Dual socekt P4 motherboard

cgarvey

Looking at getting 2 x 2.4GHz / 800MHz CPUs.. but can't find any motherboard reviews. Can anyone recommend a motherboard? I'm not pushed about on-board sound/lan/raid.

Or should I be considering 2 athlons instead?


TIA

.cg

ozt9vdujny3srf

I'm not sure why you want dual processors, but you cannot have two normal p4c's on one motherboards. They'll have to be p4 xeons, the higest fsb i have seen on sale in a xeon is 533.

Wihy do you want dual processors? You building a server or summit?

Anyways, moneywise, the cheapest you can go on komplett for such a setup is 1027 Euro simply for the mobo and processors (processor with fsb533)

tis ridiculous!, i am sure you can do it a lot cheaper with amd's but its still just silly.

BigEejit

The last mainstream multiprocessor enabled Intel processors were PIII coppermines AFAIK ... Intel disabled/got rid of the necessary bits from the processor in the P4's ....
This leaves you, like Truckle says, with Xeons which are absolutely mentally priced, but in a server they just cant be beat ... (I had a Dual PIII 1Ghz machine at home and a dual PIII 500Mhz (or thereabouts, might have been dual 550's) Xeon machine at work(with 1mB cache on each one), the Xeon machine absolutely pissed all over it for doing any crunching, and most other things ... not just a few percent either.... it would finish the same job in less than half the time :rolleyes: (my machine at home had faster HD's, CD's, more RAM ..etc etc)

Matt Simis

Depends, 2x Athlon MPs (with 512k cache) still outperform Xeons on purely FP work. If SSE2 comes into play, its Xeons on top. The Athlon MPs are much cheaper too.



Matt

cgarvey

Right, now I know I've been outta touch, coz I didn't know that P4 no longer supported multiproccessing. lol, might explain why I found it so hard to find a mother board.

So I could get a dual xeon .. a grand is about the budget I had allocated. The machine is for SOHO use, so the CPU intensive stuff would be Excel, Image processing, java compiler, and of course UT/Quake/RTCW!

So, am I better getting a high end P4 (still very expensive) with fast FSB, Duald DDR, etc. than I am getting a dual Xeon... or is a dual athlon with its slower FSB still in the equation.

Komplett don't seem to have decent dual AMD mother boards .. highest FSB seems to be 266MHz

Is xeon worth it (won't be the best for gaming anyway, right)?

Would I be mad to go dual Athlons (am looking the XP3200+ or the XP3000+), or is the difference in the FSB marginal anyway.

Or should I just say screw you guys I'm getting a single P4 as fast as I can afford.

Other than komplett does anyone have a preference for cheap latest hardware, with reasonable shipping to Ireland. (scan is not a valid answer here!!)

Truckle, BigEejit, Matt Simis, ta for the replies.

.cg

Col_Loki

The athlons dual board takes the MP processors the Xp ones wont work. ie the MP2400+ as apose to Xp2400+ which is for single boards.

Matt Simis

Athlon MP motherboards are pretty dated feature wise. AMD has moved on to Opteron now (which are nice). If you plan on games, the MP chipset will cripple performance.


The uniprocessor Athlon motherboards are quite well spec'ed as are some Xeon boards. Bear in mind that some P4s support Hyperthreading, giving you a "virtual" second CPU.

If you have the time and money, an SMP Opteron system simply cant be beat for real work.



Matt

cgarvey

Yeah I've found that MP and Xeon boards are dated alright.

So I'll keep looking for Xeon dual socket boards for a while more, and if I can't find anything half way decent .. I'll just resort to a single XP/P4

Thanks COL_LOKI, and again Matt

.cg

ozt9vdujny3srf

Look, if a dream machine is what you are looking for, go for a p4 3ghz w/ fsb800 processor (although 2.8 w/ fsb800 would be much bettter value, but that doesnt seem to be a prob for you ) get an abit ic7-g motherboard, stick a gig of high spec ddr400(mushkin or ocz or that high end corsair ) ram in it, a radeon 9800 pro and all with prometeia cooling. It'll cost an arm an a leg, but that doesnt seem to bother you!

cgarvey

Not made of money you know!!!

I'm budgeting around one grand (ex VAT) for a decent performance .. just mobo and cpu(s).. I'd like DDR ram included in the grand then cool, but consider anything <= that price.

Question is would a P4 2.8GHz with fast bus and DDR be better than a dual 2GHz AMD at 233 MHz.

Thanks again Truckle
.cg

Venom

Originally posted by Truckle
Look, if a dream machine is what you are looking for, go for a p4 3ghz w/ fsb800 processor (although 2.8 w/ fsb800 would be much bettter value, but that doesnt seem to be a prob for you ) get an abit ic7-g motherboard, stick a gig of high spec ddr400(mushkin or ocz or that high end corsair ) ram in it, a radeon 9800 pro and all with prometeia cooling. It'll cost an arm an a leg, but that doesnt seem to bother you!

Normal cooling will be fine with that setup once you dont overclock like mad

damnyanks

That new itanium chip or whatever its called is coming out or out though. Meant to be faster then xeon

Matt Simis

Originally posted by cgarvey
Not made of money you know!!!

I'm budgeting around one grand (ex VAT) for a decent performance .. just mobo and cpu(s).. I'd like DDR ram included in the grand then cool, but consider anything <= that price.

Question is would a P4 2.8GHz with fast bus and DDR be better than a dual 2GHz AMD at 233 MHz.

Thanks again Truckle
.cg

Faster at what tho? The Intel will definately be faster at games, but the SMP AMD would be much faster at 3D Rendering, number crunching etc. I have both.

Intels are going to pretty much edge similar rated Athlons out in games for a while till the Athlon64 comes out. But you do pay for that Intel performance.

Asus is releasing the SK8N next week, a "workstation" class Opteron board with nice specs (inc AGP, most server type Opteron boards lack AGP). Thats about it for quite some time on either the Intel or AMD front.

The next big Intel CPU is the Prescot, the P4 successor. Built on a smaller process (.09) and using a beefy 1MB cache, its direct competition is the 64bit Athlon64... which is meant to be released around the same time.

Itanium is a server chip and none of that family will ever be released for the Workstation or Desktop afaik.



Matt

cgarvey

Faster in general I think .. certainly there'd be more games than 3D rendering.

I think I'll go for a P4 3GHz.

Ta again

.cg

ozt9vdujny3srf

I think you are better of with a 2.8 and some decent cooling, the 170 euro extra that you pay for the extra 200 mhz, would get you a good watercooling pack which would pay dividaends for overclocking .