title: High clock speed vs multiple cores/CPUs in a web server
body: <p>For a heavy load web server (multiple users/sites), what will you recommend for best performance:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>A dual CPU server with lower per-core clock speed (e.g. the Dual E5-2620 @ 2.0GHz)
  OR</li>
  <li>A single CPU server with higher per-core clock speed (e.g. a E3-1270 @ 3.5GHz)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>In a head-to-head compare the E3 seems to be the better choice due to the higher clock speed:
  <a href="http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-2620-vs-Intel-Xeon-E3-1270V2" rel="nofollow">http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-2620-vs-Intel-Xeon-E3-1270V2</a></p>
  
  <p>The server is used to host CPU and IO-intensive PHP applications with a MySQL innodb database. I want to know if this server will be able to benefit from the extra cores, or if I will get better performance/cost with the higher clock?</p>
  
  <p>Thank you.</p>