Dual Core Comparison

[OK, so I cross-posted.]

Background:

I'm in the process of building a new computer for a friend who is a
rather demanding business power-user.

The computer will be used mostly for internet browsing / email, business
applications, and some light gaming. The game that would probably
present the most CPU burden would be MS Flight Simulator 2004.

User often has 4 - 6 business applications open at the same time then
may launch FS keeping the other apps in the background. He indicated
that memory usage sometimes tops 1g in his current system.

He wants a "very responsive" system. I don't want to hear him express
any concerns about stability.


System considerations:

The hard drives will be two WD SE16 250gb in RAID 0 (I have concerns
about the reliability of Raptors). Memory will be two gig (2x1gb) of
Corsair XMS Platinum CAS2 (becuase I have it).

O/S will either be W2K or XP Home.

I'll probably use a ASUS A8N-VM CSM since there is not a heavy burden on
video performance. (I run FS 2004 on a GF-6100 board without any problems.)

The board is only capable of ~ 20% overclocking but reports indicate its
VERY stable.

I'm interested in using a dual core processor for this application and
are considering either a X2 3800 or an Opteron 165.


Question:

In this application, are there any opinions on whether the X2 3800 or
Opteron 165 would perform better?

TIA,

CV

On Sat, 29 Apr 2006 19:56:57 -0500, Cal Vanize wrote:


[OK, so I cross-posted.]

Background:

I'm in the process of building a new computer for a friend who is a rather
demanding business power-user.

The computer will be used mostly for internet browsing / email, business
applications, and some light gaming. The game that would probably present
the most CPU burden would be MS Flight Simulator 2004.

User often has 4 - 6 business applications open at the same time then may
launch FS keeping the other apps in the background. He indicated that
memory usage sometimes tops 1g in his current system.

He wants a "very responsive" system. I don't want to hear him express any
concerns about stability.


System considerations:

The hard drives will be two WD SE16 250gb in RAID 0 (I have concerns about
the reliability of Raptors). Memory will be two gig (2x1gb) of Corsair
XMS Platinum CAS2 (becuase I have it).

O/S will either be W2K or XP Home.

I'll probably use a ASUS A8N-VM CSM since there is not a heavy burden on
video performance. (I run FS 2004 on a GF-6100 board without any
problems.)

The board is only capable of ~ 20% overclocking but reports indicate its
VERY stable.

I'm interested in using a dual core processor for this application and are
considering either a X2 3800 or an Opteron 165.


Question:

In this application, are there any opinions on whether the X2 3800 or
Opteron 165 would perform better?

TIA,

CV

Either processor is overkill of the type of system you are talking about.
The performance of the Opteron 165 and the 3800+ will be about the same.
The Opteron has bigger caches but a slightly slower clock, in some
applications big caches make a huge difference but in a simple desktop
system the sensitivity to cache size is likely to be much smaller.

There is absolutely no reason to do RAID0 on a desktop system, all you are
doing is doubling the probability of a catastrophic disk failure. Disk
performance matters at boot up time and that's it. If you are seeing
much disk activity on a desktop system that's a sure indicator that you
don't have enough RAM. Put one drive (with a 16M cache on it) in the
system and spend the money you would have spent on the second drive on
more RAM, I'd put at least 2G in any new system.

General Schvantzkoph wrote:
On Sat, 29 Apr 2006 19:56:57 -0500, Cal Vanize wrote:


[OK, so I cross-posted.]

Background:

I'm in the process of building a new computer for a friend who is a rather
demanding business power-user.

The computer will be used mostly for internet browsing / email, business
applications, and some light gaming. The game that would probably present
the most CPU burden would be MS Flight Simulator 2004.

User often has 4 - 6 business applications open at the same time then may
launch FS keeping the other apps in the background. He indicated that
memory usage sometimes tops 1g in his current system.

He wants a "very responsive" system. I don't want to hear him express any
concerns about stability.


System considerations:

The hard drives will be two WD SE16 250gb in RAID 0 (I have concerns about
the reliability of Raptors). Memory will be two gig (2x1gb) of Corsair
XMS Platinum CAS2 (becuase I have it).

O/S will either be W2K or XP Home.

I'll probably use a ASUS A8N-VM CSM since there is not a heavy burden on
video performance. (I run FS 2004 on a GF-6100 board without any
problems.)

The board is only capable of ~ 20% overclocking but reports indicate its
VERY stable.

I'm interested in using a dual core processor for this application and are
considering either a X2 3800 or an Opteron 165.


Question:

In this application, are there any opinions on whether the X2 3800 or
Opteron 165 would perform better?

TIA,

CV


Either processor is overkill of the type of system you are talking about.
The performance of the Opteron 165 and the 3800+ will be about the same.
The Opteron has bigger caches but a slightly slower clock, in some
applications big caches make a huge difference but in a simple desktop
system the sensitivity to cache size is likely to be much smaller.

There is absolutely no reason to do RAID0 on a desktop system, all you are
doing is doubling the probability of a catastrophic disk failure. Disk
performance matters at boot up time and that's it. If you are seeing
much disk activity on a desktop system that's a sure indicator that you
don't have enough RAM. Put one drive (with a 16M cache on it) in the
system and spend the money you would have spent on the second drive on
more RAM, I'd put at least 2G in any new system.


What would not be overkill? If not a dual core, what single core proc
would do the truck? At what point would additional processor power not
make any noticable difference in this application?

(As an aside, I've been doing RAID 0 on systems for years even with some
of the old [less reliable] drives. Never had a problem, never lost a
drive. Not that the odds don't point at the increased possibility of
failure. Maybe I've just been lucky.)

