I'm Building a NEW computer - core2duo or dual xeon processors ???

[tug_hill2]

Hello Group Members, I'm going to be putting together a new computer. Current computer is dual xeon based,
12 years old and badly in need of a total rebuild.

Should I go with Core 2 Duo or Dual Xeon motherboards.

Note: I generally spend $500 on the motherboard and I like dual xeon processsors..!
But are the Core2Duo as good ??

Any suggestions will be appreciated.


tug_hill2

[steptoe]

Bear in mind 12 years is a hell of a long time in computer, so you're new system will zip along compared to your old one

You'll end up buying new memory and new GFX card as thats all changed, you can still buy AGP GFX cards but you will struggle to get top spec decent GFX cards that run on AGP now. No doubt somebody will prove me wrong ......

Also, hard drives are SATA interface now, but you can still easily buy IDE hard drives, you'll notice a huge speed increase if you haven't bought new hard drives in the last 2-3 years

My 'shopping list' for my next rebuild is this :

Asus P5n32-E SLI
Intel Q6600 (quad core) or Intel E6850 (dual core)

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=397&model=1459&modelmenu=1
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q6600.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q6600_12.html#sect0
http://www.techimo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=190644

The links basically point you to the motherboards specs, and alos to a comparison of both processors I'm looking at. The quad core is likely what I'll go for as they are the same price, and leads to better future proofing with what I use my system for

I already have 4GB of fast DDR-2 memory and all my hard drives are less than 12 months old and mostly SATA, but I'm looking at getting a 'small' IDE 160GB purely for my OS installation, the rest are used for storage


I do a lot of video encoding on a hobby side, so quad core is better for me for the software I use as it supports multiple cores and is very overclockable, but also do play games

The dual core is on par speed wise, at stock clock speeds, and if you intend to play a lot of games at present there isn't too many multiple core games, but you will then need a top spec GFX card for future proofing and for GFX quality. I use an NVidia Geforce 8800GTS, with the motherboard I'm choosing means I can drop in another card of the same type later

The ASUS motherboard has plenty of scope for overclocking and SATA ports, which I need, its well reviewed and thought of and also support both processors and future processors but has a lack of IDE ports but PCI IDE cards ae very cheap so thats not a real problem



If you intend to spend $500 on the motherboard, with very careful looking and bargaining you should be able to spend that and get your motherboard, processor and memory, but the GFX card you could easily spend $500 just on that !!

[Krispy Kritter]

It is helpful to know how the PC will be used. And even the current single core cpu's are likely much faster than your current setup.

[TBoneit]

Save the money and go Quad core such as the Q6600.

You could go here and get a idea of how your contemplated CPUs benchmark against each other.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/index.php

[repoman1122]

Hi Tug! I built me a computer , it has an Intel Duo2 Quad Core processor, 2.4GHz.....It's great! and I got it on- line for $280 from NewEgg.com...Ooops, hope I don't get bleeped....anyway, it is the fastest I've ever
seen - just like being hardwired to the server! Go for it Tug, you won't be disappointed! - Repoman

[rallynavvie]

Yeah we need to know the application for this system to tailor it for price/performance.

My current rig is coming up on 4 years old (at least the one that was running the Prestonias) and it still keeps up with the latest single-socket systems just fine. In fact I love it so much I just got a clone of it with faster Gallatins.

I'm looking at putting together a dual-quad for 8 cores of processing goodness but I'm not very happy with the platforms available right now. I'm a workstation person and the chipsets for dual 771 are mostly server-oriented. Skulltrail was the only interesting development in that area but it was cost-inefficient to the extreme. If you let us know what you'll be using it for then we can figure out what to build on.