Comments

starixiom wrote on 6/16/2003, 5:33 PM
Wow, you are opening up a wide and varied debate. All i can offer is anecdotal advise since most other website deal with benchmarking various cpus. The last system i choose for my NLE was a Dual Xeon 2.8ghz system. I have always felt that Xeons where a better made processor in terms of quality of materials used, but more specifically quality control. I read somewhere awhile back that before they leave the plant that they end up going through a more rigorous process of testing and speed classification than their Pentium breatherin.

My justification for purchasing has always been that Xeons are developed for a "professional" market applications (servers, workstations, etc.) that demand reliability. Xeon motherboards tend to be better made with better components, Supermicro for example.

As terms of overall speed superiority, im not sure. Ive always read that both a Pentium 2.4ghz and a Xeon 2.4ghz are comparable in speed with memory bandwidth and North Bridge/ South Bridge chipset playing a significant role in defining overall speed.

All I can say is that right now next to me I have a Dual Xeon 2.8ghz setup that is really really quite. All I have are two average size heatsinks, an airflow baffle, and a super silent fan blowing all the hot air out to the back of the computer. My oscillating fan in my apartment is louder than the computer itself.


Thanks Intel.


Edit: I relized i might not have answered your question fully. Hyperthreading only is significant if you have programs that are "specifically" designed with hyperthreading in mind. Even vegas is not optimized for hyperthreading in that you open one occurance offload to second CPU and then open another occurance and work with it on the other CPU. I Know very few programs that fully use all the potential of hyperthreading.

So i wouldnt worry which is faster "in theory." Go with what you think is better in terms of quality. Focus on the motherboard and Powersupply first and the rest are just details.
BillyBoy wrote on 6/16/2003, 6:15 PM
Not meaning to stir the mud simply to stir the mud, but... the current naming schmes that both Intel and AMD use are at least somewhat misleading, more so for AMD. For example my current AMD 1900 XP hints that's in line with the before used naming scheme referring to clock speed, or that this chip you would think would run at 1900 Mhz. It doesn't. Its clock speed is only 1600 without overclocking. Been that way for over a year. Also a fairly common problem is the CPU won't even come close to its rated clock speed if you change something as simple as a single switch on the MB or make a mistake in your BIOS. Again for example my XP1900 runs at 1600 Mhz, but drop its FSB to 100 and it only runs at 1200 Mhz.

Perhaps more misleading (can't confirm but heard it often enough) that the difference between a CPU that's lets say a P4 2.4 and a P4 2.6 assuming they are in the same family is really nothing more than a value of how well chip A holds up compared to chip B. What happens is the chips are tested. The best in the lot if stable at a clock speed of 2.6 are labeled as such. A chip that doesn't live up to its breeding gets labelws at the speed it is stable at. That's the only reason a P4 2.4 is cheaper than a P4 2.6. There is NO difference in the chip. So while that difference is small, be skeptial of a chip only labeled at lets say as a P4. 2.2 or whatever if others in the chip family can run at 2.8 do you really want a chip running maybe 25% slower? I don't. You get what you pay for. I won't say its a second, but it sure isn't as healthy as its borther that scored higher. Ditto for memory chips or so I've been told. Can anyone confirm this is so or is it just another urban legend?

Don't confuse the various chip families. That's apples and oranges and Intel in infamous for cranking out so many different versions, which only confues more. Much of course has to do with the chipset (the other chips on the board, mostly the North and South bridges and the FSB (front size bus) that move data back and forth between the CPU and other compoents.
shogo wrote on 6/16/2003, 11:30 PM
I just posted on this a minute ago from another user who I guess didn't read this post so here is what I posted on his.

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=192065&Replies=2&Page=1
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/17/2003, 12:57 AM
if you goto www.motherboards.org you can see side by side comparison's of chips in simular price ranges. Infact, here's a p4 vs duel xeon's: http://www.motherboards.org/articlesd/hardware-reviews/1221_1.html

I can't help much with the hyper threading issue (i only have a p3-667) but i'm upgrading to an AMD soon. I personaly chose the AMD for 2 reasons: price (usually 1/2 price of comparible intel tech), the scalability ofthe AMD MB's (I can get a nice KT400 chipset board and stick an AMD Athlong 1.4 or XP1400, and in a few months when I get more $$$ I can throw in a XP 3200).

oh, along with that BillyBoy said about the CPU names/speeds, he's right that the AMD XP/MP chip's don't go as fast as their names, but are comparible to an intel chip at that speed (ie AMD XP 3200 is comparible to a p4 3.2 in computing power). When you see an intel chip with a speed of, say, 3.06 ghz, they squeezed the 0.06ghz out so that could say they had a faster chip then AMD. The super fast 800mhz bus speed won't be noticible for a little while longer (nothing moves that fast!). Xeon's support Hyper Threading, so get 2 and windows will thinkg you have 4!