CPU for database server?

[Apacer]

Hi to all,

I need your help urgently.
We had to choose a server for database server with one of these two processors:

Intel Xeon E5-2643
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#core: 4, #Threads: 8, Clock Speed: 3.3GHz, Max Turbo: 3.5GHz, Cache: 10MB, System Bus: 8GT/s, DDR3-max 1600, Memory Bandwidth: 51.2GB/s

Intel Xeon E5-2640
============
#core: 6, #Threads: 12, Clock Speed: 2.5GHz, Max Turbo: 3GHz, Cache: 15MB, System Bus: 7.2GT/s, DDR3-max 1333, Memory Bandwidth: 42.6GB/s

For database server what is more important, number of cores, cache, or clock speed, system bus, or DDR speed and memory bandwidth?
Which processor would you choose?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Liger88]

Well if RAM size was equal then I'd say you're better off with the Xeon E5-2640, the memory bandwidth I don't see being the major bottleneck in performance. Also this goes without knowing the nitty gritty of the database server (size/usage). With a multi-threaded application such as databases, the 50% extra cores, threads, and cache will be for more significant than the higher clock speed and memory bandwidth.

If you don't already have one, you might consider an SSD as the upgrade. You'll probably see a bigger jump from that alone especially in this kind of application.

 

[Apacer]

Thank you for replay.

I plan to use local SAS 6Gbps 15K disk (RAID 1) for OS. Oracle database home, datafiles, redo, archivelogs to be on disk presented from EMC VNX storage.

Do you think it is better to use SSD disks for OS instead of SAS?
Do you think I will get better database performance if OS is on SSD disks?