If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Suggestions for Core 2 Duo systems that use PCI - not PCI express?
Right now I'm running a 2.4 gig P4 on a Soyo Dragon mobo. I could
upgrade to a socket 478 3.4gig processor and get about a 30% bump in speed which wouldn't be bad, but it's my understanding going to a Core 2 Duo chip I could see a much bigger increase. I dont need to be on the cutting edge, what Core 2 chips should I look for that would net me about 3x the speed of that 2.4gig P4? I'm favoring Intel unless you feel there's a really compelling reason to go with someone else. . I still want to run XP - all my software works with it and I'd like to stay with PCI slots, not PCI express so I can swap over hardware I've already got. The more PCI slots the better - like 5 or more. Does such an animal exist - i.e. Core 2 duo system with lots of PCI slots? Thanks for all input |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Suggestions for Core 2 Duo systems that use PCI - not PCI express?
"muzician21" wrote...
I dont need to be on the cutting edge, what Core 2 chips should I look for that would net me about 3x the speed of that 2.4gig P4? None. While you would see improvement from any C2D over 2.4GHz, you won't likely see anywhere near 3X the speed on anything. I still want to run XP - all my software works with it and I'd like to stay with PCI slots, not PCI express so I can swap over hardware I've already got. The more PCI slots the better - like 5 or more. Does such an animal exist - i.e. Core 2 duo system with lots of PCI slots? If you stay with PCI, then you will choke your I/O to graphics, HDs, and other peripherals that use the PCI bus. There's no sense in staying with PCI if you want performance. |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Suggestions for Core 2 Duo systems that use PCI - not PCI express?
In message "JR Weiss"
was claimed to have wrote: "muzician21" wrote... I dont need to be on the cutting edge, what Core 2 chips should I look for that would net me about 3x the speed of that 2.4gig P4? None. While you would see improvement from any C2D over 2.4GHz, you won't likely see anywhere near 3X the speed on anything. Why not? Except under very specific workloads, the P4's pipeline length all but crippled the processor's responsiveness for day to day usage. Hyperthreading partially addressed this, although it caused it's own set of slowdowns. A single Core 2 core is roughly 1.5x-2x faster then a similarly clocked P4 CPU, one of the higher end Core 2 Duo processors should easily offer 3x-4x processing improvements over a P4. In fairness, we're rarely CPU bound at all these days, so when it comes to desktop performance comparing CPUs isn't always the best way to start. I still want to run XP - all my software works with it and I'd like to stay with PCI slots, not PCI express so I can swap over hardware I've already got. The more PCI slots the better - like 5 or more. Does such an animal exist - i.e. Core 2 duo system with lots of PCI slots? If you stay with PCI, then you will choke your I/O to graphics, HDs, and other peripherals that use the PCI bus. There's no sense in staying with PCI if you want performance. Depending on what sort of devices are connected, the PCI bus' limitations may not matter. Sound cards, fax boards, even SCSI-connected scanners and similar won't get near the PCI bus' bandwidth limitations. Higher performance devices will make use of a faster bus, but for most users their video card and possibly an additional drive controller are about all that fit into that ballpark. (okay okay, ethernet too in theory, but in practice how many users have hardware that can sustain over PCI's practical transfer speeds over ethernet?) |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Suggestions for Core 2 Duo systems that use PCI - not PCI express?
