Well, the current hardware is part of the problem, so I don't know that it is really suited as a benchmark. The current hardware was bought by a non DBA and is over 6 years old and is only masquerading as server hardware.

It definitely is experiencing a CPU bottleneck and everything I know about disk configurations tells me there should be an I/O bottleneck too, but perhaps the CPU is holding us back.

Windows 2003 x64

Intel P4 2.8 GHz

3.75 GB Ram

Disc 1: 20 GB has the OS and SQL on it

Disc 2: 150 GB has both the data files and transaction logs on it

I am basically having trouble convincing my boss that we need to spend money on an upgrade even though everybody complains about the slowness of the system (even my boss). I am trying to get some 3rd party recommendations as to what kind of hardware we need. I want to spend about 2.5K and get a semi-decent server for our office. He wants to tear down the current one and just replace the motherboard, processor, and RAM (which is just plain silly if you ask me).