PC boffins! Tell me why I should got for dual processors/dual-core!
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I was reading about the PathScale Hyper-transport <-> Infiniband adapters. Basically, you take 4 8xx opterons, use two HT ports each to connect them in a ring, use 2 HT ports for the node IO, and 2 connect to the Infiniband adapter. Then you rack up boards like this, and plug it into an IB switch.Crispy said:
Now there's a real computer.
Of course, you probably need to be doing weather forecasting to make any sane use out of it... Shame really; I'll probably just have to continue saving up for a Horus-based Opteron multiprocessor. (About 0.000001% of the way there so far...)
editor
hiraethified
That all sounds good to me. How much of a wad would I have to wave your way to build it?stdPikachu said:
I'm not so mad on games although I do occasionally dabble.
I'd be looking for a reasonably quiet system too so supersonic Concorde-esque fans are out of the question and as my room as is small, thermo-nuclear heat generators wouldn't be much fun either!
editor said:
There's basicaly two sources of sound, fans and hard drives. Can't do much about the latter so let's ignore it.
If you're getting a seperate PSU, which you should, most give a sound rating in the specs. Get one that's <20 dB. The AMD reference coolers are reasonably quiet, though you could get a quiter one for ~£30 like this
http://computerprices.pricegrabber.co.uk/search_techspecs_full.php/masterid=4998363
The fan on a mid range graphics card shouldn't be too noisy, and a low end one will be passively cooled.
WWWeed
Bandwidth Bandit
I have an AMD 64 3800 X2, and its only slightly faster than my old AMD althlon 2800Xp+. It really depends on what you use your machine for, If you use a lot of cpu intensive apps and sometimes need to run them at the same time go for an AMD64 X2 as when running multiple processes is when it really dose dose kick ass! Do you have any idea what its like to Play doom3 in high quality mode and encode a video DVD at the same time!! However if you have no need for this and just after performance I'd go for a Venice cored AMD64 4000+ with a meg of cache.
I cant really talk about the 64-bit side of things as I took windows 64bit edition off allmost instantly beacuse of all the shite it gave me with needing new drivers, However I have been meaning to wack on a copy of mandrake or something.
I cant really talk about the 64-bit side of things as I took windows 64bit edition off allmost instantly beacuse of all the shite it gave me with needing new drivers, However I have been meaning to wack on a copy of mandrake or something.
I will be brief. dual cpu= encoding or playin games +encoding movies +burning a dvd+watching a dvd and defragging at the same time with no noticable slow down.
not a lot of programs are taking advantage of x2 cpus yet as it is.
better off going for an amd 64 3200 cpu with msi mobo bigger hard drive and more memory. off the top of my head 9o for cpu 60 for mobo 60 for gig of pc3200 ram 60 for a 160gb hard disk= sorted.
need it built? pm me. (oh and dont forget the video card if you are a gamer (100-450 for a decent one).
not a lot of programs are taking advantage of x2 cpus yet as it is.
better off going for an amd 64 3200 cpu with msi mobo bigger hard drive and more memory. off the top of my head 9o for cpu 60 for mobo 60 for gig of pc3200 ram 60 for a 160gb hard disk= sorted.
need it built? pm me. (oh and dont forget the video card if you are a gamer (100-450 for a decent one).
I've just built a x2 4400 system with 800gig raid array and 4 gig of ram, liquid cooled, spanking big tower for £1200+vat. I reckon an X2 would do you well...and possibly come in within budget if you fancied building it. A couple of sata drives and fair amount of memory, you could use some of your current parts I presume, that would leave you within budget.
I am using a dual core m.s.i mobo along with a 4800x2 so whats cool?
ok imagine you are doing somthing on your pc and everything locks up (i go on yahoo now and again and there is always some dick with a special tool that is designed to lock the cpu up causing your program to freeze, it would seem the only way to fix the prob is a reboot.
