2*Xeon5520 or i7-950

Forum CPU & Components : CPUs 2*Xeon5520 or i7-950

Hi,

I want to buy a PC for CFD calculations and the CPU is the bottleneck.

Does anybody know which of these configurations is faster, when using all of the CPUs in multithreading? How much faster also?

- 2 CPUs Xeon 5520 2.26 GHz (each 8 threads and each 8MB L3 cache)
- A single 950 i7 3.02 GHz, 8MB L3 cache, 8 threads

Thanks in advance

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If your program is able to utilize all the cores and its threads then two quadcores and 16 threads is definitely better than one quad with 8 threads. You can overclock the Xeon to match the i7-950 clock speed which will then make it twice as fast or able to do twice as much calculation. Thats if you can keep the CPUs cool enough and have enough RAM.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to bsoon_tan

I don't have much information about overclocking. Is it possible to do it for a week?

Reply to mmah

In theory two Xeon 5520 processors should be up to 50% faster, but the results depend on how well threaded the application is. Since stability is important, I presume no overclocking of the i7-950. Building a stable system using Xeon processors and server grade memory might be easier.

Reply to GhislainG

bsoon_tan wrote :

Very few, if any, server motherboard allows for overclocking. Besides you want a very stable system, not one that may crash after a couple days of running and then you have to start all over again. I would also recommend ECC memory which requires the use of Xeon processors.

Reply to GhislainG

I agree with GhislainG with the not wanting crash of system and restart of calculations. So getting the server class CPUs seem the better choice plus the ECC memory would be more reliable. If you have the budget then try getting higher clocked Xeons?

Reply to bsoon_tan

Well, I think the price difference is way too high for higher server CPUs like 5550, relative to 5520. I don't have any idea about performance difference though .

Reply to mmah

I agree that the performance difference isn't always worth it. The 5520 runs at 85% of the speed of the 5550. The 5550 also supports faster memory, but that provides a negligible performance boost for your application. http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=40200,37106,

Reply to GhislainG

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