Deciding on what CPU to use!

[gmask]

I have dual 2.66 Xeons and they are proportionally faster than the other processors I have. You might however still get more bang for the buck with AMD's.. I have read that in the near future that AMD may not sell for less than equivalent Pentiums procs

[milkyman]

AMD seem to be on the up at the moment. if i had the choice i want A64, mabey thats the fanboy in me talking but mmmm. can't u wait till xmas? i have too :annoyed:

suggest looking around. the usual suspects will have what you are looking for. you can also do a search on the forum for tonnes of threads.

[Emmortal1]

I run dual 2.8ghz Xeons and they are definitely worth the money. The Athlon 64's even in dual setup, can't keep up with Dual Xeon 3.06ghz system in the majority of 3D applications. So dual 2.6's should be right up there pretty close to a top of the line Dual AMD 64 bit system and at 1/3 the cost.

You'll be extremely happy with dual Xeons, they are still cheaper than a dual Athlon 64 setup and are reasonably priced, they've actually come down a bit over the past couple of months.

Also, make sure that you run ECC Registered memory if you go with the Xeons, as they won't run in hyperthred mode without ECC. Also the fastest ECC ram you can buy for a dual CPU setup is PC2700 (333mhz). I'd recommend Mushkin, Corsair, or OCZ.

Good luck and hope that helps,

Emmortal

[tame2000]

Hey, thanks for the tips.

I have always wanted to try the Xeons. I was attracted to the Athlon64 at first but they don't really have any use to me yet. I can't even take advantage of the 64 as there's no Windows 64bit platform right now, beta versions maybe, but I think I'll stay away from those.

I haven't really heard anything to argue about the Xeons, other than the money issue. But everyone that I've talked to seems to think they're a solid proccessor.

Cheer's,

t.

[gmask]

>>>Also, make sure that you run ECC Registered memory if you go with the Xeons, as they won't run in hyperthred mode without ECC. Also the fastest ECC ram you can buy for a dual CPU setup is PC2700 (333mhz). I'd recommend Mushkin, Corsair, or OCZ.


actually that is not true.. I have a dual Xeon baord that doesn't even accept ECC ram and it runs in Hyperthreded mode. Plus ECC ram is mroe expensive and a little slower and for the desktop users adds little.

[Emmortal1]

Just so you know, they'll run under Windows XP (the Athlon 64's) Although you won't be getting optimal performance out of them until they come out with an OS with the 64bit registers. Some applications such as the next version of Photoshop (CS) will ship with 64bit extensions. I believe you can download a plugin for the current version of PS as well, although don't quote me on that.

And yes, they really aren't worth spending 800$ a CPU right now, especially when they only have 2.0ghz as the top of the line. I'm going to wait another year until applications catch up to the hardware. It's really hard to say as well whether or not the market will shift that quickly, but time will only tell.

Emmortal

[Emmortal1]

Interesting because from the technical data I've read and what's been told to me by Intel tech support, states otherwise. But thanks for the heads up!

Emmortal

[gmask]

Originally posted by Emmortal1
Interesting because from the technical data I've read and what's been told to me by Intel tech support, states otherwise. But thanks for the heads up!

Emmortal

Yeah I dunno... Although with the particular board I have you need to get matched pairs of dimms. I dunno if that has anything to do with the HT though.

[Emmortal1]

Yes indeed, they do have to be matched pairs. But it's still odd that Intel themself would state what I mentioned above. Then again, it's like playing Russian Roullete (i'm sure I butchered that) whenever you call up tech support anywhere.

Emmortal

[gmask]

Originally posted by Emmortal1
Yes indeed, they do have to be matched pairs. But it's still odd that Intel themself would state what I mentioned above. Then again, it's like playing Russian Roullete (i'm sure I butchered that) whenever you call up tech support anywhere.

Emmortal

Hmm were you talking to them about a specific board or just Xeons in general?

[Emmortal1]

I was talking to them about my board which is the SE7505VB2 board and Xeons in general. I could have mistaken what they were saying to me in regards to the ECC subject to be relative only to my board and not Xeon boards in general.

