Hello everyone, and sorry if this be a retarded topic...but I'm very much a simpleton when it comes to this stuff. So hopefully someone can help?

I am looking to upgrade my computer, and I am a concept designer/illustrator who uses photoshop for digital painting, and also plays games.

Now this is the million dolla question...

I was instructed that to get the best performance [professional performance] from photoshop I should look at a dual slot motherboard with 2 dual core processors...also a hardrive for my operating system and software, and a smaller seperate hard-drive for photoshops scratch disk [it's thinking/brain].

So, I am willing to do this...or at least get one chip and then buy another later on...but is this a big deal in terms of the learning curve. I have a friend who is an IT technician and he won't even discuss this with me in fear of suggesting the wrong stuff!

Anyway, what I found out is this...and please help me out here...

There aren't [can't find any] AMD motherboards for dual processors [2 processors i should say], but there are intel...however they all seem to be socket 604 [and use the intel Xeon chip]. I found one for about £200 [supermicro x6dvl-xg2 dual xeon nocona intel e7320].

So is the XEON better/worse than a dual-core processor?

Or should I wait for AMD to bring some out and go for 2 amd 64 x2 chips on a motherboard with a couple of gig of ram?

Again...I am new to this topic, and really need some advice. So I guess what i need to know is what things to look for in terms of dual motherboards...and if there are those boards for amd dual-processors, or intel dual-processors....or is the Xeon combination a good combination in itself?

£700 on all this is a lot to spend!!

Thanks for any help you can give.

M

There are quite a few dual-socket 940 motherboards for Opteron dual-cores. Tyan makes a bunch, and so does ASUS. Supermicro only makes Intel-compatible boards.

I built a dual-2.8 Irwindale (single-core) Xeon machine for a lab and I would definitely say go for the Opterons. It is extremely hard to find any dual-core Xeons and the only ones I even saw were 2.8GHz units (glorified $700 Pentium D 820s.) You can get a single-core Irwindale 2MB chip for not a lot of money, but the Opteron dual-cores are MUCH more powerful than the Xeons. An Opteron 270 at 2GHz is roughly equivalent to a pair of 3.4 GHz Xeons. Two Opteron 280s at 2.4GHz will outdo any quad-Xeon unit out there, bar none. That includes the Yonah-based Xeon LVs as well as the 3.73GHz Xeons.

And about the Supermicro board: the unit I built had an x6dvl-eg2 board in it. It seems to be okay, but registered ECC DDR2-400 is pretty slow and this unit had a dead IDE port on it. It is otherwise respectable, considering its limitations in slow RAM and processors. Oh, and do note that you MUST install RAM in pairs on this board as the northbridge only does 128-bit memory interleaving (the Opterons can do 64-bit single-channel or 128-bit dual memory interfacing.)

Two hard drives, one for the applications and one for data/scratch is a very good idea. Hard drive I/O is usually the limiting factor in computer performance and any way to relieve I/O pressure off of one drive is surely a winner. I do that with my machine as I have a small 74GB 10k SATA drive for the OS and programs, while swap and my data sit on a slower 250GB drive. It runs smooth as butter even when I do something that hogs disk I/O like run VMware Server. I personally think that this is a better setup than RAID, as RAID is not well-suited to desktop uses.

If you have any other questions, I'd be more than happy to help.

Thanks for your help. Awesome.

So are the AMD Opterons dual core? and are faster than the xeons? I can only find the Opteron 246 at 2ghz!!

And an Asus K8N-DL Dual AMD Opteron™ nForce4 dual ch. DDR400 +SATA RAID Firewire Gigabit LAN 8ch.audio ATX

Sorry if i'm being stupid, i'm sure I am...however if dual core is the way to go, and there are such chips as the AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 3800 512k Cache per core then what would be a dual motherboard to fit 2 of these on? It seems I am struggling to match up the sockets etc.

Or am I missing the point of having a dual motherboard?

Also, being in England, microdirect [which i only really know about] may not have a good selection when it comes to this kind of thing.

I'm at a similar point in regards to evaluating a quad core system...

Does anyone have any info on how Opterons stack up to the Athalons for gaming? I do not want to build a graphics system that screams but that drops to a crawl when gaming.

Opterons are the same cores as Athlons, they are just hand selected, made to the highest standards for business. All of these Opterons are dual core.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] &maxPrice=
I would highly recomend Opterons for your application. For the same money they will out preform the Xeons. The 1xx series is for Socket 939, the 2xx Series is for Socket 940.

I say go with a dual socket 939 motherboard and two 170's, 175's or 180's.

For the working hard drive for photoshop, use a 10,000 RPM Raptor.