I suggest that you try the "power search" function for Intel motherboards at
www.newegg.com, even if you can't use them (outside US or Canada) or don't care to use them. I find three Socket 775 boards with 5 PCI slots: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...lue=735%3A7583 (link may wrap) I don't know of a simple performance comparison. The highest clock frequencies of a Core2 CPU may not be much higher than a P4. Multicore processors can give improved performance, but that may require software written to exploit multiple CPUs. I hope that you're aware that you'll need to replace your RAM and probably the power supply as well as the motherboard and CPU. Fortunately, DDR2 memory is pretty cheap at the moment. I'm not sure that I agree with another poster about PCI-E being significant. It's the way to go for high-end graphics cards for gaming, but it may not offer practical advantages over PCI for desktop users for other purposes. There appears to be a lag in PCI-E card development, even if you were prepared to replace all of your cards. For example: I have an Asus PCI-E sound card. It is really a PCI card with some bridge circuitry, so that it works in a PCI-E X1 slot. It has no better performance than the PCI version, and it's a bit more awkward to use, as it requires a separate power connection. "muzician21" wrote in message ... Right now I'm running a 2.4 gig P4 on a Soyo Dragon mobo. I could upgrade to a socket 478 3.4gig processor and get about a 30% bump in speed which wouldn't be bad, but it's my understanding going to a Core 2 Duo chip I could see a much bigger increase. I dont need to be on the cutting edge, what Core 2 chips should I look for that would net me about 3x the speed of that 2.4gig P4? I'm favoring Intel unless you feel there's a really compelling reason to go with someone else. . I still want to run XP - all my software works with it and I'd like to stay with PCI slots, not PCI express so I can swap over hardware I've already got. The more PCI slots the better - like 5 or more. Does such an animal exist - i.e. Core 2 duo system with lots of PCI slots? Thanks for all input |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Suggestions for Core 2 Duo systems that use PCI - not PCIexpress?
On Apr 9, 1:32*pm, "JR Weiss" wrote:
"muzician21" wrote... I dont need to be on the cutting edge, what Core 2 chips should I look for that would net me about 3x the speed of that 2.4gig P4? None. While you would see improvement from any C2D over 2.4GHz, you won't likely see anywhere near 3X the speed on anything. Hmm. Looking at a chart like this http://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html gives the impression there are CPU's that are many times faster. What I'm mostly looking at is rendering times for processing video such as through VirtuaDub and for creating DVD's. You feel I I won't see "anywhere near" 3x the speed? If that's correct maybe just maxing out the board with a faster socket 478 CPU isn't such a bad idea. |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
Suggestions for Core 2 Duo systems that use PCI - not PCI express?
muzician21 wrote:
On Apr 9, 1:32 pm, "JR Weiss" wrote: "muzician21" wrote... I dont need to be on the cutting edge, what Core 2 chips should I look for that would net me about 3x the speed of that 2.4gig P4? None. While you would see improvement from any C2D over 2.4GHz, you won't likely see anywhere near 3X the speed on anything. Hmm. Looking at a chart like this http://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html gives the impression there are CPU's that are many times faster. What I'm mostly looking at is rendering times for processing video such as through VirtuaDub and for creating DVD's. You feel I I won't see "anywhere near" 3x the speed? If that's correct maybe just maxing out the board with a faster socket 478 CPU isn't such a bad idea. A magazine article, or a web site now, will tend to use benchmarks that emphasize processor performance this way. (clock_speed * instructions_per_clock) * number_of_cores What they do, is test multithreaded software. Multithreading works best in multimedia applications, because a number of problems there (processing large data sets) benefit from a divide and conquer algorithm. For example, Photoshop could split a picture in two pieces, and a processor core could work on each half of the picture. But the truth is, activities on a computer consist of a mix of single threaded ones and multithreaded ones. So a typical