Do I really need a 166Mhz Pentium processor to run SQL Server 7.0?

A. No. But you DO need a 100% Intel pentium compatible chip - whichrules out some Cyrix and IBM processors. Microsoft have used an intel pentiuminstruction that some of these non-Intel processors do not support. There is NOway around this.

The actual speed of the processor doesn't matter as long as it runs the fullpentium instruction set - it needs to support CMPXCHG8B (Compare and Exchange 8bytes) and RDTSC (Read Time-Stamp counter) instructions. Microsoft have madethis a requirement because it is the minimum spec machine that they havedeveloped/tested with - which is ok if you get most of your equipmentdonated/loaned/replaced by hardware companies free of charge, but this isn'tthe case with most businesses!

As long as the server previously ran SQL 6.5 (and is 100% intel compatible)you should find that it will run SQL 7.0 and will offer significant performanceimprovements, so don't upgrade hardware for the sake of it.

The following quote is from Microsoft Product Support Services :-

"When using SQL Server v7.0, Microsoft recommends a processor speedof 166Mhz or higher for server machines. Our extensive testing of the producthas been done on machines of this calibre and we believe customers will get abetter price performance with the product when used in this configuration.Microsoft will support SQL Server v7.0 when run on server machines with slowerprocessors. However customers should recognise that if our findings are thatmajor problems can be eliminated by using faster processors we will continue torecommend, and in some cases may require, compliance with thissuggestion."

The reason for this caveat is that some of the decisions the optimiser makeson a 166Mhz pentium may not make so much sense on a 60Mhz pentium - i.e. theextra cpu time a 60Mhz part neeed may mean that a non-optimal plan had beenchosen.