Recommended High-Performance Workstation CPU (AMD - Intel) Present-2006

Do yourself a favor and get a Core 2 Duo (the link is to one that is overclocked, but even without it they are still very fast). They are pretty darn fast (if you don't mind paying a bit). I am assuming since you want a high end workstation, you are willing to spend a bit of coin.

if you care about being able to compile a project at top speeds, do yourself a favour and get TWO computers. It doesn't take much of a computer to surf the web and watch a few DVDs so you can pick up an extra cheap one, with a good moniter. Then you don't have things like your DVD player sucking up processing power from a computer that you could setup as a simple compile and file server.

I have a Core Duo laptop right now, and Xcode can compile two source files simultaneously. In theory, this makes me twice as efficient. Dualcore is the way forward.

Is the driver situation for XP64 sussed out yet?

And get yourself a sexy RAID 0 setup too. Raid 0 improves drive performance by 2(By making 2 disks become 1 disk, thus dual writing speeds).

The biggest compiler bottleneck IS the hard disk, so having a really fast HDD(or another really high speed/bandwidth medium) will improve compiling aswell.

But, if you want REAL compiling power, build yourself a compiler farm out of 2 or 3 less powerfull computers(For instance, standard office Dells). I think there's some free software package out there for it(Dunno the name).

Then, if you ever run across a (free/cheap) computer, you install the software, hook it into a switch and BAM, more speed.

Toolmaker

Quote:

Original post by Toolmaker And get yourself a sexy RAID 0 setup too. Raid 0 improves drive performance by 2(By making 2 disks become 1 disk, thus dual writing speeds). The biggest compiler bottleneck IS the hard disk, so having a really fast HDD(or another really high speed/bandwidth medium) will improve compiling aswell. But, if you want REAL compiling power, build yourself a compiler farm out of 2 or 3 less powerfull computers(For instance, standard office Dells). I think there's some free software package out there for it(Dunno the name). Then, if you ever run across a (free/cheap) computer, you install the software, hook it into a switch and BAM, more speed. Toolmaker

Like a Beowulf cluster?

A state of the art workstation...

2 DualCore CPUs (Xeon or Operon)
4 Gigabytes of RAM
1 SCSI-RAID-Controller
4 Fast SCSI-Disks in a RAID10

The fastest CPUs for the job will probably be the new Intel Xeon lineup based on the Woodcrest core in combination with DDR2-1066 RAM. They were released just a few days ago.

Will it be expensive? Yes it will =) Will it be fast? Hell yeah!


But I would suggest:
Get a DualCore CPU that fits your budget, 2gb RAM and a reasonably fast Serial ATA disk. Best value for money and still waaaaay faster than you old Athlon.

Quote:

Original post by Toolmaker And get yourself a sexy RAID 0 setup too. Raid 0 improves drive performance by 2(By making 2 disks become 1 disk, thus dual writing speeds).

Not true! Only for linear reads/writes. Random access can even get a bit slower when using RAID0!
But more important than that: Never use RAID0 for anything important! If one disk breaks, everything is lost.
I would suggest RAID1 (mirror) for a normal development machine. If you really need the performance, use RAID10. For mass-storage use RAID5 ;^)

Drivers for X64 are pretty much in the clear (basicly since the end of beta actually) as long as your not using old hardware. The only thing you really run into is people with 56k, and printer support is still horrible. As for EMT64 I recall hearing about compatibility problems with it when it was initially released, you may want to look and see if those have been ironed out yet.

Core 2 Duos are the way to go right now, or if you have trouble getting hold of one at a reasonable price one of the recently greatly reduced Athlon 64 X2s is not a bad option. Opterons and Xeons are really geared towards the server market and the amount of extra cash you have to lay out for them isn't generally worth it for a workstation. Those huge caches are helpful when you're trying to serve 1000s of clients a second on a server but not as useful for single user workstation workloads.

For fast compile times get as much RAM as you can afford - 4GB is a good amount to aim for on a 64 bit machine. A fast hard disk won't hurt either but RAID isn't worth it for the desktop and the 10,000 RPM IDE drives like the Raptor are only worth it if you've got money to burn.

If you're willing to wait a while AMD are planning to release their 4x4 platform later in the year - 2 dual core processors for a quad core system aimed at the desktop / enthusiast market and priced competitively. They'll probably be pretty good for multitasking.

You can cut down on the CPU cost of watching DVDs by buying a recent nVIDIA card and getting nVIDIA's PureVideo player which offloads much of the decompression workload onto the graphics card.

Very cool!

Intel Core 2 Duo Conroe

I'm looking at the 2.x ghz CPUs. Price difference is over $200 when going from 2.1 -> 2.4 -> 2.6, but from my limited experience the higher the clock speed the better (lasts longer without needing to upgrade). How important is clock speed of Intel Conroe?

Kuphryn

appreciate all posts and inputs about both CPUs

looking forward to sharing this journey with a new high-performance workstation powered by Intel Core 2 Duo Conroe

Kuphryn

From what I hear, the new Mac 64-bit quad workstations are pretty damned fast. Though the video card is a bit weak for something so strong everywhere else. Upgrading should help.

As soon as Mac gets all the Boot Camp/Rosetta stuff worked out for it, you should be good to go.

Plus, two operating systems has to be better than one. And you can probably install a linux variant on it.

My 2 cents.

Greetings,

Planning for a high-performance workstation (Intel Core 2 Duo Conroe).

Next, I would like to talk about graphics card (PCI Express).

As mentioned in the post about CPU, I spend much time on developing software, including compiling multiple applications, and watching DVD. Sometimes I play PC games especially RPG and simulation. Great if the graphics card could provide exceptional visual effects when playing games (RPG) and watching DVD.

What are some quality graphics cards that would match well with the new high-performance workstation?