user doesn't see the huge speedup the above equation might suggest. For single threaded computing, you'd see an improvement proportional to just a single core. The Core2 "instructions_per_clock" is how some of the speedup occurs. (clock_speed * instructions_per_clock) So if you wanted a 3x speedup at all times, I'd have to pick a processor that offers that improvement at all times. To do that, I'd use a single threaded benchmark. If your target was 3x performance increase only while you were rendering or shrinking a movie, then a multithreaded benchmark would tell you that. I can pick a "Pentium 4 2.4GHz C Northwood" on hwbot.org, and then look at the collected benchmarks. The "C" means FSB800 (front side bus speed), which would be about as good as it gets for a S478 processor. A much earlier processor, say one for socket 423, might be FSB400, making it harder to get data in and out of the processor. http://www.hwbot.org/ResultBrowseByP...puModelId=1425 SuperPI 1M ( 1 million digits) 80 seconds at 2.4Ghz SuperPI 32M (32 million digits) 58 minutes 59 seconds at 2.4GHz Now, compare to an E8400 Core2 Duo 3GHz processor. http://www.hwbot.org/listResults.do?...pplicationId=3 SuperPI 1M ( 1 million digits) 15-16 seconds at 3.0Ghz http://www.hwbot.org/listResults.do?...pplicationId=7 SuperPI 32M (32 million digits) 14:10 to 15:59 at 3.0GHz The scaleup there implies a factor of 5, in the 1 million digit benchmark. But the thing is, SuperPI uses about 8MB of data in main memory, and the E8400 has 6MB of shared L2 cache. I don't know what the locality of reference is like in SuperPI, but I would be a bit suspicious that the benchmark is overestimating the speedup. A lot of the SuperPI data, might end up stored in L2, giving an unfair advantage and a less than honest performance ratio. So I can try the 32 million digit benchmark. This still seems a little on the high side. If we compare 58:59 to 15:59, that is a factor of 3539/959 = 3.69 Your P4 consisted of a single core, and it could have had Hyperthreading, which makes a second, virtual core. The virtual core, on a good day, contributes only an extra 10% to performance, as it runs when the other core is "blocked". Now, you can buy quad core processors, and if the software you use can actually use all four cores, then you should see a good improvement. The Q9650, is two E8400s inside the same CPU package. It is a quad for $324. The Q9550 is comparable, and is 2.83GHz for $270. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115130 core core core core Q9550, Q9650 | | | | Block Diagram -+----+- -+----+- Two silicon die, joined inside. | 6MB L2 | | 6MB L2 | ----+--- ---+---- | | +-----+------+ | LGA775 FSB (used for memory access and I/O) Nehalem (Core i7) is the most recent generation, and the motherboard and RAM for it, may add to the upgrade costs. This is an example of one of those. Socket is LGA1366 instead of LGA775 for the other one. The extra pins support a direct memory interface. Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz 4*256KB L2 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad $289 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115202 core core core core Core i7 is a single die | | | | 256KB L2 256KB L2 256KB L2 256KB L2 | | | | -+-----------+----------+----------+- | 8MB L3 |----- triple channel memory -------------------+---------------- interface on processor | (like AMD does it) LGA1366 FSB (used for I/O) Using the HWBOT again... 14.5 seconds for SuperPI 1M (when the entire data set could fit in L3. That is 14.5 seconds at 2.66GHz. http://www.hwbot.org/listResults.do?...pplicationId=3 The SuperPI 32M is 12:45 at 2.66GHz, and ratio to P4 2.4Ghz is 58:59/12:45 = 3539/765 = 4.6x single threaded. http://www.hwbot.org/listResults.do?...pplicationId=7 An E8400 is $165, and a motherboard with DDR2 memory makes for a more reasonably priced alternative. It really depends on what your budget is. The pricing is such, that buying low end Intel platforms may not make much long term sense. (You'd only be looking at upgrading again.) As far as I know, all the current benchmarks on Tomwhardware charts are multithreaded, intended to let the extra cores show their stuff. It is too bad they don't try to be more balanced, and throw in a less impressive speedup from a single threaded benchmark. I've used SuperPI above, as an example of a single threaded one. Paul |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
Suggestions for Core 2 Duo systems that use PCI - not PCI express?
On Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:51:20 -0700, DevilsPGD
wrote: Depending on what sort of devices are connected, the PCI bus' limitations may not matter. Sound cards, fax boards, even SCSI-connected scanners and similar won't get near the PCI bus' bandwidth limitations. Higher performance devices will make use of a faster bus, but for most users their video card and possibly an additional drive controller are about all that fit into that ballpark. (okay okay, ethernet too in theory, but in practice how many users have hardware that can sustain over PCI's practical transfer speeds over ethernet?) Historically, people running a combination of Creative Labs sound card and either GbE NIC, hard drive controller, or video capture/tuner PCI cards have ran into problems, though it also depends on the chipset as some have better PCI performance than others. Regardless, if the OP needs to use PCI cards then within that requirement there would still be a significant performance boost moving to a modern Core2 platform if the right motherboard can be found. |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
Suggestions for Core 2 Duo systems that use PCI - not PCI express?
On Thu, 9 Apr 2009 09:41:22 -0700 (PDT), muzician21
wrote: Right now I'm running a 2.4 gig P4 on a Soyo Dragon mobo. I could upgrade to a socket 478 3.4gig processor and get about a 30% bump in speed which wouldn't be bad, but it's my understanding going to a Core 2 Duo chip I could see a much bigger increase. It's not worthwhile to upgrade the CPU, unless you found one quite cheap which the highest speed CPUs per socket generally aren't. Long term it would become worse and worse relative to multi-core CPU performance, as more and more apps become better multi-threaded and you find new things to concurrently do without bogging the machine down once you have more cores to throw at jobs. I dont need to be on the cutting edge, what Core 2 chips should I look for that would net me about 3x the speed of that 2.4gig P4? I'm favoring Intel unless you feel there's a really compelling reason to go with someone else. . As always, budget should be considered vs length of time till the next upgrade/replacement. That'll guide you to what CPU you choose, which Core 2 Quad model #. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...name=Quad-Core I still want to run XP - all my software works with it and I'd like to stay with PCI slots, not PCI express so I can swap over hardware I've already got. The more PCI slots the better - like 5 or more. Does such an animal exist - i.e. Core 2 duo system with lots of PCI slots? Thanks for all input Life will be easier if you can accept only 4 PCI slots. Here are a few of those, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...lue=735%3A7583 I'd stay away from anything with a Via chipset, historically their PCI implementation has been inferior to Intel's. |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
Suggestions for Core 2 Duo systems that use PCI - not PCI express?
"muzician21" wrote...
I dont need to be on the cutting edge, what Core 2 chips should I look for that would net me about 3x the speed of that 2.4gig P4? None. While you would see improvement from any C2D over 2.4GHz, you won't likely see anywhere near 3X the speed on anything. Hmm. Looking at a chart like this http://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html gives the impression there are CPU's that are many times faster. What I'm mostly looking at is rendering times for processing video such as through VirtuaDub and for creating DVD's. You feel I I won't see "anywhere near" 3x the speed? If that's correct maybe just maxing out the board with a faster socket 478 CPU isn't such a bad idea. A single benchmark cannot tell the entire story. Your computer is a system, not just a CPU. Your use of the system includes the hardware, the software, and the wetware (your input and control). Besides, the CPU benchmark alone cannot tell a true story of actual performance. Also, even if you find a reasonable overall benchmark for comparison, what is the setup time for a typical job, vs the run time of the rendering app? I have a Q9450 (2.66 GHz quad-core) and an E6850 (3.0 GHz dual-core) system. Both are similarly configured -- Motherboard, FSB, RAM, HD, gfx. The chart you cite shows the respective CPU Mark score of 3895 and 1814, or a performance factor (PF) of 2.15x the "speed" for the Q6600. In the only real-world, CPU-intensive, no-manual-intervention, fully multithreaded app I run (Folding @Home SMP), the