Emmortal

[tame2000]

GMask and Emmortal1,

The board the I am looking at getting is the new Asus PC-DL Deluxe (http://usa.asus.com/products/server/srv-mb/pc-dl/overview.hTm) which uses Dual-Channel DDR333 ram. The Board supports both ECC and Non-ECC based Ram, so Emmortal, I imagine that it is just the specs for your board in specific.

t.

[gmask]

Originally posted by tame2000
GMask and Emmortal1,

The board the I am looking at getting is the new Asus PC-DL Deluxe (http://usa.asus.com/products/server/srv-mb/pc-dl/overview.hTm) which uses Dual-Channel DDR333 ram. The Board supports both ECC and Non-ECC based Ram, so Emmortal, I imagine that it is just the specs for your board in specific.

t.

Yup I looked up his board and it appears to only ta e ECC ram.

I had ECC ram in my previous system and I really foudn it annoying because the machien would then take a along time to boot while it does an extra check of the registers or whatever.. minutes long. Of course the system was so stable that I rarely rebooted but still it was annoying.

[Emmortal1]

You can, well in my mobo, set it to skip that memory check or do a fast boot. This doesn't hurt anything at all and saves you from those 5 minute boot times :)

Emmortal

[elvis]

Originally posted by Emmortal1
The Athlon 64's even in dual setup

Athlon64 chips cannot be used in dual, and neither can the Athlon64-FX.

Only the Opteron processors are capable of dual setups.

[elvis]

Also, HyperThreading has nothing to do with the memory in a system. ECC/matched pair/whatever: this has absolutely zero impact on whather or not a system has the capability to use hyperthreading.

Hyperthreading is a CPU feature, and must have a compatible motherboard and HT-aware operating system to function.

[gmask]

Originally posted by Emmortal1
You can, well in my mobo, set it to skip that memory check or do a fast boot. This doesn't hurt anything at all and saves you from those 5 minute boot times :)

Emmortal

Nope those were additional delays in themselves aside from the whatever the hell it was doing when ECC is enabled.

[Emmortal1]

Sorry, meant to say Opterons, not the 64's, mistake on my part.

As far as the ECC thing goes, leave it up to Intel to tell their customer some wrong information. I HT has nothign to do with memory specific setup, but from what they told me was that the motherboard wouldn't even allow the CPU's to run in HT mode unless they had ECC memory installed.

Emmortal

[MadMax]

Originally posted by Emmortal1
The Athlon 64's even in dual setup, can't keep up with Dual Xeon 3.06ghz system in the majority of 3D applications.


Completely false. Dual 246's (2.0ghz.) are faster in the majority of 3D applications than a 3.0ghz Xeon. In fact with few exceptions, dual Opteron is substantially faster. One of those exceptions is media encoding, which is far more effected by raw clock speed.


So dual 2.6's should be right up there pretty close to a top of the line Dual AMD 64 bit system and at 1/3 the cost.

Again, this is very misleading. If you wish to discuss the 2.66 Xeon, you can expect scores along the lines of 73 seconds per frame in Maya, vs. 57 seconds for the more expensive Opteron 246.

If you are making a living, does that 16 seconds per frame mean much? hell yeah. Do the math.

If you wish to remain comparable and present honest figures instead of intentionally misleading, you can back the comparison down to an Opteron 244 at 1.8ghz which is still faster than your 2.66 Xeon, or we could even go down to a 242 (1.6ghz) at 71 seconds which is still faster in Maya that the 2.66 Xeon at a cost of 403.00 each vs. 269.00 for the Xeon.

Now we are not talking 1/3 the price, but only a couple hundred dollars cheaper. And of course Opteron has integrated memory controller, meaning less latency and bottlenecks, 64 bit which will be an even bigger advantage very soon. I know, I am running Windows64 right now.

[MimikOctopus]

not to mention that 3d apps will probably be the first to go 64 bit. people say it will be over a year to get 64 bit integration.... sure but no one cares about 64 bit windows office etc... but i can assure you that newtek, discreet, and alias are all gonna squeeze every last bit of power out of their goodness.... that's when the opterons will just take off and leave 32 bit processors behind.

