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New test submissions bring Dell close to Compaq's sub-$10 per transaction W2K benchmark.

Most attention in the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) benchmarks has recently gone to how high Microsoft/Intel-based systems can scale in terms of the number of transactions per minute.

But there's a parallel push on the OLTP benchmark in a direction more traditionally associated with Microsoft: How cheap can Microsoft/Intel-based systems get in cost per transaction?

Dell recently waded in with a pair of results in the extremely low-cost category. Using four-processor servers, Dell achieved throughputs of $11.07 per transaction on a PowerEdge 6400 and $11.08 per transaction on a PowerEdge 6450.

For the record the total system cost was around $335,000 for each system. The servers were outfitted with four 700-MHz processors, 8 GB of RAM, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition. Each system had four client machines simulating a total of 24,320 users, a disk array, and switches and hubs.

The systems hold the second and third places on the TPC's Price/Performance rankings list after a Compaq system that plunged below the $10 per transaction barrier in late August. That system cost $9.99 per transaction, or about $202,000 total.

The Dell systems' raw performance represents about a 50 percent increase in transaction throughput over the lower-cost Compaq system, which uses three 700-MHz Pentium III Xeons, SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition, and Windows 2000 Server in a ProLiant ML570 with two client machines simulating 16,200 users.

The Dell systems processed about 30,000 transactions per minute, compared with about 20,000 transactions per minute, for the Compaq system. Compaq's system became available in late September. Dell's was made available on the report date in late October.