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Need help choosing a Xeon processor

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I am in the process of building a high performance workstation for 3d modeling/animation, fluid simulation, and rendering. My choice of processors are; the E5520, L5520, or E5530.

Now at first glance, you realize that the E5530 has a higher clock rate than both the L5520 or E5520. I did some research on benchmarks and i came across something interesting; i found a website that benchmarked some of the recent xeon processors and it had some interesting results.

Supposedly, the L5520 outperformed the E5530 in just about every test except for maybe 1 or so. The review can be found here,
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/components/250375/intel-...

Anyway, what do you think? Should i shelve out on two L5520s? will the E5520 give me similar performance to the L5520s? and if not, than what makes the two of them different? Or should I just go with the higher clock speed of the E5530 cpu? I tried to find as much info as possible but didnt have much luck. Please help me out.


Caleb

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the L5520 has the lowest power consumption but everything else is the same with the three procs

if i were u i would go with the E5530 for that little boost in clockspeed

but if power is an issue iwould go for the L5520

Actually the difference in Clockspeed is negligible so it is up to u between the L5520 or the E5530

so in a nutshell, its between getting a L5520 for lower power consumption, or the E5530 for higher speed.

Well my question is, how come on many of the benchmarks shown, thta the L5520 outperforms the E5530? i dont understand that? Can anyone shed a little light on that?


Caleb
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I would say the reason why the lower clocked L5520 beats the E5530 is due to the fact that L5520 has 20 watts lower TDP, so it should turbo higher on single threaded workloads.

Quote:
i would go for the one that gives you more power for less. yyou need more to create and render games or even process them when it comes to simulations.


What are you saying? That i should do with the E5530? From benchmarks, the L5520 outperforms the E5530 in just about every bench.

Please elaborate.

Quote:
SORRY,I have tendency to go on 'bout useless irrelevent info. Go for the one w/ the bestclock speed, memory, and core !--- Will this help?


In order for me to make a choice, i need more in depth info. When you say " i would go for one that gives you more for less", you make it sound like i should go for the e5530 just because it is cheaper and has a high ghz ratio. Cost to me is not a matter right now, im looking for the best performance processor out of the two, and from what others have answered and benchmarks that have been shown, the L5520 is the one for me.


Thank you guys again for the help.

Heya

Im just making workstation for myself. If u want to go 1 CPU on mobo go for I7 and OC it. No point using single CPU with xeons. But if you go for DUal Quad COre then u better get 2x/4x+ SSD fastest HDD in raid coz believe me Real Flow/other fluid simulation softs will need lot of speed from HDD to write/read data... so that dual xeon can work at 100%, also you need lots of HDD space for complex scenes... (lsat time I did fluid animation 1 Frame was 1.2 gb heavy :/  )

and go fastets 3.3 ghz Xeon if money doesent matter ;)  In dual setup they will rox :) 

thanks for the suggestion. I was planning on raiding two 1 tb HDD for storage, and running a 128 gig SSD for OS and other programs.

Money is not that big of an issue, but i do not want to shelve out $1000+ for a CPU when it will be outdated within the next year. I just need a high-mid level CPU, such as the L5530. But it would be sweet to see two high speed Quad Xeons working in unison together!!

So u makind single CPU workstation? Then go I7 it will own E5530 xeon lol... Find some hardcore mobo that can run 16/24 triple chanel ram and ure set to go... btw 128 GB SSD is a bad Idea for Graphics.... U gona fill it up b4 you know. Better make raid0/1 with 4-10 Hdd and external backup....

Btw I almost finish building my rig...still w8 for the cpu's, we can benchamr one time and see how dual xeon would work comparing to i7, if you go for i7. :) 

My old "workstation" which was also my very first computer build was a Core 2 duo E6400 (2.13 ghz), 2 gigs of ddr2 5400 ram, with a 320 gig hdd and a Quadro fx 1400 graphics card using an Intel d975xbx gaming mobo.

so far, what I have in he making is a Super Micro X8DA6 motherboard, coupled with two Xeon L5520 (2.26 ghz) processors, 24 gigs of DDR3 1066 ram, a Corsair P128 SSD, two SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 hard drives with a Raid 1 setup, a Nvidia Quadro fx 3800 graphics card, and a PC Power & Cooling T12W 1200W power supply, all wrapped up in a Coolermaster Cosmos 1000 case.

