/indexes with no PDQ in use. >Can you opt for 3 332MHZ CPUS? Or two 332s and more memory? More memory >means more buffers which can go a long way to making two CPUS better than >three. Not an easy choice. > How many users on the system? How many sessions actively doing queries run at the same time? I tend to prefer fewer faster CPUS. If I'm the only user on the system and my query does not use PDQ i.e. will only run on one CPU then individual processor speed is more important. >Art S. Kagel -- David Williams