What would not be overkill? If not a dual core, what single core proc
would do the truck? At what point would additional processor power not
make any noticable difference in this application?

(As an aside, I've been doing RAID 0 on systems for years even with some
of the old [less reliable] drives. Never had a problem, never lost a
drive. Not that the odds don't point at the increased possibility of
failure. Maybe I've just been lucky.)

I'm not saying you shouldn't use a dual core processor, the price is
reasonable on the both the X2 3800+ and the Opteron 165 so there is no
reason not to use one. Using a dual core will give the system plenty of
headroom for the future. All I was saying was that the decision between
the X2 3800+ and the Opteron isn't all that critical, your friend will be
thrilled with either one. As for motherboards, any Nforce4 board will do a
great job. I have an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum with a 3800+ (single core) in
my workstation and an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum with an X2 4400+ in my compute
server. Both systems have been running 24/7 since I got them, I haven't
had a single hiccup on either one.

The RAID0 failure issue is a matter of simple probability, if one disk has
an MTBF of 5 years then two disks have an MTBF of 2.5 years. However the
real issue is that it won't speed up the system. Look at the disk light on
your own system, I bet it almost never blinks. If you are seeing a lot of
disk activity then you should add some RAM to your system. You should have
enough RAM so that you can keep all of your frequently used programs in
RAM without having to do any paging.

Cal Vanize writes:
[OK, so I cross-posted.]

Background:

I'm in the process of building a new computer for a friend who is a
rather demanding business power-user.

The computer will be used mostly for internet browsing / email, business
applications,

I've personally never quite understood how having IE open, having OE
open, having word open, and maybe even going wild and having Excel
open, could be considered a "demanding business power-user."

Now if he had an 8192 x 8192 matrix of functions, not just constants,
and demanded that Excel invert that matrix in the blink of an eye,
that would be a business power user. (But the typical person starts
looking worried if I even talk about a matrix function in Excel.)

and some light gaming. The game that would probably
present the most CPU burden would be MS Flight Simulator 2004.

User often has 4 - 6 business applications open at the same time then
may launch FS keeping the other apps in the background. He indicated
that memory usage sometimes tops 1g in his current system.

Give him 4 gigabytes, every app can have its own 512meg

He wants a "very responsive" system. I don't want to hear him express
any concerns about stability.

Give him really stable hardware and only 2 gigabytes, and not have to
worry about Windows freaking out with having address issues.

System considerations:

The hard drives will be two WD SE16 250gb in RAID 0 (I have concerns
about the reliability of Raptors). Memory will be two gig (2x1gb) of
Corsair XMS Platinum CAS2 (becuase I have it).

O/S will either be W2K or XP Home.

I'll probably use a ASUS A8N-VM CSM since there is not a heavy burden on
video performance. (I run FS 2004 on a GF-6100 board without any problems.)

The board is only capable of ~ 20% overclocking but reports indicate its
VERY stable.

Stability is worth WAY more than 20% more speed. A decade ago I went
into an office and swapped out all the 486DX/33 for 486DX2/66, timed
each of them with my intensive numerical calculations and they were
about 1.8x faster. I didn't tell anyone what I had done but told them
to carefully watch for anything, the slightest difference, the tiniest
change, anything that didn't work or that they noticed. After a week
I went back and carefully asked if they had noticed anything. Nope.
Not a one of them had noticed that the machines were 1.8x faster.

I'm interested in using a dual core processor for this application and
are considering either a X2 3800 or an Opteron 165.

Question:

In this application, are there any opinions on whether the X2 3800 or
Opteron 165 would perform better?

Can you REALLY think he can actually do something that will be CPU
limited?

TIA,

CV

"General Schvantzkoph" wrote in message
news
[...]

The RAID0 failure issue is a matter of simple probability, if one
disk has an MTBF of 5 years then two disks have an MTBF of 2.5 years.

Er, no.

The MTBF applies across every disk of that type ever made. Getting a second
one has no bearing on whether either will fail at all, fail before the MTBF
or fail after it.

On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 19:01:51 +1000, DRS wrote:

"General Schvantzkoph" wrote in message
news
[...]

The RAID0 failure issue is a matter of simple probability, if one disk
has an MTBF of 5 years then two disks have an MTBF of 2.5 years.

Er, no.

The MTBF applies across every disk of that type ever made. Getting a
second one has no bearing on whether either will fail at all, fail before
the MTBF or fail after it.

In a RAID0 configuration the failure of either disk will cause you to lose
all of your data, therefore the MTBF of disk system is (single disk
MTBF)/# disks.

"General Schvantzkoph" wrote in message
news
On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 19:01:51 +1000, DRS wrote:

"General Schvantzkoph" wrote in message
news
[...]

The RAID0 failure issue is a matter of simple probability, if one
disk has an MTBF of 5 years then two disks have an MTBF of 2.5
years.

Er, no.

The MTBF applies across every disk of that type ever made. Getting a
second one has no bearing on whether either will fail at all, fail
before the MTBF or fail after it.

In a RAID0 configuration the failure of either disk will cause you to
lose all of your data,

True.

therefore the MTBF of disk system is (single
disk MTBF)/# disks.

False. The MTBF is unchanged. Your RAID 0 will be rooted but you're
comparing apples with oranges.

Not being a math genius,

If you are using two drives from a batch that has one per 100 fail, then
with one drive the probability is 1%, with two drives it's 2%.

Doesn't seem too bad.
--
Ed Light

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"Ed Light" wrote in message
news4a5g.666$KB.218@fed1read08
Not being a math genius,

If you are using two drives from a batch that has one per 100 fail,
then with one drive the probability is 1%, with two drives it's 2%.

But the MTBF - a measure of the average life of all such drives - doesn't
change.