Intel Pentium D Processors

[Coola]

I meant that 1GB DIMMs are now at roughly the same $/MB as 512MB ones, or at least affordable.

Sorry, improper English on my part. I meant to say in line with 512MB prices, as in $/GB.

Yeah, the 2005 is a pretty well-reviewed monitor (see Anandtech, BeHardware, etc.). See my link to get it for about $100 less.

wow i did check the link but i didn't see the 2005 there for some reason, kick ass but it ends tomorrow and i probably won't be in a position to purchase it for at least 2 months.

I just hope the tech prices will take a dive by then.

edit* another question about the raid hd's

Raid is good at protecting data right? with 160GB of storage, I wouldn't want to lose like 20GB because of a virus or something. So if i were to get a RAID im guessing the Raid 0 would suit me more since it's more for multitasking than Raid 1

-- is it worth the money to upgrade [$96] to the Raid 0 320gb?--

160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cacheâ„¢

250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cacheâ„¢ [add $64 or $2/month3]

500GB Serial ATA II Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cacheâ„¢ [add $264 or $8/month3] Dell Recommended

160GB Data Security RAID 1 (2 x 160GB SATA HDDs) [add $96 or $3/month3]

320GB Performance RAID 0 (2 x 160GB SATA HDDs) [add $96 or $3/month3]

 

[Pete]

Prices should be at worst the same in two months. Dell has these sales all the time, so don't worry about it. Just check BensBargains.net or a similar site before you buy. They may even have a deal on a 9100 + LCD, too.

RAID 1 only protects you against one hard drive failing. In essence, it's the lazy way to opt out of regular backups to CDR/DVDR/USB drives. RAID 1 means each HD stores the same data. So, if you catch a virus that eats data, you'll lose it on both drives, as the OS does the same thing to both drives. A UPS is important and cheap insurance anyway, but especially so with RAID 1, as a power spike can take out both drives at the same time.

RAID 0 means the OS stripes data to two drives, so all your data is spread out across both drives. If one fails, you lose the data on both. simplistically, it doubles your chance of data loss via drive failure (ignoring the constant threat of viruses, power spikes, Murphy's Law, etc.). It's faster, but you'd better have your important data backed up elsewhere. It'd be safer (and cheaper, if you buy one on sale) to just add another HD and use it as such.

I think NCQ is better for multi-tasking than RAID 0, but I haven't seen multitasking benchmarks comparing both, just Anand's benches comparing NCQ to nothing. But RAID 0 is definitely NOT better at protecting data than nothing. RAID 1 is a slight improvement in that it saves you the bother of backing up to CDR/DVDR, which you might not otherwise do. It may also offer a slight speedup in disk reads.

If you don't want to bother with backing up to DVDR, then consider buying an external HD and storing it someplace safe.

 

[epicstruggle]

russ what compiler are you using? Just read this over at slashdot:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/12/1320202&tid=142&tid=118&tid=123

epic

 

[suryad]

Wait so X2s are capable of using Intels HT??? OR is it that they can handle apps optimized for HT??

 

[chavvdarrr]

Wait so X2s are capable of using Intels HT??? OR is it that they can handle apps optimized for HT??

Applications that have hyper-threading optimizations will run faster on X2 too.

 

[suryad]

Really? Then why is it that almost all benches show the Intel to be in a slight lead except for gaming scenarios? I dont quite get that...and also what is the difference in performance bettwen a multi processor setup and a multicore setup? Seems about the same to me....besides the cache sharing and so on.

 

[Moloch]

Really? Then why is it that almost all benches show the Intel to be in a slight lead except for gaming scenarios? I dont quite get that...and also what is the difference in performance bettwen a multi processor setup and a multicore setup? Seems about the same to me....besides the cache sharing and so on.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlon64-x2/index.x?pg=7

Read whole review.

 

[RussSchultz]

russ what compiler are you using? Just read this over at slashdot:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/12/1320202&tid=142&tid=118&tid=123

epic

The compiler I'm using is not an intel product, nor targets an intel compatible platform.

Not to say that the vendor compiler wasn't compiled by an intel compiler, of course.

Either way, the intel platform wins by a wide margin for my tests, so we're purchasing those.

 

[mczak]

russ what compiler are you using? Just read this over at slashdot:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/12/1320202&tid=142&tid=118&tid=123

epic

The compiler I'm using is not an intel product, nor targets an intel compatible platform.

Not to say that the vendor compiler wasn't compiled by an intel compiler, of course.

Either way, the intel platform wins by a wide margin for my tests, so we're purchasing those.

I'm somewhat curious about that compiler. I've seen some compiler benchmarks on P4 and A64, and it usually goes like this:
A P4 loses badly against a similar rated A64 using MS Visual Studio Compiler (I believe these benchmarks are single-threaded, I don't know if that's a limitation of the benchmark or MSVS).
A P4 draws about even with a similar rated A64 using gcc and make -j3 or so (invoking multiple gccs), and losing again quite badly with -j1.
Thus, your results are somewhat surprising imho. Especially since I'd expect the workload of compilers to be exactly what the P4 doesn't like (integer code with lots of sometimes hard-to-predict branches).