New Intel Conroe vs New Xeon 5100 series

[ahbtsang]

Price them out and compare on price, whether your renders will farm well / whether it would be better to have one faster machine or two, how much office space you can use. You can get the same amount of CPU power either way, so go with the other factors.

 

Thanks for the advice, in terms of price, for sure building 2 Core2Duo desktops will be lesser than building a dual Xeon machine.

 

Since I have a large available space, so I have a plan which is to build a Core2Duo desktop with higher spec (for creation) and 1 with lower config. which is mainly for rendering node for distributed render. But both have a high spec CPU.

[AJLynn]

One more piece of advice - having all the power in one machine is worthwhile because it's usually a pain to farm test renders.

[Geoffc]

One more piece of advice - having all the power in one machine is worthwhile because it's usually a pain to farm test renders.

 

being much more on the Noob side, I would definitely second that!

[architimmy]

The new chips have much a much improved design that churns through vector and integer math like nothing. They definately trounce athlons current offerings in terms of plain processor performance. Building a workstation for rendering you need to take into account the kind of application you are using that computer for. Rendering is a very memory intensive application and hence memory bandwidth is an important perfomance consideration when choosing a new processor. Right now the new Core 2 chipset has a large large on chip cache as well as some very good memory prefetch alogrithms which allow it to jump around some limitations it suffers in the memory access areas. This chip runs off the same socket as some current intel offerings so it also suffers from some of the same limitations. If you're going with a dual dual core set go with something designed for highly memory intensive applications (e.g. server tech). I wouldn't consider desktop parts unless you're thinking about the althon 64 x2 line. In this case it would be worth your while to wait for amd's new 4x4 chipset to come out. Otherwise read up some performance comparisons between the new xeons and the opterons. They run a price premium but these chips are going to be able to handle big data sets much quicker and you should notice if you render big scenes. The xeon, while based of the Core 2 design, has a faster front side bus and uses FB-DIMM RAM which has a higher bandwith than the DDR2 that comes with the desktop Core 2 parts.

 

My suggestion... go with the Xeon if price is no object. If you want to go with the desktop parts to save money, wait a month or two for the new 4x4 from amd and the 4 core designs from intel that are going to compete with it. Your wallet with thank you and 4 buckets are so much cooler than 2.

[Cesar R]

are the core 2 duos out yet?

[Cesar R]

im very consused here...

 

CoreDuo - is its the same are the Pentium-D ?

Core2Duo = next gen based on CoreDuo still 2 cores

 

Im in the process of shopping for a workstation so i need to have my facts straight =) I just read the whole thread and realized that then xeon 5060 in old techonology correct?

[Cesar R]

i was just reading intel's site and noticed that the 5000 series has 2MB of L2 per core, and the 5100 series has 4MB shared which can be alocated to each core as you wish. for the pourpose of a workstation wouldnt you want 2x2mb rather than 4mb shared?

[manta]

Core duo is a laptop chip, a very successful one...

 

Core2 duo is the desktop Equivalent...

[Cesar R]

Core duo is a laptop chip, a very successful one...

Core2 duo is the desktop Equivalent...

 

 

is the pentium D based on the Core2 Duo just like the 5100 xeons as per this thread?

[AJLynn]

The Pentium D, Pentium 4, P4 Mobile and Xeons previous to the new 5100 series are all "Netburst" architecture chips. This is an architecture that Intel started using with the P4, that is able to hit very high clock frequencies (the number in MHz) at the expense of efficiency - the result being CPUs that have a higher MHz number than their competitors but don't actually perform as well. This was done by splitting up the processing into many more steps than before (there are Netburst CPUs with 34 steps in the pipeline, compared to 12-14 in some other chips).

 

The Pentium M (e.g. the Centrino chip), Core Duo, Core2 Duo and Xeon 5100 series are an entirely different architecture that is more like the Pentium 3. Lower clock rates but mush more efficent, and with lower power consumption. Also, the dual-core system used in the newer chips is much more efficient than the older Netburst dual cores.