Its going to be a beauty once she is complete. However, I am thinking of waiting till the new generation "Fermi" quadro cards which are set to release in Q1 of 2010.

Hey

Why are you going for Quatro CG card? I've never see any benefits from this card, meybe somewhere at uni lvl where they calculate physic etc etc but so far max/maya etc is only cpu based if im not wrong...

BTW ur mobo cost 500 dola isnt Asus Z8PE-D18 better?

The asus is nice, but from what I have read about workstation/server motherboards, Supermicro is much more reliable and superior. If you are going for a gaming computer, than an Asus motherboard would be a better choice over a supermicro, since Asus motherboard allow for overclocking and supermicro does not.


Maya, 3ds max, and many 3d modeling and animation programs rely on the graphics card for the viewport and texture processing, etc. Rendering and simulation (depending on what software you are using) rely on CPU. Some programs and rendering packages are starting to make the switch to GPU rendering and processing.


Caleb

HUmh...I'm googling from 2 months and OC 2xCPU is imposible atm.. I heard that ''some'' people menage to OC xeons using some soft but thats ''?????'' for me... Back to CG card.. from the old hardware you have I think you never had any hard scenes... or had and didnt go well...(duno) atm I got few works with 20-40K objects in scene and to be honest old 8800 gts is well... I dont have 30 fps in viewport but once I put all on layers its easy to work... dont put 700~$ in CG card just to get good viewpoer FPS... also using DX10 can speed up viewport work even tho is buggy :/  better spend it on better CPU or other components... b

Btw I got Cosmo 1000 too :D  Cant w8 to get cpus and test it out :] Sadly...it does not support SSE mobo factor (asus d18) but hey only 3 screw dont fit, that can be fix easily... :) 

Btw what ram do you getting? I was looking on Kingston but 1333 mhz cost 1.5k £ LOL...

Lol chiil people I'm not telling him to buy other rig or ill kill him lol.. just trying to figure out why he is taking what he is taking... I was chating with 3 CG directors b4 I chose my rig and none of them ever used QUATRO/Fire card, wana know why he want to use it lol... also what ram are you taking ? If u got cheap 1333 rec ecc ram share with us ! :D 

Quote:
Btw I got Cosmo 1000 too :D  Cant w8 to get cpus and test it out :] Sadly...it does not support SSE mobo factor (asus d18) but hey only 3 screw dont fit, that can be fix easily... :) 

Btw what ram do you getting? I was looking on Kingston but 1333 mhz cost 1.5k £ LOL...



SSE is another name for EATX, which the Cosmos 1000 does support. I would not of bought the Cosmos if it was not able to support the mobo platform planning on using.

Im looking at getting 1066 mhz ram, that is what is recommended for the Xeon L5520 cpus. If it was a higher end CPU, then 1333 would be the choice.



This is the ram i am looking at purchasing.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

um im not sure if there is only one SSE or many but Cosmo 1000 officialy dont support Asus Z8PE-D18 which is SSI EEB 3.61, unofficialy onle 3 screw are missing so its easy to fix problem... board fit just fine :)  However ur Supermicro board is EATX so its np for u at all :) 

Back to ram... well the one u listed on newegg is actualy more expensive than mine! :D  http://www.ilgs.co.uk/products.asp?partno=KVR1066D3D4R7...
before you buy ram check with mobo manual if it is recomendet. :) 

Dariusz said:
um im not sure if there is only one SSE or many but Cosmo 1000 officialy dont support Asus Z8PE-D18 which is SSI EEB 3.61, unofficialy onle 3 screw are missing so its easy to fix problem... board fit just fine :)  However ur Supermicro board is EATX so its np for u at all :) 

Back to ram... well the one u listed on newegg is actualy more expensive than mine! :D  http://www.ilgs.co.uk/products.asp?partno=KVR1066D3D4R7...
before you buy ram check with mobo manual if it is recomendet. :) 


Oops, yea my bad. SSE is slightly bigger than EATX standard. However, the motherboard of my choosing is a standard EATX. Althought, I have thought about selling my Cosmos 1000 for a Lian-Li PC-A70

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

However, it is a deactivated item now, so i would have to get it from another supplier.

Ps. You guys are nuckin futz!

lol, just messin.



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