Confusion over SQL 2005 Standard CPU Support

I'm a little confused over the maximum CPU count supported by SQL 2005 Standard Edition (this particular edition supports four CPUs).

Does the figure refer to four physical CPUs regardless of whether they are dual-cored or hyperthreaded, or does the figure refer to the number of logical CPUs available to the OS?

Let me cut to the chase - if I purchase a server containing four dual-core CPUs and install SQL Server 2005 Standard, will SQL Server see the eight CPUs and utilise a maximum of four of these, or will it be able to use all eight (because there are actually only four physical CPUs)?

Thanks, Chris.

Hi,

all is physical CPUs, as well as licencing and limitations.

HTH, Jens K. Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de

|||

Hi Jens, thanks for the reply.

Just to clarify in my own mind - are you saying that an instance of SQL Server 2005 Standard will be able to fully utilise four dual-core CPUs (i.e. all eight logical CPUs)?

Thanks again, Chris.

|||Well, interesting thing, I would assume you could use them as SQL Server starts a separate scheduler for the single core:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914278/en-us

Don′t thing that this differs much from the full editions.

HTH, Jens K. Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de|||

SQL Server 2005 only counts physical CPU's for licensing purposes, whether they are hyper-threaded, dual-core, or quad-core. SQL Server 2005 will use all of the logical CPU's that are present, based on the physical CPU count limitation.

You should be careful about getting Standard Edition instead of Enterprise Edition. Lots of important features, such as online index rebuild, online restore and fast recovery are only in Enterprise Edition.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/features/compare-features.mspx