Enter the dual core cpu. one core is locked up you kill the program nothing is frozen becuase core two is saying "not me mate" and giving me the responce i would never get from my single core set up.
that said also the 4400 is a great buy as it will run at 4800 speed, i just like my stuff running as stated.
overall the fact that i no longer have a system hang ad that if a problem arises core two fixes that problem i love dual core alone for that.
remember about 80% of current programs do not take advantage of dual core systems so there is not really a decent benchmark. (that i know of) but games like far cry do have a patch that apparently make maps bigger (cos its 64bit) and some other stuff that when i looked at i didnt notice at all. the changes are there but we are talking improvments to the naked eye that we simply cannot percieve.
for me an improvment would be in grafix cards making games look look like i was in the real world as my x1800xt positivly makes games kick ass. i cannot see a visible improvement over my 3700 and x800xt pt .
imho dua l core is defininatly worth it. buy and be happy.
ok imagine you are doing somthing on your pc and everything locks up (i go on yahoo now and again and there is always some dick with a special tool that is designed to lock the cpu up causing your program to freeze, it would seem the only way to fix the prob is a reboot.
Enter the dual core cpu. one core is locked up you kill the program nothing is frozen becuase core two is saying "not me mate" and giving me the responce i would never get from my single core set up.
that said also the 4400 is a great buy as it will run at 4800 speed, i just like my stuff running as stated.
overall the fact that i no longer have a system hang ad that if a problem arises core two fixes that problem i love dual core alone for that.
remember about 80% of current programs do not take advantage of dual core systems so there is not really a decent benchmark. (that i know of) but games like far cry do have a patch that apparently make maps bigger (cos its 64bit) and some other stuff that when i looked at i didnt notice at all. the changes are there but we are talking improvments to the naked eye that we simply cannot percieve.
for me an improvment would be in grafix cards making games look look like i was in the real world as my x1800xt positivly makes games kick ass. i cannot see a visible improvement over my 3700 and x800xt pt .
imho dua l core is defininatly worth it. buy and be happy.
editor
hiraethified
My current machine continues to grind away in a rather unhealthy manner, so - as a starting point - how would something like this machine fare (it's by Mesh, but I'm only giving it as an example and will shop around for a better deal):
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4400+ with HT Tech
Windows® XP Professional
Mesh Matrix² Vista
Midi-Tower ATX Case +550W PSU
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe PCI-Express Mainboard - ATX
2048MB DDR400 Memory - PC3200
300GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
256MB ATI Radeon X800GTO - TV-Out + DVI - PCI-Express
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Sound Card
3 Years Back-to-Base
£1225
It's at the higher end of my budget, but seeing as I spend all day on the PC (and make my living from it, one way or another), I'm willing to fork out for something decent.
Opinions?
(Remember: the graphics card will have to drive two Viewsonic 19" TFTs too...)
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4400+ with HT Tech
Windows® XP Professional
Mesh Matrix² Vista
Midi-Tower ATX Case +550W PSU
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe PCI-Express Mainboard - ATX
2048MB DDR400 Memory - PC3200
300GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
256MB ATI Radeon X800GTO - TV-Out + DVI - PCI-Express
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Sound Card
3 Years Back-to-Base
£1225
It's at the higher end of my budget, but seeing as I spend all day on the PC (and make my living from it, one way or another), I'm willing to fork out for something decent.
Opinions?
(Remember: the graphics card will have to drive two Viewsonic 19" TFTs too...)
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
Very nice, the graphics card is going to be more than capable of what you need.
The only thing i dislike is the motherboard, the case, psu and probabbly the brand of RAM.
However with a 3 year back to base it's pretty damn good. Buy it.
The only thing i dislike is the motherboard, the case, psu and probabbly the brand of RAM.
However with a 3 year back to base it's pretty damn good. Buy it.
editor
hiraethified
I'm not really bothered about the case, to be honest. On a foolish whim, I bought a groovy blue light emblazoned, temperature-reporting, half see-through silver case a few years ago and seeing as it sits underneath my desk I never look at the thing (the novelty of the blue lights lasted all over a day before it was switched off).Bob_the_lost said:
What's the prob with the PSU?
GarfieldLeChat
fucking awesome but wrong
Are you using photoshop cs or cs2 ?
I have noticed that cs2 is far in a way more system resource hogging than cs and i have 2 gig of ram to bugger round with it's still a slow moving app... processor wise it doesn't max out the cpu but my god it's like air in that it expands to fit the space it's got...
