What would be a better box? Ram vs Proc...

[clarocque]

Greetings!

I am very new to the whole Asterisk project and I need not say that I am very excited about PBX in a Flash.

I have two boxes sitting in my office that I can use. One has PBX in a Flash on it and one has my old TrixBox install.

I was hoping someone with experience using Asterisk could tell me what server would be better for my production build of PB in a Flash.

Server 1:
HP
Processors 1
Model Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz
CPU Speed 2.6 GHz
Cache Size 512 KB
Ram 1.48 GB

Server 2:
PowerSpec
Processors 1
Model Intel(R) Celeron(R) D CPU 3.33GHz @ 32°C
CPU Speed 3.33 GHz
Cache Size 512.00 KB
Ram 1003.20MB

They both have the same Gig NIC card.

Any advise is appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Titanous]

Why not just move some RAM into the more powerful machine?

 

[jroper]

Hi

It's questionable which is the more powerful machine for asterisk and floating point calculation e.g if you are doing echo cancelling, the 2.6 P4 or the 3.3 Celeron.

Either should be good for double digit extensions, but if I had to chose, it'd be the P4 for me.

Joe

 

[clarocque]

I thought of that except they are using different ram. And the PS has only 2 slots with 2 512 so I would need to buy 2 - 1GB Simms. Which I could do if I should.

I just wasnt sure what will be more important for Asterisk The x-tra ram or the proc.

And I was not really sure if the Celeron D 3.33 is really more powerful than the P4 2.6 (P4 vs C???).

 

[Titanous]

oops...

I didn't notice the fact that it is a Celeron. I would go with the P4 also.

EDIT: Just noticed it is a Celeron D. I'm going to check some benchmarks...

 

[clarocque]

Thanks Joe,

It should be a small system ... but it is my nature to play with the features. 4 phones with only 2 or 3 lines used at a time max.

What got me thinking about this was I was getting ready to start the IVR and other settings and noticed that after a fresh boot... PBX in a Flash (271.98MB) was using a little more ram than my old trix box (219.86MB). Granted they are both sitting idle and the Trunks to VP are disabled on the TB machine and the SIP phones are connected to the PIF box... so that might count for some more of the ram usage.

But that just got me curious which one would be a better box to put the set up time in to.

The HP I can add more ram (4 slots) were the PS has 2 and are full. But was not sure what will be the resources used up using voip (like I said I am a dangerous newbie).

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Titanous]

According to Passmark, the Celeron is 376 points vs. the P4 at 412 points.

I think the P4 machine is the winner.

 

[jroper]

Centos 5 takes more horsepower than centos 4.5 which the Trixbox stable currently uses.

One may also suspect that asterisk 1.4 takes a little more memory than 1.2.

Migrating to a bigger box as your demands increase is fairly trivial. Move the hard drive, or do a backup and restore via FreePBX.

Joe

 

[clarocque]

Thanks for the info Titanous.... & Joe....

So sounds like the P4 is the winner... now to see if I can migrate over....

Thanks again...

 

[title1admin]

Server 1 will have better performance because the processor is a little more "hefty" than a celeron..... even though celery runs faster....processor loads on a celery do not perform as well (cpu INSTRUCTION SETS ARE DIFFERENT) plus the extra RAM is always a plus.... Depending on the make of the celeron, it may support Intel's 64-bit EM64T instruction set extensions. That's only a plus if you are using a 64-bit version of O/S...right....hehehe I'd say you're better off using the stable 32-bit P4 2.6 for solid performance... and you'll have less "quirks" to deal with since PBX is compiled with x86 solid technology. Just my opinion...