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Dual Xeon or Conroe
- Thread starter Nikumba
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Associate
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- 4 May 2006
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Imy said:
#It wouldn't be one like that as it uses fbdimms. Asus have usually released a xeon board with support for unbuffered non-ecc memory, as well as being overclockable. Thne advantage being that you can use two CPUs rather than one for about £150 more. With these you also get all the workstation benefits such as 2 16x pci-e (full speed), scsi support, and pci-x.
yes i run AMD system at the moment, theres nothing wrong with saying woodcrest is potentially better CPU having faster FSB and SMP support, cause well...it does, and i have had northwood CPU as well as pentium II and a celeron over the past few years, so i don't hate intel by any means, conroe is just blown so far out of proportion and this forum is like a 'blow sunshine up conroes A** forum' and its annoying too see so many threads get turned into a 'conroe kicks A**' thread, for instance someone says 'will there be improvement upgrading from athlon 3000+ to AM2 system?' and all you get is 'wait for conroe, wait for conroe', so the persons question hasn't been answered at all and nobody cares whether this person wants AM2 system, you don't give them a choice its just more blowing sunshine up conroe. so don't go giving me grief about anything, do you have a problem with me wanting to go with a woodcrest system over the 'almighty' conroe or something? 
personally i dont care what you go for, just last few posts from you consist of "screw conroe" and pretty much everything negative towards conroe.
A kind of response i'd expect from a loyal fanboy, hence my question.
I agree members are excited about conroe, then again it is new improved technology.
A kind of response i'd expect from a loyal fanboy, hence my question.
I agree members are excited about conroe, then again it is new improved technology.
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who wouldn't be happy over new, improved technology, faster systems. i simply meant if you want more theoritical processing power, woodcrest is the superior option, xeon motherboards generally support more RAM as well, if you want a no holds barred system thats simple and exceptionally good performing and relatively inexpensive, then conroe is your chip
Xeon's, especially the MP variants of Woodcrest, are going to cost a shed load more than what you can get a Conroe for. Really this boils down to how much you're prepared to spend... If you've got £2000 laying around to build a kick ass Woodcrest rig then go for it!
Gashman said:a vote for the xeons, but not the current generation, the new ones when they come out are based on conroes architecture i think (woodcrest i think), so they clock well, be faster than AMD clock for clock, and doubling up will surely obliterate conroe(i am highly interested in the new xeons and am thinking about going dual xeon when the new ones come around)
Xeon 50xx is Dempsey (seperate 2MB L2 cache for each core).
Xeon 51xx is Woodcrest (shared 4MB L2 cache).
The performance difference between AMD and Intel depends on the architecture of your software.. we have software at work that's twice as fast on an old RP 3440-4 with two PA-8900 CPUs (each being dual core at 1GHz, 1.5MB L1 cache per core, shared 64MB L2 cache) running HP-UX 11i compared to a DL 385 with twin Opteron 275s running RedHat AS4 64bit...
The only difference is the JVM and the hardware architecture. Which I believe is the problem as the JVM isn't properly NUMA aware..
The new Xeon may suit the software better and we'll not have to wait till Java becomes properly NUMA aware..
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used to be able to get the 3.0Ghz 'nocona' variants for dual-processor systems for around £150, which is like 40% or so more expensive than there pentium IV counterparts, so fingers crossed 'woodcrest' might hopefully follow a similar trend
Caporegime
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for the love of god WHAT DO YOU WANT a highend system for? gaming, a 2nd cpu will do nothing for your gaming experience at all. if you will be running encoding on a program that can run on 4 cores across 2 cpu's then the dual woodcrest would be faster, but hugely more expensive.
if for gaming a conroe on a desktop board that can overclock much further would give single threaded apps a distinct lead, and probo dual core aware apps a lead due to overclocks. but again, we'll have to see, pure speculation. the anti-hyperthreading crap that may or may not be complete fiction, and if only amd can get it working could well mean that any x2 could beat the pants off a conroe setup with single threaded games and apps. if amd can make a dual socket board, its not too expensive, and you can throw two price dropped x2 3800+'s AND this anti-hyperthreading stuff is real then amd could well be just insanely good without waiting for K8L stuff.
personally i doubt how well it would work IF it can work, and conroe is the thing to be buying.
if for gaming a conroe on a desktop board that can overclock much further would give single threaded apps a distinct lead, and probo dual core aware apps a lead due to overclocks. but again, we'll have to see, pure speculation. the anti-hyperthreading crap that may or may not be complete fiction, and if only amd can get it working could well mean that any x2 could beat the pants off a conroe setup with single threaded games and apps. if amd can make a dual socket board, its not too expensive, and you can throw two price dropped x2 3800+'s AND this anti-hyperthreading stuff is real then amd could well be just insanely good without waiting for K8L stuff.
personally i doubt how well it would work IF it can work, and conroe is the thing to be buying.
You really need to make clear the uses for the machine, if its purely a gaming rig, a woodcrest machine is a waste, no doubt about it, dont kid yourself into thinking 4 cores will make the slightest difference in gaming atm.
Despite what your being told here, a nice overclocking Woodcrest board will very likely not be available at release and likely not for a good time after, the boards ASUS are releasesing atm are not what id call Enthuiast boards, they are clearly aimed at the server market, the prices iv seen for the new ASUS boards are around 600 USD, which severly suggests a server board.
Overclocking is still an option but be ready to use clockgen or someother software to do it. Conroe is clearly the better choice for a gaming rig, i myself would go down the route of a E6600 overclock it to 3.2-3.3 and thats a fairly restrained estimate.
I have a limited experience with dual CPU machines and i currently game on one, its an awsome machine for sure, but no better at gaming than a similar specced single cpu machine.
Despite what your being told here, a nice overclocking Woodcrest board will very likely not be available at release and likely not for a good time after, the boards ASUS are releasesing atm are not what id call Enthuiast boards, they are clearly aimed at the server market, the prices iv seen for the new ASUS boards are around 600 USD, which severly suggests a server board.
Overclocking is still an option but be ready to use clockgen or someother software to do it. Conroe is clearly the better choice for a gaming rig, i myself would go down the route of a E6600 overclock it to 3.2-3.3 and thats a fairly restrained estimate.
I have a limited experience with dual CPU machines and i currently game on one, its an awsome machine for sure, but no better at gaming than a similar specced single cpu machine.
Actually games like Oblivion and Quake4 do appear to run faster on 2 woodcrests or at least that's the subjective impression I get...I have not actually benched before I added the 2nd Woodcrest, but I know in Oblivion you can increase the no. of threads the games use to a ridiculous level with 4 cores.