XEON processors - extremely poor choice for rendering ?

[donkeydude]

Hi folks,

I have been struggling with a brand new HP xw6600 that I bought this summer whose performance with rendering has been such a disapointment. Have been going back and forth with HP but no luck there as those guys are simply not interested in solving real hardware problems other than simply offering to replace the installed components.

Below are rendering times in Solidworks-Photoworks of the same scene under identical conditions from three different machines. No other applications were running during the test and ALL cores/processors were running full throttle simulataneously when rendering was initiated.

9 minutes- Dual Core AMD Opteron 2216 2.4 GHz/ XP 32 bit/ 2 MB RAM
2 minutes- Quad Core Intel Q9650 3.0 GHz 1333 FSB 12 MB L2 Cache/ Vista 64 bit/ 8 MB RAM
11 minutes - Quad Core Intel E5450 3.0 GHz Xeon 1333 FSB 12 MB L2 Cache/ Vista 64 bit/ 8 MB RAM (My machine)

How can this be ? ... that a machine with an expensive Xeon processor is more than FIVE times slower than a comparable speed Q9650 chipset and even slower than a lower clockspeed machine.

I have PASSMARK data from all the machines and some of those numbers concern me as well.

Any help will be highly appreciated- thanks-

donkeyDude

 

[roofus]

It is probably the cheap**** motherboard choking it donkey. As a suggestion you might try getting RMA service for the board. Maybe you just got a bad one. No reason why the CPU should be holding you back.

 

[donkeydude]

thanks roofus. Where do I get this RMA service for the board from? I was hoping HP would take look at what they have configured but they are no good. They didn't even care to look at the Passmark data.

 

[roofus]

It would be through HP. I wouldnt even get as specific as the Passmark data. Think up a different angle because they are dense.

 

[donkeydude]

I also saw in these forum elsewhere that XEON chips go with the 771 socket which are stuck with a slower RAM whereas C2Q chips go with 775 socket that has a lower latency - whatever that is. Would that have anything to do with this.? Am I stuck with a certain kind of motherboard that is more suited to a server.

- thanks
donkeydude

 

[Shadow703793]

^Socket 771 server XEON CPUs are limited by the RAM as the RAM they use are FB-DIMMS. HOW EVER, the Xeon 3000 serise is LGA 775 and is not limited by FB DIMM