I have noticed that cs2 is far in a way more system resource hogging than cs and i have 2 gig of ram to bugger round with it's still a slow moving app... processor wise it doesn't max out the cpu but my god it's like air in that it expands to fit the space it's got...
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
It doesn't say what brand it is. Therefore i don't like it.
The case is just that it's not the one i'd have chosen, nothing wrong with it in itself.
The case is just that it's not the one i'd have chosen, nothing wrong with it in itself.
editor
hiraethified
CS2 at the moment -and it sure is a beast of a resource hog!GarfieldLeChat said:
I often need to be working on a ton of things simultaneously, so I'm thinking dualcore will be the way to go.
An extra 2 gig of ram would cost a hefty £220 quid, but maybe it would be worth it...
Incidentally, I looked up a few reviews of the motherboard and they seem remarkably favourable:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzAz
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,119984,pg,2,00.asp#
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
2 Gig of RAM should NOT cost £200 
I bought mine for £155 and it's slightly nicer than average stuff, the cheap stuff only costs around £100+
Unless you're getting overclocking type RAM then you really shouldn't be paying that much for it.
You can just buy it elsewhere and stick it in yourself, a much better idea imo.
The motherboard is good, but the A8N32- SLI is a little bit better.
I bought mine for £155 and it's slightly nicer than average stuff, the cheap stuff only costs around £100+
Unless you're getting overclocking type RAM then you really shouldn't be paying that much for it.
You can just buy it elsewhere and stick it in yourself, a much better idea imo.
The motherboard is good, but the A8N32- SLI is a little bit better.
editor
hiraethified
Or, how about...
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4600+ with HT Tech.
XP Professional Edition
Midi-Tower ATX Case +550W PSU -Black/Silver
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe PCI-Express Mainboard
4GB DDR 400 Memory
400GB (2x 200GB) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB Buffer
SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
256MB ATI Radeon X1800XL - PCI-Express with DVI & TV out
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Sound Card
ASUS WL 138G 802.11G/B Wi-Fi PCI Card
Firewire PCI Card
Advantage Warranty - 2 Years On-Site + 1 Year BTB-T&C
£1,700
(more than I want to pay, but if it's going to prove an investment....)
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4600+ with HT Tech.
XP Professional Edition
Midi-Tower ATX Case +550W PSU -Black/Silver
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe PCI-Express Mainboard
4GB DDR 400 Memory
400GB (2x 200GB) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB Buffer
SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
256MB ATI Radeon X1800XL - PCI-Express with DVI & TV out
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Sound Card
ASUS WL 138G 802.11G/B Wi-Fi PCI Card
Firewire PCI Card
Advantage Warranty - 2 Years On-Site + 1 Year BTB-T&C
£1,700
(more than I want to pay, but if it's going to prove an investment....)
editor
hiraethified
I'm still working on this.
How about this deal from Mesh?
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4400+ with HT Tech
ASUS A8N-E - Nforce 4 PCI-Express Mainboard
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional Edition
Brushed Aluminium ATX Midi Tower +550W PSU - Black
4GB DDR 400 Memory
500GB (2x 250GB) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
16x DVD-ROM Drive (40x CD-ROM)
256MB ATI Radeon X800GTO - TV-Out + DVI
7.1 Channel Surround Sound Audio (on-board)
Years On-Site + 1 Year BTB-T&C
Cost: a less hair raising £1345
Some Qs:
1. is it worth the £70 upgrade from AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+ to 4400+ ?
2. what benefits would there be by upgrading to ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe PCI-Express Mainboard for £35?
3. is it worth spending an extra 60 quid for the 256MB ATI Radeon X800 XL - TV-Out + DVI - PCI-Express video card?
4. Is the onboard ASUS 7:1 soundcard good enough for most uses (playing/burning music CDs/some basic editing) or would it be worth shelling out an extra 30 quid for the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 4 or a hefty £130 for CreativeLabs Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
How about this deal from Mesh?
