Best CPU for a buisness.

opterons are good and so are x2's(but if your teacher has an intel bias say itanium)

You have provided no information upon which to really respond?

What type of business?

Itaniums are very expensive and support limited software.
For most businesses, this would rule out this as a general processor.

Various Pentium and AMDs would be the only choice for general computing.

Most businesses should buy "Corporate" PCs which have a long life cycle. Most of these are Intel based, but HP and a few others provide AMD solutions.

HP has a series of Desktop and Laptop computers based upon the NFORCE chipset which use a common set of drivers which is way cool for maintaining images which can be a real cost.

In general, the AMDs also cost about $100 less than equivalent Intel based systems. The AMD systems would also cost about $10 less per year to operate based on energy costs - assuming the PCs would be idle most of the time. This would lead to a savings or $130-$140 over the life of the PC. If you have 10,000 computers, this can be over a million dollars.

Some Mom and Pop POS (not "Point of Sale") software companies may not officially support AMDs and you may need to really prove to people that AMD is not inferior to Intel, etc....
For a small company with few computers in which the total savings is minimal, these piddle things may make Intel a better choice.

Business Server:

AMD Opteron
Intel Xeon

AMD makes the Opteron in dual core and single core. They can be used for servers and business workstations.

all my prof. told us is that we have to recommend the best CPU for a Rand D company. Cost is not an issue but " computational speed is critical", according to our paper outline.

We don't know the size of the company or anythign else, I'm thinking we just have to find the fastest CPU ou there!
Thanks for your help

Well since this is not based upon reality, there is really one 1 computer to buy. That is the one ranked #1 here. Reasearch the IBM BlueGene/L system and spec it out.

http://www.top500.org/

I'm thinking that either your prof doesn't know as much as he thinks he does (which is possible, since those who can do, and those who can't teach), or you don't know how to read your paper outline.   Becuase there's some serious lack of detail going on here.

I mean the first (and quite possibly only) important question is:
What is this computer supposed to do?

Without an answer to that extremely fundamental question, how could anyone decide?

Does the computer need to run an SQL database? A mail server? A CAD program? A video game? What software is involved? And is this a server? A workstation? A client? What type of R & D? Are they researching pharmaceutacles? Aerodynamics? Software to track tech stocks? A camera to count the number of spots on the back of a ladybug?

  I mean I wouldn't even begin to know what direction to lean towards without first knowing what it'll actually be used for.

Of course, I suppose that the point could actually not be in a 'correct' answer, but simply to see how well someone can research based on what they believe the target to be. I don't know. But even then, someone has to come up with a target at some point, whether it's you or your prof.

The IBM supercomputing cluster is FAST if you can afford it that is.

Some of the top500 supercomputing clusters use AMD Opterons.

The Opterons beat the Xeons in all benchmarks and their memory bandwidth scales as you add CPUs and memory.

Currently 2 x 940 CPUs with 1 OMC each and 4 stix of PC3200 have 2 TIMES the memory bandwidth = 12.8GB/s

4 x 940 CPUs with 1 OMC each and 8 stix of PC3200 have 4 TIMES the memory bandwidth = 25.6GB/s

8 x 940 CPUs with 1 OMC each and 16 stix of PC3200 have 8 TIMES the memory bandwidth = 51.2GB/s

In the Xeon line memory bandwidth is

1/2 with 2 CPUs

1/4 with 4 CPUs

It doesn't scale at all!


With socket 1207 AMD will be able to easily add Quad Channel RAM or Dual Memory Controllers for Dual-Core CPU's so:

You have 1 PHY CPU

2 cores

2 on board memory controllers

2xDual Channel RAM -- 2 stix / Core -- 4 stix total for TWICE the memory bandwidth!

In a 2way Dual Core SMP Opteron 1207 you would QUADRUPLE your memory bandwidth = 51.2GB/s MAX Theoretical Memory Bandwidth

In a 4way Dual Core SMP Opteron 1207 you would have 8 TIMES the bandwidth = 102.4GB/s MAX Theoretical Memory Bandwidth

in an 8way Dual Core SMP Opteron 1207 you would have 16 TIMES the bandwidth = 204.8GB/s MAX Theoretical Memory Bandwidth

It scales very well.


The Itanium is fast in IA-64 but is terrible in IA-32 -- really terrible because it has to emulate it in software very slow.

The Opterons in 64bit mode are 25-70% faster than any current Intel CPU in 32 or 64bit mode especially in SQL tests ( mysql and postgreSQL ), web server tests ( apache ) and gaming / 3D visualization.

http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/24/17...

http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2163

http://www.intel.com/performance/desktop/extreme/em64t....

The Itanium isnt to be compared with other Intel and AMD cpus, but the Opteron and Xeon are comparable and at the moment the Opteron is quicker (and more efficent, colder and cheaper and cheaper to run) until Woodcrest from Intel shows up.