ATI or Nvidia? What quality is the driver software especially on windows platforms (xp and vista)? Which graphics card?

Kuphryn

Greetings,

Finally the last piece of a high-performance workstation (Intel Core 2 Duo Conroe).

Essential questions about Internal Peripherals

* Power Supply

Preferred power supply (500W or more) for high-performance CPU? Many brands and products (450W -> 1000W). Which ones are accurate and reliable?

* CPU Fan

Thermaltake
Zalman

* New motherboards include on-board sound card, network card, etc.

Music and network connection are extremely important. What is the performance difference between on-board (internal) and stand-alone (independent) peripherals? Better to select stand-on sound card and network card to improve motherboard efficiency? Are on-board peripherals reliable?

Kuphryn

From building a hell of a load of computers, I have notcied that by using even the cheapest graphics card, it improves system performance (on machines that have both a chipset based graphics and a AGP/PCI express slot, not tested on 4x or PCI standard)


I have always wondered about network and sound but never had time to test it. I am guessing as motherboards usually have their own chips for these, it is unlikly it could improve performance unlike graphics which are usually intergrated in the main computer chipset.

Intel Core 2 Duo Conroe E6600 (2.4ghz) CPU is fast

New system compiles multiple software projects while processing media (DVD, divx, and audio, etc.) at the speed of light. (500% improvement) Multiple cores CPU significantly improves performance of multithreaded software architectures.

Kuphryn

Quote:

Original post by kuphryn Greetings, Planning for a high-performance workstation (Intel Core 2 Duo Conroe). Next, I would like to talk about graphics card (PCI Express). As mentioned in the post about CPU, I spend much time on developing software, including compiling multiple applications, and watching DVD. Sometimes I play PC games especially RPG and simulation. Great if the graphics card could provide exceptional visual effects when playing games (RPG) and watching DVD. What are some quality graphics cards that would match well with the new high-performance workstation? ATI or Nvidia? What quality is the driver software especially on windows platforms (xp and vista)? Which graphics card? Kuphryn

If you're going to be gaming, get a GeForce 7000 series or Radeon X1000. I'd recommend GeForce 7600GT or Radeon X1600Pro or higher. If you're spending so much on a CPU, you might consider a GeForce 7900 or 7900GT.

There are workstation cards available, namely the Geforce Quadro series and (IIRC) the ATI FireGL. These are workstation cards, however, and won't give you very good gaming performance.

From what I hear, Nvidia has better driver support for Linux, but I haven't had any problems with my ATI card. You shouldn't have problems with Windows drivers if you install current versions.

Quote:

Original post by kuphryn Greetings, Finally the last piece of a high-performance workstation (Intel Core 2 Duo Conroe). Essential questions about Internal Peripherals * Power Supply Preferred power supply (500W or more) for high-performance CPU? Many brands and products (450W -> 1000W). Which ones are accurate and reliable? * CPU Fan Thermaltake Zalman * New motherboards include on-board sound card, network card, etc. Music and network connection are extremely important. What is the performance difference between on-board (internal) and stand-alone (independent) peripherals? Better to select stand-on sound card and network card to improve motherboard efficiency? Are on-board peripherals reliable? Kuphryn

Don't skimp on the PSU. If you get a cheap one, it could fry and total your system. I like my Thermaltake 430-Watt, but you probably want something more for your computer. In general, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. (i.e. 550 watt for $20 is a no-no) Also, read reviews. Some customers are just stupid, others have genuine complaints about a product.

If you get a Conroe, I think that the stock cooler will be more than adequate.

For onboard peripherals, I have had no problems with my onboard gigabit ethernet and soundcard. If you're an audiophile, you might want an external soundcard, but I don't notice a difference between having and not having a separate soundcard. In my opinion, onboard audio and networking doesn't seem to visibly alter performance. They also seem to be just as reliable as add-in cards if you get a good motherboard. I recommend Asus as a quality manufacturer.

Quote:

Original post by Don Quioxte [...]For onboard peripherals, I have had no problems with my onboard gigabit ethernet and soundcard. If you're an audiophile, you might want an external soundcard, but I don't notice a difference between having and not having a separate soundcard. In my opinion, onboard audio and networking doesn't seem to visibly alter performance. They also seem to be just as reliable as add-in cards if you get a good motherboard. I recommend Asus as a quality manufacturer.

I've had no problem with onboard hardware, but software to drive it can be mindblowingly bad. Realtek's audio drivers install a crappy control panel and some other useless software that I don't want, but the only uninstall option I have is to remove the drivers which kills sound completely. Really, though, nvidia isn't too much better - their control panel is horrible (compared to ATI's control panel which uses default windows controls instead of custom crap) and won't listen to me when I say I don't want the tray icon to sit there and waste space. I hate custom controls that were invented solely to make applications more difficult to use, but hardware vendors seem to love that kind of thing =-/

system specs (with cpu fan and power supply):

Intel Core 2 Duo Conroe E6600 (2.4ghz) CPU
ASUS P5W DH Deluxe Intel 975X Chipset
THERMALTAKE CL-P0114 BIG TYPHOON (impressively quiet)
OCZ 2GB (1GB x 2) PC2-7200 900MHZ
Western Digital 74GB SATA150 10,000RPM 16MB
eVGA GEFORCE 7600GT KO 256MB DDR3
ANTEC SP500 SMART POWER 2.0 ATX 12V v2.0 500W (well-equipped set of accessories)
WinXP SP2

Kuphryn

Looks like a pretty solid system. I just built an E6600 machine and it's outright divine for performance.

Good luck finding stock on Conroe CPUs right now, though; they're moving pretty fast. The E6400 is pretty widely available (and not really a noticeable drop from the E6600) but the E6600 and faster models are downright scarce.