Category Archives: Processors

Tuesday Hardware Tidbits, Nov 15, 2011

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Glenn Berry

A couple of interesting developments this week. First, Intel has officially released (and lifted the embargo) on their new high-end, Sandy Bridge-E desktop processors that use the LGA 2011 platform and X79 chipset. This is relevant for SQL Server professionals … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, Processors | Tagged | 1 Comment

SQL Server 2012 Licensing and Hardware Considerations

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Glenn Berry

Last week, Microsoft announced some pretty fundamental changes in how SQL Server 2012 will be licensed compared to previous versions of SQL Server. With SQL Server 2012, there will be three main Editions of SQL Server. These are Enterprise Edition, … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, Processors, SQL Server 2012 | Tagged , | 37 Comments

Eighty Logical Cores of Goodness!

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Glenn Berry

I recently had the opportunity to specify the purchase of a couple of Dell PowerEdge R810 2U servers that will be used as database servers for SQL Server 2008 R2. These two servers have four Intel Xeon E7-4870 (32nm Westmere-EX) … Continue reading →

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

Tuesday Hardware Tidbits

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Glenn Berry

There have been a few interesting developments on the hardware front over the past week that I want to cover today. First, Intel has released the new Core i7-2700K processor, which is their new top of the line desktop CPU. … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, Processors, Storage Subsystems | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Slides For My 24 Hours of PASS Session

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Glenn Berry

The slide deck for my session Hardware 301: Diving Deeper into Database Hardware is available here. There are still twelve more sessions in 24HOP coming up on September 8.

Posted in Computer Hardware, PASS, Processors, Teaching | Tagged | 1 Comment

24 Hours of PASS on September 7

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Glenn Berry

Just in case you forgot, I wanted to remind everyone that the free, 24 Hours of PASS online event starts tomorrow at 12:00 GMT.  My session is Hardware 301: Diving Deeper into Database Hardware starts at 22:00 GMT, and the … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, PASS, Processors, Teaching | Tagged | Leave a comment

OT: Rant About Mail-in Rebates For Computer Hardware

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Glenn Berry

As you may know from reading my blog, I buy quite a bit of computer hardware components from places like Micro Center. It is fairly common for items like memory or motherboards to have a mail-in rebate (MIR) offer from … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, Processors | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Geekbench 2.2 Released

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Glenn Berry

Primate Labs has released Geekbench 2.2.0, which is a free upgrade for Geekbench 2.1.x users. The release notes are here. Here are the results for my little Toshiba Portege R835, (which has more CPU horsepower than the $25,000 Dell PowerEdge … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, Processors | Tagged | 2 Comments

SQL Server Hardware Choices Made Easy

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Glenn Berry

Redgate has released a free eBook that I wrote called SQL Server Hardware Choices Made Easy. This is basically a compilation of the month long series I wrote in April 2011, called A SQL Server Hardware Nugget A Day, along … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, Processors, Storage Subsystems | Tagged | 6 Comments

New Dell Precision M4600 Mobile Workstation

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Glenn Berry

After a very long wait, I finally received my new company laptop this past week, which is a very fast Dell Precision M4600. This particular unit has the 2.3GHz Core i7-2820QM quad-core processor, with 8MB of L3 cache. It uses … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Hardware, Processors | Tagged | 6 Comments