real PF is more like 1.4-1.5x in actual frame times for similar Work Units. OTOH, the PF for Internet browsing is 1.0x -- there is nothing in the Q6600 that makes Internet browsing faster. Where is a benchmark that uses your rendering app, or similar, as the testbed? What does it show for a new system and a system similar to yours? How much will those results change when you factor in your desire to retain old HD, gfx, and other peripherals? Will the MoBo you choose on the basis of PCI slot capability perform the same as a same-generation MoBo that is optimized for current peripherals? If your rendering apps are NOT fully multithreaded (i.e., cannot take full advantage of 2 or 4 cores), do not scale linearly with added cores (VERY common) and/or entail a significant amount of HD read/write, the CPU part of the performance will be less significant. If you use the same HDs in your new system, your HD R/W performance will not increase at all. If you don't want to go "cutting edge" and restrict yourself to a MoBo with multiple USABLE PCI slots (looks like 1 of the 5 would be unusable on either MoBo cited by Bob, once a gfx card is installed), likely the best you can do for a reasonable cost is a Q9650 ($325 for CPU alone). Assuming you find a MoBo that supports its full FSB and RAM specs, the CPU Mark scores for the new and old CPUs are 4414 and 339, or a theoretical PF of 13x. Given the real-world example above, you could expect 2/3 of that for the CPU portion of a fully multithreaded app, or about 8.6x. Both the MoBos cited by Bob are restricted to DDR2 800 RAM, so your memory bandwidth will be restricted relative to the benchmark system right off the bat. IF the RAM bandwidth scales linearly from 1066 to 800 and IF RAM bandwidth has a similar weighting in overall performance, now you're down to a 6.5x PF. Then, if your rendering app only can take advantage of 2 cores instead of 4, you're down to a 3.2x PF. With both HD and gfx performance at par (no increase), they will significantly reduce the overall PF. FWIW, if you go for a more mainstream CPU like the Q6600 instead of the Q9650, its CPU Mark score of 2851 would indicate a PF of 4.2 or 2.1 using the above methodology (before HD and gfx input), instead of 6.5 or 3.2 for the Q9650. None of this addresses setup time (your manual intervention to get the rendering work ready to run), which also has an assumed PF of 1.0, and could therefore be another significant factor in overall performance. While I admit my methodology is far from rigid, it does give a reasonable feel for how unreliable CPU benchmarks alone are for assessing performance potential of a system. |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
Suggestions for Core 2 Duo systems that use PCI - not PCI express?
muzician21 wrote:
.... What I'm mostly looking at is rendering times for processing video such as through VirtuaDub and for creating DVD's. You feel I I won't see "anywhere near" 3x the speed? If that's correct maybe just maxing out the board with a faster socket 478 CPU isn't such a bad idea. No! Multiple core CPUs are the bomb. You will see a huge improvement in performance when it counts. If I were you, I would go to a VirtuaDub USENET group or maybe a web forum. Ask users, they know what hardware works best. The bigger the group, the more likely you will get replies from techies (and some of them will know what they are talking about). By the way. I am real-life testing an SSD drive (OCZ Vertex) right now. The numbers look very good (at least to me) for compressing and decompressing archives. It feels very fast too. Now my Raptor is my slow (haha) secondary hard drive. On a 2 core 3 GHz CPU... WinRAR 3.7... 1,270 KB/s 7zip (multithreading, 2 core CPU) compressing, resulting... speed... 3223 rating... 7500 decompressing, resulting... speed... 27582 rating... 3117 Good luck and have fun. -- Interested in making Windows and games obey your verbal commands? Continuous command recognition (much easier than speech recognition) can now be enabled using Naturally Speaking and freeware Dragonfly. See (comp.lang.beta) for discussion. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Is RAM Dedicated by Core in Mutli-Core Processor Systems? | JB | General | 3 | August 12th 07 07:36 PM |
Suggestions for a good systems for graphics? | Anders O | General | 6 | November 2nd 04 06:40 PM |
Systems with BTX/915/PCI Express not on web site | Dave Curtis | Gateway Computers | 1 | August 30th 04 06:23 AM |
PCI Express shuttle systems?!?! | Rob Jellinghaus | General | 3 | June 3rd 04 06:56 PM |