Server: Prescott or Northwood?

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vigor

Limp Gawd
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Jun 7, 2002
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I am going to be building a new server for colocation purposes.

Im currently debating between a 2.8 C or 2.8 E

I've seen benchmarks between the two, however none are server related.

Any opinions?
 
Servers are all about stability and you want a processor that will not run real hot. I would pick the Northwood no question. I'd get at least a 3.0c maybe though. And you'll want ECC RAM and all that too i would suppose right? I would be sure and get a stable board and not an enthusiast board like the Abit IC7. If your not overclocking just get an Intel board.
 
Northwood I'd say for reasons stated above ... unless your server will be running some kind of application that will benefit from Prescotts higher cache ...
 
i say NW too less heat
and the larger cache doesn't really help performance it's just to balance out the longer pipeline
 
Opteron :p

No, I'm serious. Even the Xeons, the more server-bred brethren of the P4s, have a hard time keeping up with the Opterons in most reviews I've seen. It's not painfully expensive either, if you go for the slightly slower ones.
 
But board cost for Opteron and Xeon platforms increases the price somewhat. If your not needing anything but file and print serving and I/O theres no reason to put a processor like that in a machine.

You could use a Celeron for all it would matter. It just depends on your needs.
 
How many people are going to ask the same lame question.... NORTHWOOD.

It runs COOLER, is FASTER in ALMOST every apps & game, has more raw horsepower

The prescott in a few RARE occasions the larger L2 and SSE3 can make it slightly fast, but those are few.
 
Athlon64 FX! :D :p

The Opterons and its children outperform Intel on the server market with a rather broat margin... but if you're set in stone about using Intel, get a Northy. Even without performance and heat differences, you'll get a lower electricity bill... :D
 
This is the "Strictly Intel" forum so he probably does want to stick with Intel.

It depends on the applications used, but in general Opterons do kick butt.

I've been thinking about leaving the darkside (intel) if AMD has their shit together with the 939 pin mobos with a .09 A64; AND Intel hasn't straightened out the .09 process and hitting 4Ghz+ or some other drastic improvement.
 
Why is it that I keep seeing all this "Get AMD xx" in the Strictly Intel forum latley? WTF is up with that?

Some people DON'T LIKE AMD. They don't have to. There doesn't have to be a reason and it doesn't have to make sense.

It's just like some people like Ford or Chevy. Not realizing that both could be bad or good. It's the same thing with AMD and Intel.

Some people just prefer Intel to AMD and vice versa. I should think that in the Intel forum you should keep it Intel. Just as in the AMD forum you should not say things like "AMD's suck because they have no thermal throttleing capabilities or they don't have Hyperthreading so they feel sluggish when multitasking."

Jeesus people.........
:rolleyes:
 
Well, this may be Intel, but I'd still recommend an Opteron for a server. Have you seen the performance benches on those for servers? Woosh.

otherwise, i dunno. i don't do servers ;) but I would lean towards the Northwood, just as fast if not faster [than a prescott] and a lot cooler. The Prescotts start to do better in some things at the higher clocks.

edit: Oh, if you're looking for a 2.8 go with the Northwood.
 
So is this 'colocation' server going to act as a firewall, service provider, skynet locale, or what? If your just gonna run something basic, don't overkill with the components. You can run exchange server on a P2. But if you need some hardcore processing I would stick with the northwood every time. Prescott sucks at the moment and everyone knows that. Stupid pipeline is frigin too long.
 
Originally posted by m1garand
So is this 'colocation' server going to act as a firewall, service provider, skynet locale, or what? If your just gonna run something basic, don't overkill with the components. You can run exchange server on a P2. But if you need some hardcore processing I would stick with the northwood every time. Prescott sucks at the moment and everyone knows that. Stupid pipeline is frigin too long.
Click to expand...

The pipeline depth is just fine. When Prescott climbs up to much higher clock speeds and applications get patched for SSE3 along with Prescotts improved Hyper Threading and soon to be 64-bit extensions in 3rd quarter it will be a force to be reconed with on LGA 775, with DDR2, and PCI Express.

People thought Northwoods pipelines were too long and that it sucked. They didn't realize it just needed to scale to higher clock speeds. Clocked well over 3Ghz now, an Athlon XP doesn't look nearly as hot as it did back when Northwood was idling around 2.4Ghz.

Deeper pipelines will beat fewer pipelines nearly every time especially in gaming and multimedia if the clock speeds are high enough to keep the pipes full and not idleing along with the branch prediction being good which it is on Prescott. And i dont think the heat is as much of an issue as people are making it out to be. With a few revisions heat most likely wont be a huge issue. There was an Article on Anandtech just this week on Prescott and Northwoods heat comparison. Prescott just needs a new board built around it. Current boards were built for Northwoods, not Prescotts.
 
Originally posted by burningrave101
The pipeline depth is just fine. When Prescott climbs up to much higher clock speeds and applications get patched for SSE3 along with Prescotts improved Hyper Threading and soon to be 64-bit extensions in 3rd quarter it will be a force to be reconed with on LGA 775, with DDR2, and PCI Express.
Click to expand...

If I get a LGA775 board it will probably be a 915 with DDR (not DDR2) until they get up to at least DDR667 and maybe even DDR800.

Current regular DDR400 or higher like DDR500 (unofficial) is probably going to be faster for a while.
 
Originally posted by NightRaven
Opteron :p

No, I'm serious. Even the Xeons, the more server-bred brethren of the P4s, have a hard time keeping up with the Opterons in most reviews I've seen. It's not painfully expensive either, if you go for the slightly slower ones.
Click to expand...




most, not all. in my first hand experience, while rendering video for school projects and stuff, xeons beat opterons out of the water. so, basically, it boils down to what exactly you are doing...


go Northwood for now, you will see Prescott start to beat Northwood when programs start using SSE3 and the 1MB of L2 cache.

methinks that at the moment, Prescott is Intel's NV30.
 
Originally posted by burningrave101
Deeper pipelines will beat fewer pipelines nearly every time especially in gaming and multimedia if the clock speeds are high enough to keep the pipes full and not idleing along with the branch prediction being good which it is on Prescott.
Click to expand...

If everything else is exactly the same (including clock frequency), a shallower pipeline will beat a deeper one in exactly everything (though not by alot), since the branch prediction isn't entirely flawless. The only good thing about deepening the pipeline is that you can increase the clock frequency more.

most, not all. in my first hand experience, while rendering video for school projects and stuff, xeons beat opterons out of the water. so, basically, it boils down to what exactly you are doing...
Click to expand...
It even depends on what app you're using... 3DSM prefers Intel, while some prefer AMD, and some prefer PPC. According to all benchies I've seen, no computer in the world performs nearly as good in After Effects as a PPC970, while the Xeons simply rule some things, yadda yadda.
 
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