 

The AMD architecture is more like the new Intels than the Netburst Intels - fewer pipeline steps, lower MHz performing more efficiently, lower power consumption (though not as low as the new Intels) and a more efficient dual-core.

 

So basically, Pentium D is bad, AthlonX2 and Opteron are good, and (until AMD overhauls its line) Core Duo, Core2 Duo and Xeon 51xx (three very similar CPUs) are best.

[Cesar R]

awesome thanks !!!

 

so at this point my only intel based option is a xeon 51XX

[AJLynn]

Yeah, that's pretty much it, assuming you want a dual-dual capability. Read the other thread (that Strat started) - I'm going to stop writing the same things in several threads at once

[Chris LeBlanc]

Rendering is a very memory intensive application and hence memory bandwidth is an important perfomance consideration when choosing a new processor. Right now the new Core 2 chipset has a large large on chip cache as well as some very good memory prefetch alogrithms which allow it to jump around some limitations it suffers in the memory access areas. This chip runs off the same socket as some current intel offerings so it also suffers from some of the same limitations. If you're going with a dual dual core set go with something designed for highly memory intensive applications (e.g. server tech). I wouldn't consider desktop parts unless you're thinking about the althon 64 x2 line. In this case it would be worth your while to wait for amd's new 4x4 chipset to come out. QUOTE]

 

Architimmy-

Could you eleborate on what you mean by memory bandwidth being important while rendering? If you you mean it's important not to run out of ram, I completely understand... however you seem to be implying something much more subtle. I have been looking for information on how the various speeds in FSB, ram speeds, etc may, or may not affect rendering times, and can't seem to find any info on it. Is rendering a computing task that even has the capacity to max out this type and amount of ram "bandwidth"?

Thanks,

Chris

[atj-w]

The Core Duo CPU codename (Yonah) was originally made for the mobile market, but it was so successful that motherboard manufacturers made desktop versions based on that same Core Duo CPU.

 

The Core 2 Duo CPU is the successor to the (Yonah) Core Duo CPU. One of the improvement is EM64T (Intel x86-64 extensions) for 64-bit processing.

 

The desktop version of Core 2 Duo is codename (Conroe) with 1066MHz front-side bus.

 

The mobile version of Core 2 Duo is codename (Merom) with 667MHz front-side bus. It has more emphasis on low power consumption to enhance notebook battery life. It is pin compatible to the (Yonah) Core Duo CPU. Notebooks with 945GM or 945PM chipsets can 'upgrade' to the Merom. Bios update likely needed.

 

The server/workstation class of the Core 2 Duo is codename (Woodcrest) with a 1333MHz front-side bus.

 

Just learned this myself with some research, hope it clears up some confusion about the desktop and mobile versions of the Core 2 Duo family.

[tecton3d]

Architimmy-

Could you eleborate on what you mean by memory bandwidth being important while rendering? If you you mean it's important not to run out of ram, I completely understand... however you seem to be implying something much more subtle. I have been looking for information on how the various speeds in FSB, ram speeds, etc may, or may not affect rendering times, and can't seem to find any info on it. Is rendering a computing task that even has the capacity to max out this type and amount of ram "bandwidth"?

Thanks,

Chris

see here:

memory bandwidth and FSB

 

someone correct/elaborate if I'm wrong but, it's the rate (termed: FSB) @ which your CPU can access system RAM... so yes, more is better and it does affect rendering. Your scene is stored in system memory and the cpu needs access to that scene data, stored on said memory, in order to work the calcs for the render. Consider a higher FSB an "X" diameter pipe that allows a certain amount of water (data) to flow through at a given time. If you want to move more water, you give pipe "X" a larger diameter (larger FSB), and that allows the CPU to better communicate with RAM.

 

A big FSB one of the reasons (amung many) why the new Woodcrest (Xeon) chips are so darn fast ~ they have an FSB of 1066 or 1333.