P4 vs Xeon performance...

[Maintane]

For work, I'm looking at a Dell workstation with 2.4 Xeon w/ 1mb L3 cache
and 1 gig of 333 ECC DDR vs an OptiPlex with 3.2 P4 w/ 1 gig of non-ECC
DDR. Otheriwse, both equipped about the same with 64 meg dual DVI or CRT vid
card, (2) 80g drives, DVD burner and DVD reader, and (2) 19" Ultra Sharp
LCD/TFT monitors,

The Xeon is about $1100 more...abt $2800. Is there enough performance
difference to make it a good buy. I do a lot of very large database work,
heavy Excel with extensive use of macros and VB coding, usually have 5-6
programs opened, with possibly 2 telnet sessions going.

Thanks for the input.

Mike

--
__________________________________________________________

"There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few
who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the
electric fence for themselves."

- From 'The Wisdom of Will Rogers'

 

[Clyde]

For work, I'm looking at a Dell workstation with 2.4 Xeon w/ 1mb L3 cache
and 1 gig of 333 ECC DDR vs an OptiPlex with 3.2 P4 w/ 1 gig of non-ECC
DDR. Otheriwse, both equipped about the same with 64 meg dual DVI or CRT vid
card, (2) 80g drives, DVD burner and DVD reader, and (2) 19" Ultra Sharp
LCD/TFT monitors,

The Xeon is about $1100 more...abt $2800. Is there enough performance
difference to make it a good buy. I do a lot of very large database work,
heavy Excel with extensive use of macros and VB coding, usually have 5-6
programs opened, with possibly 2 telnet sessions going.

Thanks for the input.

Mike

Xeon is a server processor. The big difference over P4 is the large
cache. It's designed to let a lot of people do a lot of things at the
same time. A good example of this would be databases. Of course, most
databases are hit on by a lot of different people, not just one doing a lot.

In short it may or may not help your DB work. My guess is probably not
enough to justify the $1100, but I really don't know. I doubt it will
help your Excel and VB coding any at all. Actually a P4 with HT might be
faster for both of those.

Clyde

 

[Al Dykes]

Xeon is a server processor. The big difference over P4 is the large
cache. It's designed to let a lot of people do a lot of things at the
same time. A good example of this would be databases. Of course, most
databases are hit on by a lot of different people, not just one doing a lot.

In short it may or may not help your DB work. My guess is probably not
enough to justify the $1100, but I really don't know. I doubt it will
help your Excel and VB coding any at all. Actually a P4 with HT might be
faster for both of those.

Clyde

I see lots of high-end desktop XEON systems by companies that
specialize in CAD and other specialized applications. I assume they
have a place, for someone.

Assuming you are currently running NT/w2k/Xp you can user Performace
Monitor (perfmon.exe) to see what your workload is currently
bottlenecked on. It's hard to recommend a configuration until you've
measured what your system is doing.

Depending on your workload, if your databases are local to your
machine I'd consider spending the premium on a very fast disk
subsystem. In general IMHO money spent on fast disks for heavily used
machines is well spent. Mobo dual SATA set up as raid striping plus
an IDE 10K disk for the OS, temp and swap sounds like a good combo.



Also, don't rule out AMD for a nice high-end system.

 

[Ric H]

I see lots of high-end desktop XEON systems by companies that
specialize in CAD and other specialized applications. I assume they
have a place, for someone.

Assuming you are currently running NT/w2k/Xp you can user Performace
Monitor (perfmon.exe) to see what your workload is currently
bottlenecked on. It's hard to recommend a configuration until you've
measured what your system is doing.

Depending on your workload, if your databases are local to your
machine I'd consider spending the premium on a very fast disk
subsystem. In general IMHO money spent on fast disks for heavily used
machines is well spent. Mobo dual SATA set up as raid striping plus
an IDE 10K disk for the OS, temp and swap sounds like a good combo.



Also, don't rule out AMD for a nice high-end system.

ay-up. 2x WD "raptors" in RAID 0 for system disk is pretty hard to beat,
even with wide-channel SCSI...!

ric h