Re: Opteron vs Xeon (Was: What to do with 6 disks?)

> RAID1 2 disks OS, pg_xlog
> RAID 1+0 4 disks pgdata

Looks like the consensus is RAID 1 for OS, pg_xlog and RAID10 for pgdata.  Now
here's another performance related question:

I've seen quite a few folks touting the Opteron as 2.5x faster with postgres
than a Xeon box.  What makes the Opteron so quick?  Is it that Postgres
really prefers to run in 64-bit mode?

When I look at AMD's TPC-C scores where they are showing off the Opteron
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_8796_8800~96125,00.html
It doesn't appear 2.5x as fast as the Xeon systems, though I have heard from a
few Postgres folks that a dual Opteron is 2.5x as fast as a dual Xeon.  I
would think that AMD would be all over that press if they could show it, so
what am I missing?  Is it a bus speed thing?  Better south bridge on the
boards?

--
Jeff Frost, Owner     <jeff@frostconsultingllc.com>
Frost Consulting, LLC     http://www.frostconsultingllc.com/
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