Upgrade to dual-core (Pentium D) processor - Does it worth it?

[Charles Swiger]

On Jul 14, 2006, at 12:52 PM, Tobias P. Santos wrote:
> As this server's motherboard doesn't support an additional  
> processor, we are wondering whether a Pentium D processor (830)  
> might help to minimize this problem.
> In our understanding, one core would be busy with mysqld for  
> example, while the other one would be free to handle other  
> processes like httpd and serve pages that don't even need mysql  
> resources.
> Is this correct? Did someone have similiar (successful or  
> unsuccessful) experiences?

Yes, in particular, the preforking design that Apache uses  
distributes very well amoungst multiple CPUs.  There is some overhead  
from using SMP, you might get better performance by separating your  
workload into two machines, one dedicated to Apache and one dedicated  
to your MySQL database, but upgrading to a dual-core CPU is cheaper...


-- 
-Chuck