dual xeon or single pentium 4

[johnnyboy32]

My current system is an athlon 3200xp on an asus a7n8x deluxe with 512 meg ram. HD are 2 x seagate barracuda V 80gig in raid 0 and 1 x 200gig samsung spinpoint. I have just been given a brand new 73gig hitatchi u320 scsi drive. I asked the advice of a colleague about buying a scsi card but he suggested i may be better off buying a server mainboard and new chip. I did not want to spend this much money but he then told me he could probably get me a xeon processor from a dell workstation (precision 460). would i be better off buying a gigabyte server mainboard (GA-9ITDW) and matching xeon chip to run 2 processors or spend the equivalent amount on a pentium 4 and motherboard and of course a scsi card. The pc is used mainly for playing games and video editing.

 

[FrankJH]

this is a general assumption as I dont know very much about xeons

I would check that your psu fits, as I have heard that server boards often require a different connector from standard pc / workstation ATX boards.

I would also suggest that any inbuilt scsi ports on a mobo will not work anyting like as well as a well set up pci-x card. Your friend is right in the fact that if you get a scsi card that fits in a standard pci slot it wont work as fast as its capable of as there arent as many channels for pci useage as in a server mobo ( I believe this is the right terminology, but please someone correct me if I am wrong)

Gaming wont be that brilliant on a xeon or pentium system ( as an equivelnat AMD system) however you will see the payback in the very good video editiing - which is more important to you? X2 cpu's ( and indeed the dual core pentium chips) would probably be better for you in my opinion as they would be good in games and good video encoding programs should make use of both cores ( but check with yur application of choice's website to verify)

SCSI isnt the be all and end all unless you are doing serious video editing with large files. eon chips are great server choices but in myopinion there are better workstation chips available ( depending on what yur paying for the cpu's) and there are decent performing s939 mobo's ( for amd cpu's) for not very much money and they will use standard psu's ( but for a decent gaming system I would check yours is 400w plus unless you are getting a new one?

Hope this is of some help

 

[matt100]

You'll need a new psu, you might end up needing new ram (registered memory on a lot of server boards) and you're going to get very little from a scsi drive that you wouldn't get from a raptor.

Thats in fact if you edit large files, if you don'd and its just for a bit of high speed level loading in games I really honestly wouldn't bother.

If you're going to spend money on upgrading I'd do it properly and get dual core and pci-e rather than go chasing scsi drives.

Just my 2p!

 

[BillytheImpaler]

I just built a 3.2 GHz dual Xeon board to replace my single 3.6 GHz P4 workstation. The difference is positively astounding. Everything is lightning quick. It makes me want to never buy a single core/CPU machine again.

Not all dual Xeon mobos require ECC registered RAM. The Asus NCT-D E7525 is a fantastic choice. It takes a PCI-E video card and supports DDR2 RAM.

 

[Combat squirrel]

if playing games get an AMD board, maybe an opteron dual core then put your scsi harddisk in that, how you get it for free anyways ? nice1 ! lol

 

[mattio1980]

dont waste your money on intel **** over priced and over rated if you are so up for building a duel cpu system go for the 2xx range from amd

AMD *OEM* 1 to 2-Way Opteron 248 (2200MHz) 64Bit CPU 1024L2 Cache

£201.49 Inc VAT

but as said you will need reg'ed ram about 140 for a gb

FULLY star your swearing.

Otacon

 

[johnnyboy32]

The only reason that I considered going down the xeon route was because i have been offered it for free. I don't really know if they are any good and the general feeling on here is to go for an AMD with motherboard and scsi card

 

[MrWhippy]

The only reason that I considered going down the xeon route was because i have been offered it for free.

if i was offered it for free, i'd snap their hands off.

try it, if it doesn't work out to be good enough, sell it or give it back and then buy into something more apropriate...

 

[Wyvern971]

tbh when it comes to Xeons I'd have to say "suck it and see" some people really won't find it useful, others will swear by it.

I have a dual Xeon rig as at the time I got it (the same week doom3 was released) the CPUs were fairly cheap in comparison with the P4s.

As far as windows and multi-tasking goes they run fine (guessing it's going to be Nocona cores if so they run fairly hot)

My board does require ECC RAM which costs a fair bit more, with little benefit in most cases.

As far as SCSI goes I would say there is little benefit for a home user (unless you have an U320 15K RPM Seagate Cheetah drive

for a free upgrade I would say it isn't bad, but these days if it came down to splashing out my own cash, an AMD dual core would be the call of the day.