You might as well go for a Socket 939 platform along with a dual core Opteron (model 165 to 180) or even an Athlon 64 X2 (model X2 3800+ to X2 4800+).

Such a system will be cheaper and easier to put together since all the component involved are widely accessible consumer products while a dual socket 940 platform is bound to be much more expensive and harder to get.

Regardless of which route you decide to take, its the video card that makes or break a gaming system, as long as you go for an high-end to bleeding-edge GPU and a decent motherboard, your gaming experience will be silk smooth.

Sounds like good advice, thanks for all of this.

So as I understand it...

It is a better option for me [my lack of computing knowledge] to opt for the more widely available socket 939? And also 'opt' for the Opteron, or maybe the AMD 64 dual?

However, am I right in thinking that there are socket 939 motherboards which support 2> processors? Are they called 'dual socket motherboards'?

Cheers

p.s does anyone have any good shops in England that sell the socket 939 dual motherboards and Opteron/amd 64 dual-core processors?

There are several brands of dual processor motherboards for AMDs, here's the list at asus.com as a reference point:

http://usa.asus.com/products3.aspx [...] Processors


What I have not heard of is, if Opterons are just well inspected Athlons, has anyone picked up a dual opteron MB and tried to plop in a pair of Athlon X2 chips and how'd that work out for them.

There are things that you should consider before you buy. Socket 940 opterons require that you use more expensive buffered memory, socket 939 opterons do not. Not all opterons are dual core, as has already been discussed here, and not all opterons will work in a dual socket situation. The 1XX series of processors are for use with a single socket solution (some are dual-core, but they are designed to work in a single socket). With the 2XX series you can use up to two sockets (if you have two sockets of course), and the 8XX series can function with up to eight sockets (though the most I have ever seen on a workstation board is four, and those are rare, any more than that and you're getting into the server arena). I would not recommend buying two 1XX series processors for use on a dual socket board because I don't believe that you can use two of those on the same board, in that particular case you would want to buy one of the 2XX series. If anyone here knows how you might get around this let me know. I know it's not retail, but you can find single core opteron 246's (2.0 ghz) for around $240 a pair on ebay, and thats pretty damn cheap for that much power, keeping in mind that in the future you could throw a couple faster dual core opterons on there and have four processor cores to work and play with. To answer your question I beleive there are socket 939 dual socket boards, though dual socket 940 boards are a little cheaper nowadays since opteron processors were originally released as socket 940 processors.

DONT mobos that support dual cpu's are used as servers only??

DONT mobos that support dual cpu's are used as servers only??

There aren't any 939 dual socket motherboards.... has anyone ever seen one? Come on guys.... look..... 939 is for single slot solutions..... IE.... the Opteron 1XX series..... or A64 939's. The Dual Socket 940 board is for Opterons only. It suports 2 940 pin Opterons, either 2XX dual core Optys or 2XX single core Opty's. IE, you could drop 2 Opteron 280's or two Opteron 246's.......... you would not be able to put the 1XX series of of Opterons on this board, they have one less pin and are pinned differently. So, if you want one dual core CPU go with a 939 board..... if you want two go with 940 as it is your only option.....

Considering that you'll only be using your computer for photochopping and gaming, I don't think that you'll notice any benefit from a dual Socket 940 vs a single Socket 939 with a dual core CPU.

Workstations with more than 4 CPUs are mostly ment to tackle intensive number crushing such as running scientific/engineering simulations or heavy duty CAD and rendering.

What we refer to as "dual core" CPUs are two processing units within the same chip, making it possible to have two CPUs on a single socket motherboard.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up weskurtz81. To bluntside: There are a LOT of dual socket mobos that are used in servers, but that isn't their only purpose. If you do a lot of encoding and/or rendering--especially if it's a "time is money" kind of situation--having a dual socket system can be an asset in a worstation, though you will only really see any benefit if the applications you're using are multithreaded or you just happen to have a hell of a lot of programs running at one time. For general usage it is a bit of overkill, especially considering that dual-core/single-socket systems are becoming more commonplace recently.

ignore this

And what about the AMD Athlon 64 dual-core? Is that the same situation...you can only use one of these on a single socket motherboard?

So, from the debate the options are...

Socket 939 'single' socket Moboard, with a 1xx series Opt or Athl 64 dual.

or

Socket 940 'dual' socket Moboard with 2 2xx dual/single Opterons
+expensive buffered memory? + anyhting else?

So how do these compare in power then [for Photoshop]?? Which set up is faster...how do these setups compare?

What about these...

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Produ [...] &GroupID=0
+
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Produ [...] &GroupID=0

Otherwise I go for Socket 939...with AMD 64 dual??

This is the only way???

Is there anything else that would be needed with this setup though...such as cooling? Specific memory?etc

Thanks again