xeon x3220 vs. xeon e5530 - PostgreSQL and Bzipping

[qubix]

Hi!

I'm thinking about switching one of my servers from old HW to the newest cutting edge Nehalem one. I currently have the x3220 xeon processor there - that is a 4 core 2.40 GHz Kentsfield on LGA 775. I'm thinking about getting the e5540 chip that is a 4core+HT 2.40GHz Nehalem/Gainstone on LGA1366. Of course I need the mobo and new ram chips as well.

The question is - how those two chips will differ in terms of performance in "general PostgreSQL" and (p)bzipping. Those are the two basic most CPU consuming operations that are being done on that server.

Can someone please post their PTS results or some links to such? Will the difference be like 2 times or 20%?

BTW. the LGA775 xeon is thought to be Q6600 and the LGA1366 one is supposed to be the core i7 920 with a lower clock rate.

[Kano]

Xeon E5530 is for dual cpu systems, you really need that much speed and of course 2 cpus!? Of course it looks cool when you see 16 virtual cpus... Btw. Xeon W3520 is the same as a i7-920 - just cooler name and more expensive

Well benchmarks look pretty impressive of course with 2 cpus. If you compile much you would certainly like such a system, otherwise you mainly need much more power

http://global.phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=profile&u=digit-27756-28237-6927

[qubix]

thanks for the link!

actually the biggest show stopper for my current configuration is the process of backing up a 40GB PostgreSQL database, that I need done daily and I have maximum 7 hours for that.

My current setup is just on the brink of being able to cope up with that.

Of course I also do "warm standby" but I need a second way to backup the database.

I can get a decent dual E5530 rig for about 10000 pln that is about 3500usd or 2550euro. That is the kind of money I have in my budget.

By the links you gave me I assume, that CPU speed will not be the bottleneck in the process anymore and I should work on faster disks/raid devices in the next step.

[Kano]

bzip2 takes pretty long (parallel may be better, did not compare). maybe using gzip would speed it up on your current system. did you try that? usually hd usuage is less critical.

[qubix]

I use pbzip2 actually.

Gzipping gives strange results - even longer than pbzip2. I guess that there is some strange IO problem with gzip as it works much slower than pbzip2. HD usage will get critical when I will have more CPU power for pbzip2.

When compressing on a normal dual core pentium, with gzip the IO is the bottleneck, with pbzip2/bzip2 the CPU is the bottleneck i suppose.

[Kano]

You can lower compression, gzip -1 should be much faster.

[curaga]

There's also a parallel gzip, pigz, from the same devs.

[Kano]

And did it help for you?

[Ant P.]

If you're disk-IO-bound, you might be better off with xz instead of bzip2. The main problem is they haven't implemented multithreading yet...

[qubix]

Hi! I did not yet update the box. Still x3220. I've tweaked pbzip2 compression options. I am still ok and within the backup window. I guess that at the rate by DB is growing, I'll need a faster box in 12-18 months. So that's pretty plenty. I'll wait for faster 6core xeons

regs.