Help my logic !

[Olly]

I have a little predicament here, and was wondering if you could help ! :
I have 2 systems, a server, which consists of :

2 x Xeon dual core 3.2ghz processors, running server 2003, 6x400gb hard drives, AGP graphics, etc etc. I use this machine for most of my work (photoshop, video encoding, website developement, etc)

My other machine, is a 2.4 conroe, evga mobo, 8800gtx gfx card, which i mainly use for games.

I have taken a new job recently, and my game playing time as been significantly reduced due to the longer hours im now working !

I'm thinking of doing this:

Sell my games pc, without the 8800gtx. Buy a new dual xeon motherboard with a pci-e x16 gfx slot and put the 8800gtx in the server system.

This will allow me to carrying on using my server for most of my work, and when if i ever get the chance to play my games, i'll have the 8800gtx in there too, with the quad xeons powering it all.

Is this a good idea ? are server cpus as good as the modern dual core chips like the conroe ?

I dont mind a slight drop in performance, but not too much !

any thoughts ? or should I just stick with the 2 systems ? theres just a lot of expensive hardware going to waste at the moment !

 

[steve258]

How about selling your dual xeon plus mobo and put all HDDs in your conroe rig, OC that conroe to 3.6Ghz and it will handle all your works and games nicely.

 

[Olly]

so your saying an oc'd conroe to 3.6 dual core cpu will be as fast as 4 xeons at 3.2 ?

 

[steve258]

Depends on which architecture the Xeon is based on. If they're the old Netburst Xeons then yes, an Oced conroe will easily outperform them, unless the apps you are running truely utilise 4 cores at the same time.

If they are the new core based Xeons then of course stick with them.

 

[Olly]

they are socket 604, nocona core, which i think are pretty good.

anyone else have a view on this ?