Which one do you think is more powerful?

2 Conroe 3040 against a Dual Intel Woodcrest 5130 Dual Core

I think it depends on:
* how perfectly you can divide the load between multiple servers
* how even the traffic is / what spikes you have to endure

On one hand, I like a single much more powerful server because if you have one site that gets a spike while all others remain normal, you have a lot more resources to take the spike in stride.

On the other hand, even with the woodcrest 1333 vs. conroe 1066 bus, with two conroes you have more memory bandwidth overall.

Well there are advantages and disadvantage. I currently run separated boxes but im thinking of getting 1 unit server instead of 2. You do get more bandwidth with separated servers and maybe ram thats true. But you are right, a bigger processor can take spikes better.

I was actually looking into get 1 big server and split it into virtual ones or just leave it like it is.
But now that the double all three promo is gone again its not worth anymore. I would had get 4000 GB transfer, and 4 GB ram with 1 server, against 2 x 1500 GB of 2 conroes which also could have 2 GB each. As for disk it would have a big advante 2 x 250 GB disk against the 2 x 500 for the 5130. All with the double all three promo.
So with that promo you have the same and the only disadvantage i saw is putting all eggs on the same server. But without that promo its useless, you get better specs with separated boxes. Something i dont quite understand since The Planet actually saves money if you own big bad servers instead of little ones. They save the datacenter space, cooling and power, etc.

Now im going probably just buy the big server with Softlayer and maintain small servers at The Planet. SL give you a dual quadcore, 4 GB ram, 1 Terra disk, KVM included all for 300$. The Planet charges you extra 30$ for KVM and like 400$ for that box. I will probably also need KVM on all my servers in the next months so i think its a good idea to move since they include KVM on all their servers. I always said this and it seems The Planet doesnt hear. Softlayer offers better prices on big servers, better hardware (all disk sata 2) and they focus on network and hardware. The Planet seems to be moving more into hosting then to datacenter. Softlayer seems so good now, they focus on TECH, hardware, Net. The Planet seems to be focusing lately on services, it seems SL is that The Planet was some years ago. Really curious, i actually think they spitted the company in 2. The Planet for newbies and Softlayer for experts.
With promos The Planet has better prices, its true. Not on the big monster servers, but overall with promos you get better prices something i actually dont like. Because the promos come and go away fast, i need a provider that has stable prices. The Planet has a great promos, you make your costs based on that servers prices and then the promo is gone. Its very hard to maintain a business without stability on servers prices. I would have pay 300$ with KVM for that dual core. I will pay the same for a quad core there, the only disadvantage is it will have only 2000 GB transfer instead of 4000 GB it would had here on TP.

Those are low-end compared to SCSI or SAS

I agree with you regarding promos vs. stable pricing though -- I've taken advantage of the promos at the planet twice now, but at the same time they are a bit frustrating because then the promos dictate your schedule vs. your actual needs. Still taking advantage of the promos, I've gotten a great deal here for my money I feel, so I can't complain.

While I don't want to start a SL vs TP debate, I have to be honest that the WAVE of promotions here at TP in the last year have been very different behaviour and it is something I wasn't used too. Without these promotions they were no competition at all for other providers. Which is why I have a server SL that has better specs than anything here for a similar price.

In regards to your original question about which is the better setup, though I can really only base this on CPU's, no other pieces of hardware.

The basic specs for starters are

Woodcrest-5130 | 4 MB L2 Cache | 2.00 GHz | 1333 MHz FSB
PassMark Benchmark Score for [Dual CPU] Intel Xeon 5130 @ 2.00 GHz = 2,397

Conroe-3040 | 2 MB L2 Cache | 1.86 GHz | 1066 MHz FSB
PassMark Benchmark Score for Intel Core 6300 (Comparable Model to the Conroe 3040) is 1,059 x 2 = 2,118

If you teamed the Woodcrest up with adequate RAM, HDD space, and Bandwidth I think you would be better off. It has better L2 cache which is really a great part of modern Intel CPU architecture. The Conroe has only 2 MB of L2 per die, with two servers that is only 4 MB L2 cache in total. The Woodcrest has 4MB of L2 cache per CPU, so in the end you would have 8 MB of L2. The Woodcrest and Conroe design are aging in the face of newer Intel CPUs but they still perform very well for their price. You also gain some clock speed with the Woodcrest and having a stronger single server will reduce your administration time than with two servers. I only have to say have a backup storage plan, and a outage plan.

Well it seems we all agree on the promo deals. It seems we all are not very used to promos in dedicated fields, since that was more something of a hosting environment, but that makes sense actually since The Planet now describes as a Managed Hosting or Dedicated hosting provider. Normally you look for a fixed price in network and hardware if you are on a real budget for your IT environment. And without those promos basically The Planet is no better then others. Someone noticed they actually now lowered prices exactly the same amount as SL? For some models the price is exactly the same, just specific features change on each provider.
If you ask me I did liked the old model better. Fixed Servers prices, and addons. These promos are great but if they want to compete in prices they should not be promos but fixed deals. It makes my head spin since the deals are rotated weekly. Sure, someone looking for 1 server loves those deals. But im sure here at TP there are also people that actually outsource their entire hosted environment and once you need to escalate you cannot afford to wait until next monday to see which promo comes up. And if you buy the minute then your angry since 3 days later the same server is available for half of what you paid. Specially because here we dont have an upgrade path. I will probably then just go with 1 model to replace 2 instead.

My first server at EV1servers then known as RackShack was actually headsurfer's "babysurfer special" -- the first P4s they offered with extra bandwidth and dual IDE hard drives But a really good deal, I think it was in 2001. I actually set an alarm so I could be near the start of the line when they opened up the order queue so I wouldn't miss it. Then after an intermediate, I got a Total Control Server that was advertised on WHT also for a good deal with extras thrown in like 40 GB of NAS space and a third drive as part of the promo. That was in 2004. So with both companies I've been used to seeing promo deals for a long while now.