New Mashine for High Performance

[Howlett]

Hey there,

I'm new here and I saw the great benchmarks on the website but few questions poped up in my mind. I work with 3D graphics and as i advance i bounce at my hardware's limits. After the summer I would like to buy myself a new mashine that should provide high CPU speed. First I thought about 2x Xeon 5530 with the rating of roughly 10k. Alright. I then checked the rating of i7 965 and 975 which had around 6-7k. But when I went to the System Benchmarks I saw that the top rated system are actually the i7 ones...
So I would like to ask whats the secret behind it and what system should I buy, my goal is to achieve a very high performance mashine in the range of 1200-1600 euro

[David (PassMark)]

The best machine depends on the software you are using, and in particular
1) How many cores it can use at the same time
2) If the application is limited by memory bandwidth (and not CPU power)
3) If the application is limited disk bandwidth (and not CPU power)
4) If the application is limited by video card performance (and not CPU power)

What CPU do you have at the moment and does the CPU usage currently get pinned on 100% for long periods?

[Howlett]

Hi, thanks for the answear so far

All the software I use uses 99-100 % of my CPU, it's pure mathematical algorithm. My current CPU is the Q6600 at stock speed. Some of my programms can use up to 16 cores, some even higher. Video card performace doesnt play any role when it's about to calculate something.

Ofcourse RAM is needed too, I intend to have at least 8 GB of RAM, which should be fast too, at least 1066 Mhz.

[David (PassMark)]

The dual or quad CPU Xeon systems (eg. dual X7350, X7460) are faster than the i7, but also much more expensive. I haven't checked the current prices, but I think they would be out of your budget.

In which case a single CPU Core i7 solution is probably the next best.

[Howlett]

Well yes those two are around 2300 euro per piece.

So do I understand right, one single Processor like i7 965 Extreme Edition would be faster than a 2x Xeon 5530 system, and why ?

[David (PassMark)]

I think the Dual CPU Xeon 5530 would be a quicker machine for CPU bound tasks. But more expensive.

[Howlett]

Do you perhaps now by how much it would be quicker ? I need to know because a i7 mashine would be at least 2x cheaper and if the diffrence isnt that big then it wouldn't be worth ..

[David (PassMark)]

You would really need to run your particular application on both platforms to get the exact numbers. And it depends on the particular i7 model you select and probably on RAM as well.

In some cases the use of ECC RAM can even make servers slightly slower than desktops (all other factors being equal).

The difference would definitely be less than x2 however.