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4400+ with HT Tech
ASUS A8N-E - Nforce 4 PCI-Express Mainboard
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional Edition
Brushed Aluminium ATX Midi Tower +550W PSU - Black
4GB DDR 400 Memory
500GB (2x 250GB) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
16x DVD-ROM Drive (40x CD-ROM)
256MB ATI Radeon X800GTO - TV-Out + DVI
7.1 Channel Surround Sound Audio (on-board)
Years On-Site + 1 Year BTB-T&C
Cost: a less hair raising £1345
Some Qs:
1. is it worth the £70 upgrade from AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+ to 4400+ ?
2. what benefits would there be by upgrading to ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe PCI-Express Mainboard for £35?
3. is it worth spending an extra 60 quid for the 256MB ATI Radeon X800 XL - TV-Out + DVI - PCI-Express video card?
4. Is the onboard ASUS 7:1 soundcard good enough for most uses (playing/burning music CDs/some basic editing) or would it be worth shelling out an extra 30 quid for the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 4 or a hefty £130 for CreativeLabs Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
1. No. The performance advantage is around 3% in real world applications. Save your money and upgrade sooner. TBH the 3800+ offers 80% of the performance of the 4800+ most of the time. http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/21/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts_2005/page36.htmleditor said:
3. Not unless you want to play modern games at a few more fps.
4. Stick with the onboard sound.
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
1. No, i went with the 4400 but i was planning to OC it anyway so i wanted the full 2x1mb cache, you aren't. Also your main CPU hog is going to be photoshop, which doesn't gain anything at all from the increased cache.
2. The difference between the SLI and the E is small, the SLI will come with an extra ethernet port but that's the most noticable change.
3. *shrugs* Nvida fanboy here.
4. Depends, if you've got speakers that cost more than £70 then get an XFI (why do you want the fata1ty one anyway?) Do you use onboard sound at the moment?
2. The difference between the SLI and the E is small, the SLI will come with an extra ethernet port but that's the most noticable change.
3. *shrugs* Nvida fanboy here.
4. Depends, if you've got speakers that cost more than £70 then get an XFI (why do you want the fata1ty one anyway?) Do you use onboard sound at the moment?
I just bought a 4400x2 and msi kt8 diamond mobo. compared to my 754 socket 3700 and msi kt8neo it flies.
my old rig when playing bf2 would take about 30 seconds or more to return to desktop from an alt+tab, the new machines does it in 5 seconds. I did consider buying the 4600 but moneywise it wasnt worth it at all when i can just raise my fsb by 20mhz and have the same clock speed as the 4800 and have the full lvl 2 cache x 2.
the new dual core cpu's utterly kick ass and i love mine.
my old rig when playing bf2 would take about 30 seconds or more to return to desktop from an alt+tab, the new machines does it in 5 seconds. I did consider buying the 4600 but moneywise it wasnt worth it at all when i can just raise my fsb by 20mhz and have the same clock speed as the 4800 and have the full lvl 2 cache x 2.
the new dual core cpu's utterly kick ass and i love mine.
editor
hiraethified
Well, after reading the feedback here and churning through a ton of online reviews, I've ordered the thing!
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+ with HT Tech.
XP Professional
Brushed Aluminium ATX Midi Tower +550W PSU - Black*
(*this is a bit bonkers - it's got blue lights and daft dials!)
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe PCI-Express Mainboard - ATX
6x USB Ports, GB LAN, Dual Channel Memory, 8 Channel Audio, 4x SATA ,2x UDMA, RAID 0,RAID1,RAID 0+1
4GB DDR 400 Memory
500GB (2x 250GB) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
16x DVD-ROM Drive (40x CD-ROM)
256MB ATI Radeon X800GTO - TV-Out + DVI - PCI-Express
7.1 Channel Surround Sound Audio (on-board)
Firewire PCI Card
Advantage Warranty - 2 Years On-Site + 1 Year BTB-T&C
It hurt to click on a button that says, "pay £1,390", but hopefully it'll prove to be a wise investment!
Thanks again for the feedback y'all!
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+ with HT Tech.
XP Professional
Brushed Aluminium ATX Midi Tower +550W PSU - Black*
(*this is a bit bonkers - it's got blue lights and daft dials!)
