Reposted Workstation

rolo

Gawd
Joined
Jul 15, 2000
Messages
591
Dual Xeons, baby. 2.8 or 3.06ghz is where the sweet point is for price at the moment. The Opteron is kinda meant to compete with both the Xeons and the Itaniums. The 14x and 24x series are good for workstations, while the 24x and 84x series are good for servers. The Opteron 246 is a good performer, but is very very expensive ($800+ per chip), so I'd recommend a dual 3.06ghz/512k Xeon (less than $500 per chip) over it. The Xeons with an extra 1MB L3 cache probably aren't worth it, although they're definitely "cool".

With dual processors you can game and "crunch" at the same time: just the other day I was playing Deus Ex: Invisible War while encoding a DivX. No slowdown in the game at all, it was smooth.

For price, your best bet however is a single Pentium 4 with HyperThreading. They're a lot better for multitasking compared to a regular Pentium 4 or any single processor AMD solution.
 
Originally posted by 2phastPRO
This is the same post I made over at "General Hardware". Just figure i'd get more answers over here. Sorry for the newbyness. Just saw this SMP forum today! :rolleyes:

A couple days ago I was fighting with myself on whether or not to build a Workstation or a Desktop. Seeing as how powerful todays desktops are today it really makes no sense to go with a workstation right? I game heavy, so I mean a workstation wouldnt be the way to go. But. I also need something that can multi-task like no tomorrow. From what I understand a workstation can keep up with the games I want to play and at the same time give me the flexibility I need to run encoding progs and the such and crunch numbers etc. I see the Xeons are getting cheap like crazy over at pricewatch....but I also see AMDs new Opteron. Tell me, Looking at the price vs performance issue....which one would be a better solution for a heavy cruncher and a midnight gamer. Am I confusing the Opteron with something else? Is it designed to go head to head with the Xeon line?

Dual opterons are much more efficient in MP setups than anything out there. Their only problem right now is price as stated before. Yet at newegg the lower speed 2XX opterons are reasonable in price:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...mit=property&mfrcode=0&propertycodevalue=4777



Ed:
Personally I would rather have a dual opteron rig running at 1.8ghz than a 3.06ghz xeon one. :D

Plus you save $60 (at newegg) when you buy the opterons.
 
Pricing out stuff that tops out my budget for MB, RAM, processors, case, and power supply at $1200.

With GB Ethernet, USB 2.0, IEEE 1394, and high end integrated sound on the Mobo, I came up with dual 2.8 Xeons or dual Opteron 242's.

It looks like for the apps I'm running now the performance at 32-bit software is fairly comparable with the Opteron's having a lead, but some of the stuff I'm using is likely to go 64-bit in the future which would give the Opteron's a big performance edge.
 
I agree, if your applications like the Opteron and look as if they will be ported to 64bit soon stick with the Opterons. I went the "budget" route for DivX encoding and OC'd my 3.0Ghz Xeons to 3.4 and change. DivX still favors the P4/Xeons for the time being and I got into the Xeon setup for about $1200. GL :)




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One very nice thing about the Xeons is that their multipliers are only partially locked. You can change them to anything lower than they come set to from the factory. My 3.06GHz Xeons have a multiplier of 23, but I use a multiplier of 18 and use a 667mhz FSB. Nice little speed boost :)

I recommend the IWill DPI-533 for a workstation, by the way. Good performance, stability, and you can even overclock with it. (You'll note, however, that I actually have my CPU's underclocked by 66mhz ... the FSB is overclocked however.)
 
Yes, I use the IWIll DPI533-SATA also. Nice MOBO, PCI/AGP lock, FSB adjustments up to 200 and a very easy V mod. :)
 
Having dual CPUs is like driving a nice luxury Mercedes-Benz. Once you own one you just can't go back to normal economy cars. Not that I own a Benzo ... yet ;)
 
Can you guys tell me a good mother board I can slap two opterons in? Is a dual opteron setup possible? Or are they single for now?
 
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