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Dual socket dual core or single socket quad core?

kippermitten

kippermitten

kippermitten

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hello!

Gosh its been a while since Ive done this but Im going to build myself a home workstation. Been using an XPS laptop for two years but dammit I need RAID and dual graphics again!

So my question is thus:

Having had a plethora of dual socket systems that always batter the pants off of single socket systems whats the performance differential like these days?

I can pick up a dual socket dual core Intel or AMD pcie motherboard for cheap of the bay of E but what about a quad core single socket system of later generation processors? While the single core newer systems be more powerful overall?
Im not just looking at CPU performance but also memory and back plane throughput...

Any thoughts appreciated!
 
jaybee said:
I'd go modern day quad single socket as fast as you can afford.
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+1 no advantage to having a dual socket dual core system over a single quad in my opinion, but a lot of down sides (cost typically being the main one).

Dual socket motherboard are typically quite a lot more expensive and often use ECC RAM which tends to be quite expensive in comparison also.

We run a lot of big workstations at my office, typically we used to buy high end Dell Precision workstations which were dual dual core CPU's, but lately we've just been getting the single socket i7 equivalent Xeon ones. Unless you're doing an awful lot of 3D rendering a single quad core like the i7 is ample and any more cores aren't typically used by most software anyway, so they just sit there idle.

E-I
 
Single socket makes me feel inadequate!

But Im looking for as much performance as I can get for much cheapness...

Are the Quad Core Q6600s worth a look?

Can be overclocked?
 
My last rig was a q6600, excellent CPU and still very powerful. If you have the budget its worth checking out an overclocked i7 920 or 930, OCUK has some very good pre-overclocked bundles. Very quick!

Remember, its not the size of your cpu but what you do with it...

Or maybe I'm thinking of something else :-)

E-I
 
Ok - so Im looking at a Q6600 cpu and what Motherboard is recomended?

Also what graphics card? Im so out of touch with whats hot or not!
Need to be around 60-70 quids tops second hand btw...

ALSO! What PSU rating will I need?
 
Really wouldn't go for a Q6600 if I were you dude, you're buying a complete setup, is it really worth going for a socket that has been around since 2004ish, and a CPU that's been around since 2006? (I think, not certain on the years and I cba looking them up).

Personally I'd say go for a 890 series AM3 board and a 1055T. 6 cores, a lot of them have overclocked to 4ghz and all will go over 3.6ghz, DDR3 ram, USB3, SATA3 etc. Basically every feature and standard has moved on now from the LGA775 era.

As for graphics cards, at that budget it's got to be a 5770 really. DX11 and in crossfire it's a very quick setup, so there's that option for the future.

Just my take on it really. :)
 
The only reason to get a dual socket system is if you want twice as many cores as are currently available on a single socket.

For that privelage of being maybe 18 months ahead for highly threaded work, you pay a very significant premium, normally at least double.
You are far better off whith a brand new single socket system than an ageing dual socket one because CPU speed increases very quickly.

All the other things which could distinguish a workstation from a high end consumer machine can be implemented on a single socket machine.
They might include raid / scsi drives, pro graphics card, lots of RAM etc I'm dubious about the advantages of some of these things (apart from the extra RAM) too on a price/ perfomance point of view but that's a seperate issue.
 
Quixote said:
The only reason to get a dual socket system is if you want twice as many cores as are currently available on a single socket.

For that privelage of being maybe 18 months ahead for highly threaded work, you pay a very significant premium, normally at least double.
Click to expand...

Yes, because when the next processor come out you buy two and still come out on top. It's obviously more costly than 1 processor / single socket but I guess the OP has to decide if it's worth it.

For things where processor time matters (encoding etc) OP has to weigh up if the time saving by doublling the threads/CPU pays off against the cost of getting such a beast system. Sometimes it's cheaper to just get a complete second system...
 
Muel said:
Personally I'd say go for a 890 series AM3 board and a 1055T. 6 cores, a lot of them have overclocked to 4ghz and all will go over 3.6ghz, DDR3 ram, USB3, SATA3 etc. Basically every feature and standard has moved on now from the LGA775 era.
Click to expand...

This

Or at least go with an AM3 Quad which can then be upgraded to a Six / Maybe even Eight Core if your lucky (and the rest of us with AM3 based systems!)
 
That's my current plan. My 790X board died, so I upgraded to a 890GX board which is ready for 6 core now, and has USB3 and SATA3, and I reckon may well run the 8 core CPUs with a BIOS update. I've heard rumours about 12 cores as well, but we'll see.
 
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