The premium for servers (lack of) performance is not that great, for a given level of technology. Proper configuration is much more important. Also - what are the "conditions". A few years go -- we needed to improve out SQL servers. I installed and tested multiple configurations (including top of the line processors). The single biggest improvement - was the size of the RAID cache (and this was on process intensive code, not data intensive). The number of processors, the speed of the processor -- all of these had little impact. But using systems with significant RAID cache .. and one with a larger (larges available at the time) even when put on systems with slow speed -- out performed even the fastest CPU's (again.. keep in mind this was process intensive). I've found over the years that many people don't understand what they are testing. The jump to and make false claims with investigating the story behind the story.