Slower (Dual) Zeons Vs. Faster (Single) P-4

[sjd123]

I'm Running Solidworks and MS Outlook together.

1) What will be a faster system to purchase? (money not part of the equation): Dual processor 3.2Ghz/533Mhz FSB Zeons with 2G of 266Mhz memory(DIMMS) or (1) Pentium 4 - 3.2Ghz/800Mhz FSB with 2G of 400 Mhz memory (DIMMS)

2) (Will the fact that outlook is running in the background significantly affect the processing power of the "faster" P-4 setup or is the "slower" Dual Zeon setup going to be faster?

The goal is to purchase the best(fastest) system to run our Solidworks CAD system without getting bogged down due to MS Outlook running in the background.

I appreciate whatever advice you can lend. Thanks!

 

[shadus]

MS Outlook isn't a big enough program to impact either of those pc's. Most cad programs can take advantage of SMP however (you need to check the documentation to be sure.) and if yours does then by far the faster system would be the dual xeon. If money is no object you may wish to try to get a P4EE instead of standard P4, its faster than the standard p4, but costs a heafty chunk of change. Make sure you get good quality ram regardless and a good powersupply.

Shadus

 

[sjonnie]

Using perfmon.exe I monitored the %processor time on OUTLOOOK.EXE. When sitting in the background it uses no processor power, a send/recieve on my 4 email accounts makes a peak of maximum 10% processor time over 2 seconds.

Answer, running OUTLOOK in the background isn't going to affect your performance whatsoever, especially when it's just one out of 40 other background processess running.

Solidworks does not support dual processors.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=114979" target="_new">My PCs</A>

 

[Crashman]

I use solidworks, it doesn't have a huge impact on system performance. Unless you're using Cosmos, in which case dual CPU's could come in very handy.

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[Guest]

as others pointed out, outlook should not bottleneck anythig, unless you are constantly compressing folders.

For maximum solidworks performance, it seems AMD is a better choice. look here: <A HREF="http://www.spec.org/gpc/apc.data/specapc_sw2003_summary.html" target="_new">http://www.spec.org/gpc/apc.data/specapc_sw2003_summary.html</A>. The opteron 146 holds a rather impressive performance lead over the P4C's. And you could use a Athlon FX instead, which would perform even better (10% faster clock).

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