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Couple quick questions..

D

disc13

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 26, 2001
Messages
484
Hey, it's time to upgrade but I haven't been keeping up much with the development of the recent Intel processors. I'm looking to spend about $220 for the processor, and it looks like I can get a P4 at 3.0E and 3.0C. I've tried to find the difference between the two, and looks like one of them has a "longer pipeline", making it less efficient than the other?

I'm going to be mainly be doing 3D modeling/animation/rendering stuff, and will not be overclocking at all. Which one should I get?

Also, since I'm not going to be overclocking, is the stock P4 heatsink and fan good enough (in terms of heat dissapation and noise), or should I get a third party one (and which?)?

While we're here, does anyone have a suggestion for a solid Gigabyte motherboard for the above processor?

Thanks very much in advance for any help!
 
well, not sure which cpu would be better for the 3d work, but you're correct in that the 3.0e has a longer pipeline. It has 31 stages as opposed to the 20(something) that the 3.0c has. However, the 3.0e also has 1mb cache (2x the cache on the 3.0c) which makes up for the pipeline most of the time.

As far as the heatsink, the stock Intel HSF setup will be fine if you're not overclocking. Of course an aftermarket HS would be better, but not necessary.
 
just curious but what 3d software will u be using?
Anyways, both processors generally perform about the same. I would want an aftermarket heatsink if I was to buy the Prescott since u will be rendering and putting quite a bit of stress on that cpu.
One would think that Prescott would be better than the Northwood for Digital Content Creation due to the extra cache and other features, however, if I remember correctly it performed slightly better in a few apps and a bit worse in others.
I don't have any benches for the Prescott at hand, but u could check zoorender.com for some benches.
IMO at stock speeds both processors will be pretty close. I personally have a Northwood and it's just fine, but by all means you're not going to have lightning fast render speeds even with a dual cpu (xeon or opteron) probably until 64 bit becomes mainstream and applications like Maya support 64 bit rendering.

Generally rendering a fully textured scene using software render will take abou 40 secs to 1:00.

In the end though I don't know anyone using a prescott for 3d work especially 3.0e and up because of heat issues. But of course I don't have real world experience with this cpu in 3d. So personally I would lean towards the northwood and only get the prescott for 3d if u were to specially cool the cpu because if you're batchrendering an animation for hours on end...well u get the picture.

hope this helps.
 
Personally, I would go with the 3.0C mainly due to heat output of the Prescott.

An aftermarket HSF like a Thermalright SP-94 or a Thermaltake silent tower are gonna out perform a stock HSF any day of the week.

As far as a good Gigabyte board, I would have to suggest the 8KNXP... If you're in need of SCSI support then they also have the 8KNXP Ultra and Ultra 64.... I've been running mine now for about 6 months and it's been nothing but rock solid.
 
hi, thx for all the responses!

I'm going to be using Lightwave for my 3D purposes.

and yes, I'm planning on RAIDing two Raptors, so I guess I need that SCSI support. The board you mentioned looks solid.

Any other input?
 
disc13 said:
I'm planning on RAIDing two Raptors, so I guess I need that SCSI support.
Click to expand...


Aren't Raptors IDE???

Gigabyte makes good boards. They would be my 3rd choice for a mb if I were buying (a toss-up between Abit and Asus for the first two though)....but then again, I o/c all my stuff and Asus/Abit are better for that than GB.
 
Raptors aren't SCSI, but 10,000rpm SATA drives. I wouldn't really recommend RAID 0 for 3d work unless you're video editing and plan on loading really large files because there is no real benefit in 3d I've noticed.
 
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