paul_damian wrote:

> Hello!
>
>
>>>P IV 1.8GHz 256MB should be fine (P III or Xeon may be better),
>
> 256 is ok
> I'm wondering why is Pentium III better than Pentium 4? Is the code
> optimized for this processor? Even if so, is P4 not downwards
> compatible with PIII?
>
>

Someone may come along with a more complete answer but in the meantime...

The Pentium IV is generally considered to be just smoke and mirrors. It
is optimised for graphics processing, something that a database server
doesn't do a lot of. The architecture is such that more instructions
need to be processed to achieve the same result as a slower PIII, so the
extra speed kind of gets lost.

Most performance tests that I've seen don't show early PIV's out
processing the later PIII's. However, the increased processor speeds
that the PIV architecture allows is finally giving it the performance edge.

I guess you could say that the PIV is for games and serious business
users would be better off going for a PIII SMP box.


Paul
--

Paul Reeves
http://www.ibphoenix.com
Supporting users of Firebird and InterBase