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe PCI-Express Mainboard - ATX
6x USB Ports, GB LAN, Dual Channel Memory, 8 Channel Audio, 4x SATA ,2x UDMA, RAID 0,RAID1,RAID 0+1
4GB DDR 400 Memory
500GB (2x 250GB) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW
16x DVD-ROM Drive (40x CD-ROM)
256MB ATI Radeon X800GTO - TV-Out + DVI - PCI-Express
7.1 Channel Surround Sound Audio (on-board)
Firewire PCI Card
Advantage Warranty - 2 Years On-Site + 1 Year BTB-T&C
It hurt to click on a button that says, "pay £1,390", but hopefully it'll prove to be a wise investment!
Thanks again for the feedback y'all!
Sunray
Its sunny somewhere.
With those big apps like Photoshop, I think the best improvment you could have made is to improve the disk subsystem of your PC. Few years ago, if you really want good performance SCSI was the only system to consider as it was by far the fastest system. Pricy too.
Since the SATA Raptor drives came out, this isn't so clear cut. These are 10000rpm drives and the new ones come with command queuing. This was until then a preserve of SCSI. If you pair up a couple of these drives in a raid array that uses striping, the peformance of your system will improve incredibly. From a clean install, my PC with 2 Raptors boots XP in about 3 seconds. (Shame about the 1 min BIOS and RAID initalisation)
A in depth review of the speed of these drives
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200512/WD740GD-00FLC0_1.html
One other thing to do when you install a PC, is to have a seperate partition for the swap file and things like the web cache and history.
Microsoft recommend 1.5x the amount of memory for the swap file. The default is for XP to manage it itself. If you let it it will expand and shrink the swap at will. Best to fix it at 1.5x the memory of the machine. This then will allow you to have all the web cache and history on the same partition as the swap without it getting too fragmented. This is often what makes machine start to grind over time. Fragmentation of the swap file as the disk fills up. The more fragmented it gets, the slower your pc will operate on big tasks.
Some advocate, with 2Gb of ram, that you should switch off the swap altogether. Knowing how windows manages memory, I am less sure. Only one way to find out.
Since the SATA Raptor drives came out, this isn't so clear cut. These are 10000rpm drives and the new ones come with command queuing. This was until then a preserve of SCSI. If you pair up a couple of these drives in a raid array that uses striping, the peformance of your system will improve incredibly. From a clean install, my PC with 2 Raptors boots XP in about 3 seconds. (Shame about the 1 min BIOS and RAID initalisation)
A in depth review of the speed of these drives
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200512/WD740GD-00FLC0_1.html
One other thing to do when you install a PC, is to have a seperate partition for the swap file and things like the web cache and history.
Microsoft recommend 1.5x the amount of memory for the swap file. The default is for XP to manage it itself. If you let it it will expand and shrink the swap at will. Best to fix it at 1.5x the memory of the machine. This then will allow you to have all the web cache and history on the same partition as the swap without it getting too fragmented. This is often what makes machine start to grind over time. Fragmentation of the swap file as the disk fills up. The more fragmented it gets, the slower your pc will operate on big tasks.
Some advocate, with 2Gb of ram, that you should switch off the swap altogether. Knowing how windows manages memory, I am less sure. Only one way to find out.
lobster
Well-Known Member
funny enough i was debating over getting a dual core but instead went for amd
athon 64 3200+, asus A8v-se mboard
1024mb ddr 400mhz pc3200 ram
antec slk1650 midi tower 350 watt psu
17inch lg monitor tft lcd
maxtor diamondmax plu 9 120gb sata 8mb cache
pinneer dvd rewriter
nvidia 6600gt pci-E 256mb
keyboard and mouse
floppy drive (even though i never use it, because the floppy controller is broken i think)
i got it all for £692.06
athon 64 3200+, asus A8v-se mboard
1024mb ddr 400mhz pc3200 ram
antec slk1650 midi tower 350 watt psu
17inch lg monitor tft lcd
maxtor diamondmax plu 9 120gb sata 8mb cache
pinneer dvd rewriter
nvidia 6600gt pci-E 256mb
keyboard and mouse
floppy drive (even though i never use it, because the floppy controller is broken i think)
i got it all for £692.06
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