I like our latest refurbished Dell T5400 because the way it built, heavy steel. So I bought another T5400, newer T7400 can cost you thousand of dollars, one on Ebay selling at 4K plus. Mostly refurbished pc has only single CPU, I bought another CPU to see if I could run it dual CPUs. Windows 7 failed to install with dual CPUs, not a matched pair. CPUs need to be same stepping but then runs fine under Vista business. Microsoft forum did not come up with a solution for mismatch CPUs. However our dual quad core CPUs have a total of 8 cores running.
What benchmark? I know people get mad at me for mentioning model numbers. But I do it for good reason. This is a good example here. Just saying that it's a quad core doesn't tell us what generation, year, or clock speed. If performance was based purely on the number of cores in a processor, Intel would be out of business.
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From CPU benchmark, the score of my old hardware is in the same league as many I7s. Theoretically, if AC was written in 64 bits with optimized parallel instructions then my old hardware with 8 cores would outrun Bert older generation I7. For 600 hundred dollars!
For instance, I looked up your T5400 server and found out that it typically uses the Xeon E5405. The E5405 has a clock speed of 2 GHz, also no HyperThreading. If I'm right about the processor, then you "downgraded" from the Q9550 (2.83 GHz, quad core, no Hyperthreading). Even two E5405s will not compare to Bert's i7-2600Ks (Quad Core, Hyperthreading, 3.8 GHz turboboost, SandyBridge Architecture) (those are in his desktops btw).
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Nothing much happened still. I hardly felt any dramatic improvement in performance after living with three 'server' generations except when AC doing its encryption back up with imported files included (about 9 gigs), without imported files only less than 200Meg files.
That feel you're looking for will not come upgrading your RAM or CPU. You're looking for the SSD feel. That will give you that snappy and swift response that you've been after.
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AC is still 32 bit application, there some advantages to go with 64 bit OS and lot more RAM but not that much. Mostly user perceptions but no study on performance differences from AC.
AC maybe a 32 bit application, but SQL Server is not. Unfortunately, the SQL Server 2005 Express bundled with AC is. You said it yourself. AC is essentially data in and data out. AC is just an interface between the user and SQL Server. I can see AC's reluctance to upgrade to the new one since the main improvement between 2012 Express and 2005 Express is the database size allowed is 10GB (instead of 4GB). The RAM limitation is still 1GB. Even after 7-8 years with AC, most people's databases don't exceed 200MB. (Imported items are not part of the database).
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