Dual Xeon setup vs. 3 Gig
TomasC.
2.4 ghz
system. But all of the research so far seems to indicate that these systems
are more
for servers. I just want the fastest personal computer possible (within
some limits -
no super computers). Since this represents a huge investment for me, I'm
being very
slow to make decisions. I'm interested in opinions on this. Thanks (Budget
is ~$3500
for box. I have monitor, modem, speakers, etc.)
Lucas Tam
news:5%OH9.34833$bq3....@news.bellsouth.net:
> As a result of an answer to a different thread, I am considering a
> dual Xeon 2.4 ghz
> system.
What type of work are you doing?
For games, surfing, etc, Dual processors is going to do you no good.
--
Lucas Tam (REMOV...@rogers.com)
Please delete "REMOVE" from the e-mail address when replying.
TomasC.
Video editing and 3D art design. Sorry about that, I shoulda
said.
"Lucas Tam" <REMOV...@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:Xns92DBAB33E29...@140.99.99.130...
Lucas Tam
@news.bellsouth.net:
> Thanks Lucas,
> Video editing and 3D art design. Sorry about that, I shoulda
> said.
That's debatable. The dual processors will come in handy rendering effects
and 3D scenes, but aside from that the processor will sit idle most of the
time.
Instead of purchasing dual processors, you may want to spend the money on a
good hard drive/RAID setup and a NICE monitor + video card : )
TomasC.
Which mobo/cpu are you suggesting then?
thanks
"Lucas Tam" <REMOV...@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:Xns92DBC9C9A66...@140.99.99.130...
Andrew Hecox
"TomasC." <TC...@AlliaNet.com> wrote in message news:%kVH9.37735$bq3....@news.bellsouth.net...
Just to chime in with Lucas,
unless you go with the Placer chipset (just released, 533 FSB Xeons), 3D rendering
may be the only thing you can speed with using dual CPUs. You should care about
3 main things here- FSB width, memory bus wide, and amount of RAM. A RAID
array will help a little, while a good graphics card will help a lot.
Look at the latest Intel 845 and 850 chipsets and make sure you get one with 533
FSB, RAM bandwidth to match, and AGP 8X.
TomasC.
"Andrew Hecox" <ahe...@no-spam.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:V8XH9.5453$Kw6.3...@newssrv26.news.prodigy.com...
> Look at the latest Intel 845 and 850 chipsets and make sure you get one
with 533
> FSB, RAM bandwidth to match, and AGP 8X.
Thanks Andrew, so with that in mind, which mobo/cpu/video card do you
suggest and
yes I do lots of 3D rendering.
Lucas Tam
@news.bellsouth.net:
The new 3.06ghz Pentiums are very impressive. There are two models, one
with Hyperthreading and one without. Hyperthreading creates a virtual dual
CPU within a single CPU:
http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q4/021114/index.html
http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/20021202/index.html
The 3.06ghz chip is available for ~700USD each.
AMD Athlons are also a good choice. They're MUCH cheaper than Pentium 4's
and provide competitive speeds. My last 3 computers have been Athlons and
am very happy with the performance.
Asus makes reliable motherboards. Asus has a new board, the
P4G8X Deluxe which seems well suited for your needs.
http://www.asus.com/products/mb/socket478/p4g8x-d/overview.htm
http://www.asus.com/products/mb/mbindex.htm
Gigabyte, Tyan, MSI, and Soyo are other good choices for motherboards.
As for the video card, if you do a lot of rendering, look at ATI's FireGL
series, 3dLabs Wildcat, or Nvidia's Quadro cards series of cards:
http://mirror.ati.com/products/workstation/fireglx1/index.html
http://www.3dlabs.com/
http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=quadro4
These cards come with certified graphic drivers and extra functions to
enable them to work correctly with professional applications. The only
drawback is that they cost significantly more than a consumer video game
card. You can use a consumer grade video card as well, but usually the
visual quality is not as good, or you'll have anomalies on screen due to
poor drivers, feature support.
For hard drives, IDE is really fast these days. A Western Digital 8MB
Cache Special Edition drive can rival some SCSI drives. SCSI maybe worth
it if you require the fastest transfer speeds and if money is of no
concern.
For graphics design a CRT monitor may still be the best choice, but LCDs
are comparable in many cases. Apple has a really nice Theater Cinema
Screen which is compatible with PCs if you have the proper connector. The
only drawback is the the control software is not supported on PCs... but
there maybe 3rd party utilies available (I'm not sure).
Andrew Hecox
"TomasC." <TC...@AlliaNet.com> wrote in message news:Wa3I9.28259$nd5....@news.bellsouth.net...
To be honest, I don't do much graphics work so I'm way behind on the subject
relative to a lot of people here. That said, the cards that are getting the best
reviews at the moment are the newest ATI cards. These'll run between $300 -
$400, not a small price.
As for processors, you'd have a hard time beating the Pentium 3.06 with
hyper threading, but that's one expensive chip. A more reasonable value
would probably be any of the 533 FSB based CPUs, which I believe
start at 2.26 (2.40 & 2.66 should be good values too). My pick would
be the 2.4 GHz P4 @ roughly $185.
I'm not as familar with the P4 boards (I run a dual athlon system now,
previously I was using a P3-style board), but it's hard to beat Asus.
AOpen, & IWill are also good options, as is Tyan. But you won't
need to spend much over $150 either way.
Other than that, I'd make sure I got a solid 2 GB of RAM, Corsair
has some nice high performance stuff, but just make sure you don't
get generic memory (meaning Micron, Kingston, Samsung, etc...
will be fine). With all your leftover $, you could buy a car, or a
couple SCSI disks (Seagate Cheatahs), whichever's cheaper ;)