Compare Old vs new CPU...

[edikat]

Hi there

I need a lot of power for numerical computation....

I have a choice of servers with:

1. 4 x Quad Xeon MP 3.0GHZ HT 2MB L3 cache (from 2003....)

2. new Single Dual Core Server (not sure of model but not more than 2-3 years old)

Can anybody tell me what would be better?
I do a lot of stuff that can be computed in parallel....

many thanks.

 

[edikat]

Sorry I mean

4 x Xeon MP 3.0GHZ HT (i.e. Quad CPU)

 

[HugoStiglitz]

best way would be if you have access to each server (or can ask the seller to run some benchmarks)

Linpack is the benchmark you will want to run.

other wise we would need exact models of the Server's / CPU's to know which is a more powerful setup.

 

[13thmonkey]

is the computation multithreaded, can it take account of multiple cores?
or use a farm:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

even if it takes a day of compute or extra large hi cpu then that'll be less than $50.

With regards to the your question, i'd suggest the 8 cores would outweight the single dual core (they have hyperthreading).