Dan said:
Hello people
Which will be faster for working with photoshop, CAD, movie editing and so
on:
HP workstation xw6000 with dual Xeon2.8 GHz processors with 533MHz fsb
(quite old computer)
or a new
HP dc5700 with one C2D 2.13 GHz procesor with 800MHz fsb ??
/Dan
I'd take the C2D.
The instructions per clock are more than 1.5x the older architecture
in the Xeon. So the 2.13Ghz clock is like 3.2GHz in a P4 era
processor.
Also, you may have upgrade options with the more modern machine.
Picking this page at random, for DC5700, it'll accept an E6700.
Going with a small form factor, does mean accepting compromises,
when trying to upgrade later. Better to get a "roomy box" you
can stick more junk in
You get a more powerful power supply
by doing that as well. This thing has a 240W power supply. The
E6700 is a 65W processor, which is why it is offered as an
upgrade option on a machine with a 240W power supply.
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/12454-12454-64287-321860-3328896-3249646.html
If you like the idea of the E6700, buy it now before they
disappear completely. It looks like they're discontinued,
so now you'll have to "turn over a few rocks" to find one.
Just unplug the 2.13GHz processor, and install this 2.66Ghz one.
http://www.serversdirect.com/product.asp?pf_id=CP1115
If you're curious, you can find some benchmarks here. Virtually
all of these benchmarks, attempt to use both cores, so the results
are skewed towards multi-core processors. I think only the ITunes
benchmark is a single execution thread. Comparing the Pentium D 805
in this chart (at 2.66Ghz), is as close as I can get to emulating
your dual Xeon 2.8GHz choice.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html
There are probably some small business machines of more
recent vintage than the dc5700, and you may be able to
get a faster processor than either of the options above.
There are Core2 processors at 3GHz readily available now.
Paul
