Intel Pentium 4 Processor
Intel's Pentium 4 processors, with Hyper-Threading technology, turn in better performance benchmarks than our previous fleet of dual-processor servers. Circa 3000 employs P4 processors at 2 GHz or faster.
Intel Server-Class Motherboard
Circa 3000 employs Intel motherboards designed specifically for server applications. We do not employ "desktop" hardware or low-budget alternatives.
Lots of RAM
Perhaps the single most important feature for any web server, free memory permits caching of more web pages, bypassing slow reads from hard drives. Circa employs a minimum of 1Gb of RAM on all shared servers and 512Mb on dedicated servers.
Hardware RAID
Dynamic and database-driven web pages benefit most from high-speed disk access. A 'Redundant Array of Independent Disks' (RAID) returns data at many times the speed of a single disk. While some hosts advertise "RAID support," most employ Microsoft Windows built-in RAID software; vastly inferior to true, hardware-driven RAID. Circa 3000 provides RAID on every network server, both shared and dedicated.
No file compression
File compression (or, more importantly, de-compression) is slow. Sure, we could squeeze more customers onto a server if we secretly compressed your files, but this would sacrifice your server's performance.
