Category Archives: Processors

Intel Xeon E5-2600 Series Processors Released

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Glenn Berry

Yesterday, Intel finally released the much anticipated Xeon E5-2600 family of processors, also known as Sandy Bridge-EP. This is a Tock release for Intel (which means a new microarchitecture) that still uses the same 32nm manufacturing process as the previous … Continue reading →

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CPU-Z 1.60 Released

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Glenn Berry

Pretty much right on schedule, Frank Delattre has released CPU-Z 1.60, which has support for some new and upcoming processors from both Intel and AMD, including the Ivy Bridge and Trinity lines. Here you can see the CPU tab report … Continue reading →

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What I Want For My Birthday

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Glenn Berry

Dell has teased us with some images of their upcoming 12th Generation servers (that will support the Intel Sandy Bridge-EP processor). The PowerEdge R720xd is shown below. I want one of these… Some more detailed information about these new servers … Continue reading →

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Behemoth of the Server Room?

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Glenn Berry

Back during the PASS 2011 Summit in Seattle, I was interviewed by Tony Davis, Andrew Clark, and Rodney Landrum about hardware, storage subsystems and virtualization.  This was a fun little impromptu interview, filmed in a somewhat quiet location during the … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, PASS, Processors, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, Storage Subsystems | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Building or Buying a Desktop Based Development and Test Database Server

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Glenn Berry

Back in April of 2011, I wrote a post that compared the merits of using an ancient, but actual rack mounted server versus a new desktop based system for testing and development work. It is pretty common for old retired … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, Processors, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012 | Tagged , | 6 Comments

AMD 2012-2013 Server Roadmap

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Glenn Berry

AMD had their 2012 Financial Analyst Day today, which is basically a dog and pony show for stock analysts. Previously, AMD had talked about introducing a new G2012 platform in 2012/2013, which would use 10 and 20-core processors called Sepang … Continue reading →

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Scaling SQL Server Presentation from SQLSaturday #104 Precon

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Glenn Berry

On Friday, January 6, 2012, I got the opportunity to present an expanded version of my “Scaling SQL Server” presentation down in Colorado Springs. I think it went pretty well, and I got some nice feedback from the attendees. Being … Continue reading →

Posted in PASS, Processors, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012 | Tagged | 2 Comments

CPU-Z 1.59 Released

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Glenn Berry

One of my favorite free tools for getting some processor and memory specific information from a Windows computer (whether is is a laptop or a database server), is CPU-Z.  It gives you a lot of very useful, accurate information about … Continue reading →

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Scaling SQL Server – SQL Saturday #104 Precon

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Glenn Berry

I will be presenting a day long preconference session on Scaling SQL Server for SQLSaturday #104 on Friday, January 6, 2012 from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM (MT) in Colorado Springs, CO. This will be a revised and expanded version … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, PASS, Processors, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, Teaching | Tagged | 1 Comment

Tuesday Hardware Tidbits, Nov 29, 2011

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Glenn Berry

Since Microsoft is moving to core-based licensing for SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition, with a minimum of four physical core licenses per physical socket, I have had a few questions about what is the “best” quad-core processor to choose for … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, Processors, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server Denali | Tagged , | 1 Comment