I am considering picking up a 500mhz Netra X1 and I wondered how they compare to Intel and AMD chipsets. I do understand that 500mgz on a Sun chip is much more powerful than a 500mhz P3, but by how much? Can an X1 with 1gb perform better than a dual 1ghz P3?

Thanks,

Pete

Depends on what your workload is. The X1 will probably feel slower from a "user experience" perspective, and will do single-threaded tasks slower. However, if you start adding multiple users, the end-user experience doesn't rapidly degrade like it does on PIII machines.

Given that it's a Netra, I'm assuming you're not talking about a desktop user's computer with graphical interface and all. As Brian said, that's not where the Sun would shine (ouch, bad pun. ;-) ).

However, the Sun systems have always been focused on balancing multiple simultaneous processes, i/o, and overall system throughput. If you were running something like Apache, a proxy server, or sendmail, the Sun would outrun the Intel system. It's more than just the chipset. Everything in the Sun is aimed at not having a particular bottleneck. This is particularly true in something like my E250's, which aren't even 500MHz. But they are dual processor, 64bit, with lots of registers, and lots of bandwidth and data transfer capability in other components on the system.

Comparing two particular systems can be difficult and will depend on the particular workload and demands on the system. Having enough memory, high performance disks, etc. all add to the equation.

I was thinking about maybe using it for a colo, or maybe a local dev machine. Needs would be low, but I would want something I could slam for testing.

This is a little off the OT, but do you know how these new Sun machines run? I see UltraSPARC and the new AMD processors. I thought the big benefit of Sun machines was the SPARC.

That would be a hard thing to do with a T1 or X1, given these machines are pure rackmountable 1U servers and have no graphic card for workstation use. They could serve a SunRay or remote X11 displays though.

I'm running Solaris on my first Sun AMD-based workstation, a Sun Ultra 20, and I'm very very very happy with it. Smooth as silk.

Which new machines?

The things that I find exciting are the T2000's and similar (with the T1 or Niagara processor). I mean, can you picture 32 threads per CPU? That's 4 core with 8 threads per core. Or, with the latest rev of the CPU, 64 threads per CPU? And they use *way* less electrical power than older machines with comparable computing power.

But, then, this isn't a workstation.

Yeah I meant the X and T series that are on the Sun site. I could not remember models. I am considering the 60 day trial to see how they perform.

Oops, that's why I thought that a workstation would fit your needs.

This is quite confusing. Are you talking about Netra T1 and X1 which are now somewhat obsolete low end servers for which obviously no 60 day trial exist or are you interested in current servers ?

In the latter case, which model are you interested with and for what usage ?

A UltraSPARC T or T2 based server isn't at all an end user machine you want to install at home, unless you also own a Ferrari (I mean the Italian made car, not the laptop ).

I was replying to the quote about the T2000, in reference to which new servers I was curious about, the X being the AMDs and the T being the SPARC (I believe), I probably should have just stated the model numbers. Sorry.

I was interested in a trial with the Sun Fire T1000, which would be used for a colo. I was also considering the X2100 since it is a little more affordable.

I was only curious about the Netra X1 and T1 because I could get an X1 for $75 shipped and if it was decent it would be worth the money.

Pardon my ignorance. What is a "colo" ? (google didn't help ...)

Colocated server

Got it, thanks.

Aaahh. Originally, you said Netra. Those are quite different. What you should do is just look it up on the Sun web site; and then, when you make a post here to ask a question, site the correct model number and reference. Avoid a lot of confusion that way.

The T2000's are serious machines. Not cheap. And could be departmental servers running a lot of server side applications, like sendmail, samba and apache, all at the same time. It would be overkill for a development machine, unless you were a serious software house using it as a compiler farm for a number of applications or simulations or something like that. And then it might not be making the best use of it. That kind of stuff is simply compute intensive and doesn't make use of the i/o capacity. You could just as well use much cheap Intel hardware that didn't bother with the issues of i/o workload balance and multi-threaded apps.