Hello.

I'm looking into building a new linux box.

I have a SMP workstation at work (see signature) which is very nice. I want the new system for home so I can work from their.

Here is the break up of my computer use as it relates to work:
20% MySQL queries to a local database
60% Perl and C++ programming
20% Web surfing and document writing.

I'm trying to replicate my work database at home. My concern is that I'll take a big performance hit in the database queries if I build a home system with a single processor.

Does anyone have any experience with running Slackware on a Pentim 4 with Hyperthreading? How fast is it compared to a true SMP system?

How about a single processor AMD 64 machine?

If you have experience using either of these systems as a workstation for database queries and/or coding I'd really be interested in your thoughts.

Thanks.

I'd always go for an AMD over an intel.

I take it you mean for the cost benefits?
Yeah I was leaning that way too. However I've heard that I can get more speed from an Intel chip using hyperthreading.
Then again in searching the forums I've found plenty of people who haven't had much luck with hyperthreading.

Have you any experience using an Athlon64 system?

if you're going to be doing any multimedia encoding, go with the P4. my 2.4GHz barton takes about 4-5 hours to encode a dvd. my friend encodes dvds on his 2.8 P4@3.1 in 12-15 minutes (XP). i'm looking into hyperthreading in linux, and if it's workable now, that is definitely the way to go for multimedia and 3D. anything else, gaming, content creation, office apps, etc. -- A64.

Not true. Two virtual processors can not beat two physical processors. Two Opterons will always beat two Xeons with hyperthreading enabled (4 processors). Anandtech compared the two in server environments.

AMD Athlon 64 (socket 754) is as fast as the latest Xeon processor. The Opertron or FX-53 beats any Xeon processor because of lower latency from the memory controller.

You will not get much improvement using multiple processor system when compiling programs because compiling is an serial process. AMD processors compiles programs faster than Intel.