Why is it that a Pentium 3 xeon 800 costs about $1800 and a pentium 4 xeon 1.7 ghz costs $500 can someone please please tell me what the hell is going on? I can't sleep at night damn it!
What are the cache sizes on the two procs you are looking at. A Xeon may have anywhere between 512 and 2megs of cache and that makes a huge difference in the cost.
What are the cache sizes on the two procs you are looking at. A Xeon may have anywhere between 512 and 2megs of cache and that makes a huge difference in the cost.
true, so thats the only difference? I have done a few Xeon price checks.
I found a p4 Xeon 1.7 ghz for $300 however the cache is 256kb, the same as a normal p4. So what exactly is the benefit of this Xeon?
I have also found a P3 733 mhz Xeon which has 256kb for $78? a p3 600 still cost $140
A p3 Xeon with 500 mhz 512kb cache costs $300, does the 512kb of cache double the speed of the processor?
Now things start to get a bit bloody wierd, a p3 1ghz Xeon and 133 fsb for.....$470? the p4 1.7 ghz Xeon with 256kb 400fsb is $170 cheaper then this one.
What the hell is going on intel? Don't make me come down there!
I don't know where you are getting these prices from but it sounds like they are from ebay.. where prices can be a free for all and are inaccurate until the end of the auction.
Here's an article that may give you some infos on the difference.
http://www.esc-ca.com/processors/intel/xeon.htm
Another reason that you may be finding that the newer P4 xeons are cheaper than the older ones is that the new ones require a new motherboard. So if you have a server and you want to upgrade what is cheaper paying more for the fastest P3 xeon or rippin g ht ewhole system apart to replace the motherboard and CPU?
Also Intel is cutting it's own throat to push these new procs especially now that they have a 2ghz one.. the older procs were allready heavily discounted and will probably not drop in price until the are totally obsolete.
All the prices above are from www.tomshardware.com under price search. Ebay is an auction site...?
So intel takes into account people who have to buy new motherboards, well thats nice of them considering the new dual p4 Xeon 860 is going for a mere $700 and even that is the cheapest I could find.
Thanks for the Xeon link I shall go and have a read.
Check out the MayaRendertest Database = It doesn't look like you can say xeon is much faster, maybe a few percent when crunching heavy stuff? For most 3d renderjobs it does not help you much taking the xeons, I guess with the extramoney the xeons costs I would invest in one more non xeon rendermachine = that would indeed be much faster than the 2 or so percents a xeon gives.
Maybe I am wrong but I think the pIV is a little different from the PIII because he does not handle mutliprocessing. Only the PIV Xeon can do that.
Well Pentiums and Xeon weren't designed with 3D rendering in mind.. I'm just saying theoretically that is how the Xeon would work faster. Recent devlopments and the competition with AMD have made the cost facter of Xeon's questionable.
Most 3D software isn't optimised for P4's either so it really is pointless to buy them now.
Maybe I am wrong but I think the pIV is a little different from the PIII because he does not handle mutliprocessing. Only the PIV Xeon can do that.
Actually P3 Xeon procs can multi proc in really high numbers.. you only see 2 and 4 boards for sale because anything higher is astronomically expensive but they do exist.
Eventually there will be a Multi Proc board for P4's but currently I do not know of any boards that can pair up P4's.
I was talking to a guy in a local (mom & pop) computer store in L.A., and he said that there will NOT be multi-proc boards for the P4. Instead, Intel is focusing all their efforts on the IA-64. I believe he also said that the current P4 Xeons are at the max speed that Intel will make them (i.e., they aren't going to make them any faster).
On a side note, the "home" version of WindowsXP will not be supporting multi-processors as well. If you want multi-thread-ablilty, you'll have to go for the server (or whatever they're calling it) version. But, it's not like I was going to upgrade from Win2K - in fact, that's the last thing I would ever do.
Finally, here's a question that's been confusing me... If you go to Dell's website and configure a 330 workstation, converting it from a desktop to a tower configuration adds OVER $800!!! Why is that???
Eventually there will be a Multi Proc board for P4's but currently I do not know of any boards that can pair up P4's<
I was talking to a guy in a local (mom & pop) computer store in L.A., and he said that there will NOT be multi-proc boards for the P4. Instead, Intel is focusing all their efforts on the IA-64. I believe he also said that the current P4 Xeons are at the max speed that Intel will make them (i.e., they aren't going to make them any faster).
OK well maybe I'm mistaken.. I just figured since Xeon's are usually used in Servers that they would go multiproc.. so far I haven't seen much about the Itanium's that made them seem anywhere near being viable to 3D folks.
On a side note, the "home" version of WindowsXP will not be supporting multi-processors as well.
Yeah I'm more likely to move to Linux than "upgrade" to XP.
Finally, here's a question that's been confusing me... If you go to Dell's website and configure a 330 workstation, converting it from a desktop to a tower configuration adds OVER $800!!! Why is that???
Well I don't know what machine you were looking at but things that would increase the coat would be a larger power supply for all those extra hardrives and if the case is metal rather than plastic it would be more expensive but neither of these items should add up to $800. Well they mmay use a different motherboard int he tower but like I said I have no idea which systems you were looking at... I have built most of my systems by hand.
Hey G -
I think you misread my post. What I was saying was that the standard P4 will not be DP capable. The current P4 Xeon is.
The Dell machine I was referring to was the 330 workstation (which runs on a standard P4 - now up to 2GHz).
I have yet to build my own machine, but am very close to doing that for my next system. Kind of frightens me. Don't be surprised if I seek guidance.
I think you misread my post. What I was saying was that the standard P4 will not be DP capable. The current P4 Xeon is.
I see..
The Dell machine I was referring to was the 330 workstation (which runs on a standard P4 - now up to 2GHz).
I couldn't find this huge price difference between the two systems you mention are you sure you picked the same specs besides the desktop versus tower?
I have yet to build my own machine, but am very close to doing that for my next system. Kind of frightens me. Don't be surprised if I seek guidance.
It's not too hard to do.. it's nice if the place you buy the baord and CPU from install the CPU and setup the BIOS. I would highly reccomend www.micropro.com as they do this and they have pretty good deals on top notch stuff.
Hi gu,
Thanks for all the relevent answers to my original question. I still don't seem to be any better off than I was before 
cheers,
Milton