[tame2000]

Well, dual opterons would be a nice treat but I am a little unable to fork out the cash for that sort of a set up. Putting up the money for Xeons is enough on it's own right now.

Yeah, using 64bit programs will be great, I am well aware of this and can't wait to get the chance for a fully 64bit system, but really, lets say 64bit versions of Maya and Lightwave (which are my programs of choice right now) aren't released for another year or so, I will most likely be looking at getting another system around that time. At which point I would look at going with the 64bit procs. Why buy a 64bit proc and not take full advantage of it for a year, when one could wait till whenever everything has been converted over to 64bit, and get a better proc.

t.

[MadMax]

People seem to be under the mistaken impression that you must have a 64 bit OS to take advantage of what these processors can do and that is completely false.

You'll need a 64 bit OS to take advantage of the extra memory address space.

You will not need a 64 bit OS to take advantage of it's superior FP capabilities, SSE2, Higher IPC's, Hypertransport and lower latencies and higher memory bandwidth.

Yeah, they are a bit more epensive, and yeah, I'll have to wait to take advantage of 64 bit apps.

But as of right now this minute, I run circles around the top dog Intel systems.

I finish work hours, sometimes days faster that the best Xeons out there depending on how much rendering needs to be done.

[gmask]

>>I finish work hours, sometimes days faster that the best Xeons out there depending on how much rendering needs to be done.

Hmm.. this is a bold statement.. I mean since when did the faster computers actually mean you only had to do the same amount of work as you did when they were slower .. give me a faster computer and I'll just end up making it do more and work the same hours I allways worked.

[Emmortal1]

Actually the information I posted was not so far off if you look at benchmarks from tomshardware. Although a lot can be said, and I for one agree with much of it, about the credibility of the site, that's what I was baseing my information off of. After reviewing several other sites including AnandTech, I'd have to agree with you on some points. The AMD 64bit CPU's do out perform the Xeons in many aspects. However, I believe it's too early to decide on them considering the beta version of WindowsXP 64bit still has many issues and isn't projected to ship until Q1 of 2004, which obviously doesn't mean that the advantages cannot be seen in the 64bit CPU's right now, but will definitely show the difference even clearer when that is released.

Hopefully by then the leading DCC applications will have 64 bit options available to the consumer. Until then, I'm not going to spend money on upgrading.

Emmortal

[MadMax]

Originally posted by gmask
>>I finish work hours, sometimes days faster that the best Xeons out there depending on how much rendering needs to be done.

Hmm.. this is a bold statement.. I mean since when did the faster computers actually mean you only had to do the same amount of work as you did when they were slower .. give me a faster computer and I'll just end up making it do more and work the same hours I allways worked.

well DUH.

Think about what you just said and maybe you'll get the point.

Lets say I finish a large project 16 hours faster. That means next project is in the pipeline all that much earlier, and done all that much sooner.

So where I might have turned a client down because I wouldn't be able to meet his deadline, or didn't have enough time to take on a project, now I do.

There is nothing bold about the statement at all. I have a finite amount of time that is determined by the capability of the network to complete projects. There is no magic fairy dust that will just make things finish when I want it to.

So if I shave off an hour here, 16-24 hours there, I have more network time for more paying projects, which means more money.

Basic economics.

[gmask]

>>So where I might have turned a client down because I wouldn't be able to meet his deadline, or didn't have enough time to take on a project, now I do.

Well my argument is that there's not enough of me to go around to do the work.. it really has little to do with the computer.. they after all don't drive themselves. I turn down jobs because I can only be in so many places at one time.

Now if if were to say turn back the hands of time 5-10 years then the amount of work I can do based on the hardware is hugely different.

[tame2000]

I have to agree with Emmortal1. I'm not going to spend money on something that I can't take full advantage of right away. I'd rather spend my money on other usefull things.

And by the time one can take full advantage of the Athlon64, don't you think that Intel will also have a 64bit proc, and most likely a Xeon64 version.

This is all just coming down to two sides battling one another... Athlon, no Intel...


t.

[Emmortal1]

Actually Intel has a 64bit CPU, it's called the Itanium 2, but it's a couple grand and not even worth it. Actually it's more than a couple grand, but you get the point.

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