This is the case where hardware is more advanced that software.

The technology is available at the processor level, but is not recognized or even utilized at the software level.

The new generation of dual core Xeon’s (5000 & 5100 series) are engineered with features not supported by the current Windows operating systems, to include the X64 versions.

One of the great benefits of past Xeons & Windows was the NetBurst & Hyper threading technology: Windows XP was compiled to fully utilize Hyper threading, creating virtual CPU’s.

The Xeon 5000 series was left with hyper threading, but not the 5100 series:
The 5000 series L2 caches is independently accessed by each dual core (2x2MB).
The 5100’s aggregate 4MB cache is shared by the dual cores:

Windows XP HAL will require a major patch, maybe with the release of SP3 in order to recognize, and hopefully utilize more of the benefits dual-cores with shares L2 cache.

Vista’s re-designed kernel will dynamically recognize the various permutations contained in the current, and future Xeons dual, and multi cores processors.

We have clients that purchased the 690 systems with the 5100 & 5000 Xeon series, and found the 5000 series more responsive under Windows XP. I believe partly due to the legacy hyper threading technology left on the 5000, and L2 cache independent to each dual core.

Windows Server 2003 SP2 (x32 & x64), configured as a workstation operating system, have produced the best performance to date when tested with these new Xeon dual-cores.

You may want to install one of the best CPU software I’ve worked with.

RightMark RM Clock Utility 2.1

http://cpu.rightmark.org/download.shtml

This latest edition contains enhancements to create power management profiles based on dual-cores CPU technology: The Dual Cores section allows you to set the software to reset the CPU to the Max, Average or Sum of the aggregate dual cores speed.

The fix described on Microsoft 896256 article is realy a hard coded registry value, and does not address several issues with dual cores: Try the RM Clock Utility 2.1 with various settings and see if you find a combination that creates sustainable improvement. The software can load up at boot, or manually selected.

Unless you have a PCI-X SAS RAID card, you are better off utilizing the SAS interface on the motherboard. If PERC PCI RAID cards are now SAS compliant make sure they are also PCI-X compliant. PERC Card usually transfers at the old 66 MHz speed interface; severely handicapping any benefits of RAIDS with SAS or SCSI. The PCI-X bus is capable of 133 MHz transfer rates.

Any SCSI/SAS RAID setup will need to be configured with a PCI-X, otherwise you will only see aggregate transfer rates of 65-70MB/sec. PCI-X will yield, depending on the RAID configuration between 120-160MB/sec.

Also check with the Raid management software any play with the write-thru and write-back commands to determine the best transfer rates.

Make sure you go into the RAID management software and make sure that write caching is turned on for each Hard drive to get the best performance. For RAID 1 the default cache settings are off which will result in lower performance (but better data integrity).

From Start->Programs open Dell SAS RAID Storage Manager->StartupUI. Login with your current windows login name and password. Select the Logical tab in the first window and then select the virtual disk to highlight it. Then select the operations tab on the right hand window. Then toggle the Set Virtual Disk Properties button and select Enable on the Disk Cache Policy. If you don't have an array defined you can select the Physical disk tab, highlight a drive and then select the Operations tab and select the Enable Write Cache button.