I7 chips v Xeon w series

[Christiansltd]

Hi all, I am in a dilemma, I have a number of HP z400 comps running xeon w3520 chips, I want to upgrade these as I am not at all happy with the performance .

 

I was looking at popping in the xeon w3680 six core chip in to each. However, looking on cpubenchmark I see that the I7 970 is faster again and price wise £200 less than the w3680 !

 

I have been onto my supplier and also hp who ard unable to answer questions about compatability and also if there is any difference between the xeon w series and general I7 chips.

 

This is really making my head pound, has anybody looked in to this or have any words of wisdom. I just really want to upgrade these to the best possible !

[AJLynn]

I could speculate on what CPUs go with your HP but, not knowing anything about the motherboard they used, the usefulness of this would be minimal. MB/CPU compatibility can be difficult - for example, you may have an older generation of Z400 with a different MB than what's currently used, so I could tell you that the Z400 can be bought with a W3680 so of course yours can take one, and be completely wrong, or you can even get an MB that was released before some particular sub-line of CPUs came out and supports them but only with a BIOS upgrade.

 

You're going to need to research this for your particular MB. Maybe you're going about it wrong - try asking your HP sales rep questions about whether they can sell you CPU upgrades for those machines, and whether they require BIOS upgrades ("because my IT guy told me that he doesn't like doing BIOS upgrades because last time it screwed up the video cards...") - make it sound like you want to give them money.

[Christiansltd]

hi, thanks again for the advice, I have gone and bought a z800 with 2 quad core chips in which has rectified my issues, I quickly worked out that the costs to upgrade a d all the messing for a few days + researching compatibility etc has meant that a z800 was the smart idea.

 

I will be using this for large projects using acad civil 3d, 3ds max & vue 8.5, I am now facing graphics card issues.

 

Choices are:

 

Quadro 4000

Ati firepro 7800

Or at a third the price a gtx 460 2 GB.

 

What would be the advantage of getting a pro card over the gtx ?

 

Cheers

Edited September 13, 2010 by Christiansltd

[Derek Forreal]

I have been onto my supplier and also hp who ard unable to answer questions about compatability and also if there is any difference between the xeon w series and general I7 chips.

such terrible service. i find it hard to understand why you would go back for more? before i started building my own PCs, i bought from Mesh Computers. i rarely needed to talk to them but when i did (usually for upgrading) they were very helpful even though it had been a number of years since my purchase.

[Christiansltd]

Don't you think that with the so called recession it has just been an excuse to let customer service slide...

 

I bought the z800 as a shell off eBay and bought the bits I needed for it from scan.

 

I couldn't sing there praises enough, rang up let them know what I was doing and they did all the leg work for me.

[Derek Forreal]

Don't you think that with the so called recession it has just been an excuse to let customer service slide...

 

I bought the z800 as a shell off eBay and bought the bits I needed for it from scan.

 

I couldn't sing there praises enough, rang up let them know what I was doing and they did all the leg work for me.

+1. i got most of my stuff from Scan too and they were indeed very helpful there.

[Christiansltd]

Just placed an order with scan, going to try the Palit GTX 460 2GB cards in a couple of machines instead of going for the new quadro fx 4000.

[AJLynn]

That's reasonable, especially if you have any CUDA software. The Quadros have some advantages WRT viewport performance in Max, Autocad etc., so they're good choices for larger budgets.