pentium HT or dual Athlon

[proces2]

Anyone have a guess as to which would be the faster machine? i got them worked out to just about the same price with all other similar specs. being similar.

 

Pentium 4 3.06 Ghz HT

1GB pc2700 ddr sdram

 

or

 

Dual Athlon MP 2000+

1GB pc2100 registered ecc ddr sdram

 

I checked on the benchmarks that Greg Hess had gathered but didn't see anything for the Pentium 4 HT's.

 

A side question - what (if any) is the difference (performance-wise) between the registered RAM and unregistered RAM?

 

sean

[Greg Hess]

Pentium 4 3.06 Ghz HT

1GB pc2700 ddr sdram

 

or

 

Dual Athlon MP 2000+

1GB pc2100 registered ecc ddr sdram

 

Its hard to make solid decisions on closely matched systems, because the performance will be determined not so much as persay the technology allows for, but how the individual user uses the machine.

 

With that in mind, the systems would actually be about equal in default max5 rendering. A 3.06 HT is about equiv to a dual 1900+ MP in rendering prowness, if you have both HT and SSE enabled.

 

In some scenes the Dual Athlon will still win, but in most, (because of max5's single threaded bias) the P4 will take the crown.

 

The Dual athlon will be more responsive, and be able to multitask multiple apps much better. It'll also let you do things like render in the background while working in photoshop. (through affinity/priority settings).

 

The P4 will boot faster, have higher game/viewport fps, and open applications faster then the Dual athlon. (3.06 ghz vs 1.67 in single threaded tasks)

 

If you compare it to a Dual 2400+ MP system, it would lean towards the athlons favor (dual 2.0 ghz) But a dual 2000+ is only Dual 1.67 ghz, so your making alot of sacrifices there.

 

I checked on the benchmarks that Greg Hess had gathered but didn't see anything for the Pentium 4 HT's.

 

Thats cause I haven't bought mine yet. See note about i875/i865PE

 

A side question - what (if any) is the difference (performance-wise) between the registered RAM and unregistered RAM?

 

Registered ECC dimms are usually about 1% slower, but infinitely more stable. Because of error correcting (which is usually a server level technology) it will eliminate almost all known ram errors that would occur due to flucuations in EMI/voltage/innerstellar space (no joke).

 

You can however run unbuffered ram in the Dual athlon, you'd just be limited to the first two dimms. (If you then wanted to upgrade, you'd need to buy 3 or 4 totally new registered dimms)

 

Remember, don't buy a P4 now if your going to get one, buy it next month. The 3.0/800 and 3.2/800 come out in late may, along with i875 and i865PE, which feature PC3200 Dual Channel DDR, and 800 Front side buses. Or translated into layman's speak.

 

Hella fast man...hella fast.

[garethace]

Great post Greg, and some very useful insight there into ECC memory as it is relevant to how people want to use a workstation.

 

Most people i know who buy new workstations, still treat them with the same suspicion they used to treat their botchy old Pentium III system that was slow, crashed alot and never 'seemed' to do everything they wanted.

 

This perception of a workstation will hopefully change over the next couple of years as standards improve from VIA, Intel, nVidia (great work there), AMD, Serverworks or whoever is responsible for 'system stablity' and performance. And of course lets not forget our friends Microsoft, or will the future for the workstation really be Linux?

 

I have listened often to people in the Sun workstation jobs, who often complain about less cpu brute force than x86 users. But the other side of the coin is Sun workstation users rarely ever have to complain about stablity of their software, operating system or system.

 

Just one of the perks of buying a system from a whole system maker like Sun. Instead of a mish-mash of different components made by Dell, Microsoft, Intel, Autodesk, ..... etc.

 

Apparently Sun do make OEM stuff for small players like Polywell to sell as Solaris based workstations and servers.

[proces2]

Thanks a ton for the info Greg.

 

i think i am leaning towards the dual machine then. even though it will render slower, this is the ONE machine for my new (and first) employee. so, with only one box, they should be able to have something render, yet not be locked out from the computer. with the dual machine (like you said) you can have other programs open with the rendering running.

 

sean

[Greg Hess]

(like you said) you can have other programs open with the rendering running.

 

This will require a slight inital lesson in setting affinity's...or at least, forcing windows to always load max on cpu #2. All very simple to do.

[bigcahunak]

Originally posted by Greg Hess:

This will require a slight inital lesson in setting affinity's...or at least, forcing windows to always load max on cpu #2. All very simple to do.

Where can I get more info about this very simple to do...?

Is it possible in XP only, or 2K is in the game too?

[Greg Hess]

I only know how to do it in windows 2000. I assume it'll work in Windows XP as well.

 

Will have more info on it later, working on my car right now.

[garethace]

Thanks very much Greg, because i have always used VIZ with W2k and two Intel cpus also. I will look forward to learning how to do this trick with the second cpu and MAX/VIZ.

[Fermi Bertran]

Originally posted by bigcahunak:

Is it possible in XP only, or 2K is in the game too?

In win2K with your app already going on, open Task Manager, Processes folder, select your app: 3dsviz.exe, 3dsmax.exe, whatever... rightclick on it, last on the list: "stablish affinity" and you'll see all available processors, (by deffault all should be enabled) uncheck the ones you want to free for other jobs.

 

Should take the same time it took you to read this

 

Forgot to add:

 

You wnat enough RAM in your system for all the processes going on, while small swaping won't practically affect a single rendering job, when multitasking swaping may mean serious slow down...

 

[ May 03, 2003, 09:59 AM: Message edited by: FB ]

[Greg Hess]

Sorry guys.

 

I'm currently sans car, and neither have access to my primary machines, nor my normal database of information. It'll be another week or so before I get a new car/fix the old one.

 

Then I should get back into my grove.

 

There is a way to set priority and affinity in the command line, just don't have the info here with me.