Intel Questions

[CLONEOPS]

hey talk about BOXX SYSTEMS
WE BE BUYIN alienware
all alienware
nothin but alienware
long live alienware
oh ya and alienware is king of rock and roll...seriously.
and king of the greater cosmos tooo.
..better bang for your bujja/dinar/kroner/pound/dollarino.
toms Is a really good place for all that with all the testing they do,benchmarks and whatnot...

[dvornik]

There used to be those t-shirts about 10 years ago: "Take me to you dealer".

[Daniel Whitton]

Actually my question is more towards whats a better processor for me, Will I notice any difference between Xeon and just a standard P4 interms of running Maya and rendering. What are the advantages of owning a Xeon.

I was seriously looking into Alienware, before I read a post on Cgtalk, talking about how bad their support is, and Best Buy recently dropping them because of bad porducts.
Right now I am shopping, and just want to get as much feedback as possible before dropping down a few grand for a computer.

Thanks

[CLONEOPS]

xeon good
xeon very good
xeon faster
xeon quicker faster smarter better
xeon more expensive too.
uh anyway if i had a few "thou"of lovely american dolllars
to drop on a sys i would get not a normal m/b
but a dual xeon/server board ,pop in one xeon for now
..get another later and doulble my speed when the prices drop
..if ever
the server/intel boards 3x in price about from normal
can have up t0 6-8-10-12 mem slots... so you can pack cheaper 512-1g modules on them and still end up with 2/3/4/5/6 gigs of ram on a system ..what more could you want..
but some of the serv/boards have onboard crap graphics controllers..gotta shop around!

[milkyman]

what they smokin' dvornik?

[GregHess]

I've never seen someone type so much, and yet accomplish so little.

What programs are you running daniel?

The main benefit of the Xeon processor is its ability to SMP (Or run two processors at once).

Otherwise they're generally almost identical to their P4 brethern, cept the P4's have higher FSB's, and memory bandwidth.

So if you were only going to go with a single processor, a P4 would be a better choice.

However a dual xeon is a far superior machine to a single P4, as long as your rendering quite frequently, and time is off the essence.

[Daniel Whitton]

Thanks Greg,

Mainly I'll be working in Maya and rendering with Mental Ray, as well as using After Effects and Photoshop. I'm not a prduction house or studio, just little old me.

Thanks for the response and making sense of things.

[GregHess]

Daniel,

It really comes down to budget.

All the apps you mentioned make use of multithreading, with mental ray taking the cake (as the greatest user of both processors power).

Of course the question is, how much more money are you willing to pay for additional power?

A single P4 3.0C HT system is quite fast, and does have some hyperthreading, which is kinda of a midget SMP that sometimes works wonders, and sometimes gets drunk and passes out.

A Dual Xeon would be extremely fast in Maya and Mental Ray rendering, and speed up manipulations in after effects, and some filters in photoshop. It'll also cost more, and in some operations can actually be slightly slower then a single 3.0C HT. (Because the P4's have greater bandwidth potential).

There is alot of new Intel stuff coming out in Feb, so if you can wait, I'd definitely recommend you do. If nothing else, there is a price cut on the 2.8C P4 coming up.

[Daniel Whitton]

Greg you're a gentlemen and a scholar.
Thanks for making sense of the entire situation, and for the heads up on the price watching. I'm in no absolute hurry to make a purchase. I'm actually being over cautious and procrastinating.
I gues the biggest question I have for myself right now is if I want to spend a few extra months saving up for the dual Xeons.

Thank you very much.

Dan

[GregHess]

Daniel,

I usually recommend waiting if possible. Computer technology advances very quickly, with entire generations of hardware sometimes passing by in just 6 months time.

The general rule (if your not addicted to hardware) is to try and wait until you need, instead of buying when you want.

But basically you can theoreticaly wait forever...cause well, baring an alien invasion, there is always going to be something better around the corner :).

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