I'm trying to decide between an AMD Barcelona or an Intel Harpertown quad-core CPU for a web/database server. The Intel would have a 5% lower clock speed. I've read that Harpertown outperforms Barcelona (by 20%?), but that the quad-core implementation isn't as good on the Harpertown. It's surprisingly difficult to get comparative benchmarks on these at similar clock speeds. Does anyone know which of these should perform better in a web/database server? I support AMD on my non-critical systems, but I need performance for this server.
I'm also trying to decide between a 2.5" 10k HD vs. a 3.5" 15k HD. I've read that the 15k yields about a 20% I/O performance boost so I think I'll go for it. I won't be using RAID at all. - Grant
