Indecision

[Rimrock]

I was looking at the price of the C2D Quad, ultra-whatever it is, like a thousand bucks for the chip. Don't know what M/B. Anyway, probably looking at around $1500 or so by the time the memory, HD, and M/B. I guess that is the 6700 chip equiv. So I got to wondering really if the performance of that would be any better really than 2 of the high(er) end amd x2 chips. Still would be a quad equiv. There are only a couple projects really that the c2d does better at than the amd. Not looking to start a war here either. Just wondering if anyone has some actual production stats between the two? Another question is whether you think the higher price of the quad intel is really worth it? For instance one could purchase 3 X2-4200's for the same price if judiciousprice shopping was followed.

Comments/thoughs please?

edit: I forgot to add in the cost of a high end PS for the quad too. =:0

[Ototero]

Do you want to wait for the REAL quads? The intel ones, I believe are 2 duals cut and pasted together. Both intel and AMD are bringing out real quads later this year.

[Rimrock]

Probably not a bad idea.

[vaughan]

Or buy some lower spec CPUs and overclock them. The C2D 6300 will oc to 3Ghz on air given reasonable RAM and a decent m/b. Avoid the mistake I made using the Asrock dual-vsta m/b as they don't like to oc.

My Gigabyte DS3 C2D 6400 (stock 2.13GHz) is at 2.7GHz and I've only just started messing with it.

[Rimrock]

Well I took the AMD solution. Went and bought two X2-3800's this afternoon. While not C2D's, the price was a lot better. Then maybe next fall/winter I'll have some more saved up so I can go for one of the amd quads.

[vaughan]

OK Rimrock, so what DC project(s) are you going to crunch them on?

AMD X2s would shine on my favourite - BOINC Riesel Sieve.

[Opteron]

Don't forget the Quad Opteron is on its way this year... Also, great work on
D2OL!!!

[Rimrock]

Not a good day today. I've had 2 instances now of hosed up motherboards, model Gigabyte GA M61PM-S2 MATX AM2. Two bad out of four, with one to go yet. AND.......... I'd bought TWO 1gb DDR2 800 sticks. One of the sticks was goo, one bad, took it back to the shop (132 miles away) they traded me out and guess what, the replacement one is bad. Tested that on three other motherboards. So I think I'm done screwing with those people.

I had been getting Asus, but then there was some traffic on the boards saying people had been having trouble with those lately, so I went for the gigabyte boards. The board was just plain flakey, didn't like this or that, then the next time this was okay but that wasn't. Meanwhile then it had fits with netcards, or HD's. Put the HD's back in another system and the drive worked fine and the filesystem was fine.

So I think it's time to head for Fry's and get a few of their cheapest, rot-gut brand AM2 motherboards. No sense putting money into these things. Ain't messing around with gigabyte no more.

So anyway, my trusty old xp2000+ that was going to get replaced didn't get replaced and it's happily crunching away while I sit here and fume. I think I'll wait for tomorrow before I touch the otherone.

[Lagu]

Rimrock!

ASUS isn´t that bad as peoples say. I have this motherboard on my Intel Core2 Duo and it works fine. No problems at all. ASUS have a nice tool for easy overclocking too.

[Rimrock]

I've got a few asus boards, and haven't had any trouble with them myself.

I should have just ordered them. But you get ants in your pants to get something going in a hurry and don't want to wait for UPS or Fed-Ex. Seems like every time I get in a rush, something happens with the parts. Maybe one of these years I'll learn.