Core 2 and Xeon ... what's difference


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Canonised

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Aug 27, 2003
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Need to buy a low end workstation for CS4 and some basic home movie-editing hobby, have narrowed down to these 2 quite similar pc ...
can bros here enlighten me with the difference and the right choice ... both about the same price ... and the rest of the specs are about the same.:dunno:

A) Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E8400 (3.00GHz, 6MB L2 cache, 1333 MHz FSB)

B) Intel Xeon Processor W3505 (2.53GHz, 4MB L2 cache, 1066MHz, Dualcore)

Thanks.
 

I think(more research needed) Option A is a penryn generation architecture while Option B is a nehalem based architecture. Penryn is an older architecture compared to nehalem. Major difference between Penryn and Nehalem is
1. EPT (Extended Page Tables - affects mainly virtualization)
2. Nehalem doesn't have Northbridge. That was the bottleneck for performance in many cases with regards to memory. Intel removed Northbridge and came out with a "copy" of AMD's Hyper-transport and call it Quick Path Interconnect... LOL bottom line that is to improve memory performance.
3. Nehalem supports Triple channel DDR3 memory. (Generally faster)

Disadvantages for Nehalem based CPUs is mainly the memory cost IMO.

I would go for option B as its a newer architecture. I personally owned a dual core Xeon 5530(with an obscene amount of RAM) and I love it...

Hope this helps.
 

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I tot core2 more applicable to personal desktop while xeon powers the server computers?
 

I think(more research needed) Option A is a penryn generation architecture while Option B is a nehalem based architecture. Penryn is an older architecture compared to nehalem. Major difference between Penryn and Nehalem is
1. EPT (Extended Page Tables - affects mainly virtualization)
2. Nehalem doesn't have Northbridge. That was the bottleneck for performance in many cases with regards to memory. Intel removed Northbridge and came out with a "copy" of AMD's Hyper-transport and call it Quick Path Interconnect... LOL bottom line that is to improve memory performance.
3. Nehalem supports Triple channel DDR3 memory. (Generally faster)

Disadvantages for Nehalem based CPUs is mainly the memory cost IMO.

I would go for option B as its a newer architecture. I personally owned a dual core Xeon 5530(with an obscene amount of RAM) and I love it...

Hope this helps.
this .... whalau, extremely non-layman language ....:sweat::sweat:

ok, option B, is 3GB ram enough?:think:
 

3 GB is kinda weird combi for RAM. Why not go for 4GB? 2x2GB sticks. :thumbsup:
not sure what it means, but the sales rep said anything more than 3GB is useless :dunno:
anyway it comes with the 3 ....
 

3 GB is kinda weird combi for RAM. Why not go for 4GB? 2x2GB sticks.

not sure what it means, but the sales rep said anything more than 3GB is useless
anyway it comes with the 3 ....

Which is true unless you're on 64-bit Vista. 32-bit will only detect up to 3GB of RAM.

E8400 is a good core and used to be very popular a while ago. Overclock it and you have an excellent budget performer.
 

A good doc for TS to read up. If you are running in 32-bit environments, 3GB "limit" is for user space, not total amount of memory referenced.
 

Which is true unless you're on 64-bit Vista. 32-bit will only detect up to 3GB of RAM.

not really..

5d2dg4.jpg
 

for 32bit, only 3gb ram will be fully used.
 

this .... whalau, extremely non-layman language ....:sweat::sweat:

ok, option B, is 3GB ram enough?:think:

Erm... Option B is a little more special. Since its using triple channel DDR3, memory comes in sets of 3. Therefore the ram would be in multiples of 3 i.e. 3, 6, 9,12...... 3GB of ram al depends on what you are going to use it for. If you wanna run photohop on a 64 bit operating system editing huge raw files(or doing video editing with adobe premier), you can never have too much ram... :bsmilie:
 

like the TS, i am considering getting a new desktop soon... so am reading this thread with interest too :)

idor: when you said you had an obscene amt of ram... how much are we talking abt here? :p

but am thinking more of a quad core cpu... running a 64-bit OS (eventually), likely run XK, skip vista & go direct to windows 7. intending to run CS4 of course... can't decide on the amount of RAM though...
 

like the TS, i am considering getting a new desktop soon... so am reading this thread with interest too :)

idor: when you said you had an obscene amt of ram... how much are we talking abt here? :p

but am thinking more of a quad core cpu... running a 64-bit OS (eventually), likely run XK, skip vista & go direct to windows 7. intending to run CS4 of course... can't decide on the amount of RAM though...

Nyxx... lol I have 48GB(12 sticks of 4GB) of DDR3 1333 ram on my machine. This used to cost a bomb... but now I think you can get it beow 2k USD. If $$$ is not a factor, I suggest going for nehalem architecture or the upcoming westmere architecture CPU.
 

Nyxx... lol I have 48GB(12 sticks of 4GB) of DDR3 1333 ram on my machine. This used to cost a bomb... but now I think you can get it beow 2k USD. If $$$ is not a factor, I suggest going for nehalem architecture or the upcoming westmere architecture CPU.


48G??? :bigeyes: Wowee... you must've made some salesman/woman very happy!!

Ok... for nehalem or westmere.... what do I tell the shops at sim lim?? :sweat:
 

anyway remember to stick a relatively strong GPU into the system cuz photoshop uses quite a bit of CUDA for rendering.
 

48G??? :bigeyes: Wowee... you must've made some salesman/woman very happy!!

Ok... for nehalem or westmere.... what do I tell the shops at sim lim?? :sweat:

For Nehalem, tell them you want core i7 or xeon 55xx. For westmere... erm... you have to wait... think it will only be released early next year. But some rumours says late Q3 early Q4 this year intel may release but I would not count on that.

Most Nehalem based Mobo is triple channel DDR3. so remember memory is in sets of 3. I am not sure about sg price but in US, for ~150USD you can get 6 sticks of 2GB. that would give you like 12GB which is considered a lot for home use. 4GB sticks are not common yet. 8GB sticks are still like 1k each stick.:sweat:

Anyways, the Nehalem I have with 48GB I bought everything online. So i dun know ultimately who is the happy one. But I am the happiest one as my company is the one paying for it.... :bsmilie::bsmilie:
 

I would choose Option B and upgrade to at least 8Gb RAM (with a 64-bit OS). And who says Xeon is only for servers? Take a look at the Apple Mac Pro. Win XP and Vista 32-bit only supports up to 3.5Gb of RAM. 64-bit OSes (e.g. like Snow Leopard) can support up to 16Tb, yes! 16 terabytes of RAM. :)
 

Then how about AMD?
 

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