dual athlon vs overclocked p4

bradb0286

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hey
in looking to build a new pc/workstation for video ediing/ gaming and such. I have had my eye on a dual athlon MP 2000+/2100+ system. for about 1500-1600. But I have seen some simmilar framerates and FPS's from a OC'ED ~2.8 ish p4 system for about 100 - 200 less
pentium mobo is abit IT7
athlon mobo is tyan tiger S2466N-4M but have found the tiger
S2460 for 95 bucks!!! would like imput on that card also
graphics for both is nvidia geforce 4 ti4400 with VIVO
pc3500 ram for p4 system, pc2100 ram for athlon mp
120GB 7200 hard drive for both
brad
 

lhgpoobaa

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hmmm... its really like comparing apples and pears here. to many variables.

what <b>YOU</b> have to do is work out what programs you will be using on that system... and find out if they support AND utilise dual CPU's.

if the application in question is optimised to use dual cpu's then the dual AMD rig will obviously be superior.
if its not, then your really only using half of your dual system, and thus the overclocked p4 will undoubtedly win.

also bear in mind that dual cpu systems go for a price premium.

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Dinski

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I ain't got any practical experience, so I'll tell you what I've read.
Probably, the dual system would be more profitable, if:
- first, you run the applications on an OS which supports dual CPUs (such as Linux and all kinds of UNIX-based OS, Windows XP, 2K and NT4);
- second, your applications are designed for Dual CPUs;
- third, you are able to provide enough RAM: that means, twice or above the RAM needed for a single-CPU system. This means, depending on your specific job, 512MB - 1 GB RAM.At least ;-)
- fourth, if you ain't got enough money to buy SCSI drives (and mobo with SCSI controller), get a mobo with RAID-controller and two fast, large HDD (at least, at 7200 rpm and 2 MB cache or better)
 

bradb0286

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so then does the gigabyte GA-7DPXDW look like a good mobo for the athlons.
using win XP pro
what does RAID do? i have heard of it but never realy looked into it
i would be using adobe products for digital media on this computer.
 

Dinski

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RAID-controller will help you increasing the speed of writing and reading, and you may put in 2 large HDDs which would act as one. Or, you may use it to create symmetrical recors/archives. So if one HDD crashes, the second will be here to help you. If you haven't enough money to spend on HDDs right now, first buy one good device, and later you may add another one. These features of RAID are useful for this kind of PC you want to build.
 

BuddyAtBzboyz

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Ok so why would you wanna get the dually over the p4? Well if you run distributed computing programs like seti@home it would double your processing time. Also you can set the coputer up so that one processor takes care of all the background tasks while the other is dedicated to what you are doing. If you are going to be multitasking then the dual system would be better. But for straight out fps the P4 will win in most if not all cases. Raid is a wonderful thing Raid 0 basically doubles the speed of your hard drives by accesing both at the same time and splitting up the information. Its more complicated then that but raid 0 = fast! And when choosing the system take into account that you should be using double the ram in the dual Athlon system.
 

cakecake

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2 corrections.

Seti@home does not support dual CPU's right now.

2 P4's aren't necessarily better than 2 K7's. The Athlon still has a much more robust floating point unit than the Pentium 4. If you are using folding@home or specviewperf this is very noticeable.

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mbetea

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Raid is a wonderful thing Raid 0 basically doubles the speed of your hard drives by accesing both at the same time and splitting up the information
too bad basic explanations do not equate to realistic performance. 2 drives on a raid controller no way do they double the STR of a single drive. raid, unless you're talking about a nice adaptec 3410s or the like controller and a few 15,000rpm drives on it, is just a gimic.

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BuddyAtBzboyz

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You are right cakecake seti does not support 2 cpus in it self. However you can use a program such as seti driver to do it. Or you can just run 2 different instance of it. If you do it that way though you need to have two seperate folders to do so. After you have two processes running you just have to set one to run on once cpu and the second seti instance ot run on the other cpu.
 

BuddyAtBzboyz

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You are right it doesn't actually double your speed. It does however offer you quite a dramatice increase and with a raid 0 you can actually take almost full advantange of the ata 133 spec.
 

BuddyAtBzboyz

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Glad I taught you something new ;) I got this strange warm fuzzy feeling. I shall go forth and inform people! Or I can just stay here and play warcraft III... WC III it is!
 

mbetea

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with 2 drives? sorry, but i highly doubt that. not when i have 3 drives and the highest i've ever tested it was about 68mb-72mb/s. with 2 drives in raid0 you'll see about 4mb-6mb(at best) increase over a single drive. there is nothing, apart from running a mission critical db server or something and then i wouldn't see why you would want anything other than scsi, that an ide raid is going to improve performance noticably over a single drive. mainly i keep the controller only because i need the drives hooked up. if you're considering an pci raid controller, i'd say save $50-$60 and get ata controller to connect all your drives. and no, there is no set "rule of thumb" that says you need double the amount of ram you would use for a single cpu system. it may seem that way because (and this will shock you) most people that buy/build/use a dual rig aren't just bopping around the internet or playing games! wow imagine that. they're actually doing something that will utilize both cpus, so most likely what they're doing is going to require <i>more</i> ram.

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BuddyAtBzboyz

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Well how much bandwidth the raid setup uses is actually dependant on what controller you are using in addition to which hard drives you are using. For instance is your raid a cheap on board controller or a 32 bit pci card or a 64bit pci card. But I'm gunna have to agree with mbetea on the bandwidth right now since I personally don't have a raid to test.