Which would be faster and why? A Dual Quad Core 3GHz Xeon or One I7 Clocked @ 3GHz running Vista 64bit?
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M$3 Answers
In general, however, once you pass the single -> dual core jump, and particularly the dual -> quad jump, the return on investment isn't nearly what it was.
Here's why:
If you have one function that has two operations, one of which can be split up equally and divided amongst the processors, but one that needs to be done serially, IE on one processor, more cores will help, but in reduced fashion.
An extremely simplified version of this is if you have one function that needs 640 "processing units" and the second needs 200 "processing units", and the oct-core setup can handle 8 "processing units" per core per clock cycle, and the quad core setup can handle 12 "processing units" per cycle - the oct core system takes 10 cycles to complete the parallel part (64 units/cycle), and then for the second part takes 25 cycles, you have a total of 35 cycles. Now, the faster quad core will complete 48/cycle, thus taking 13.3 (14) cycles for the first segment, but only 16.667 (17) cycles for the second segment, thus finishing the operation in only 32 cycles. In this situation, the quad core setup is about 10% faster.
There are programs that are hugely parallel (video encoding), ones that are somewhat parallel (photoshop), and ones that are very serial in nature (can't think of an example off the top of my head).
The benefit of a faster/less core system will depend entirely upon the application being used, so if you are doing something important or desire the best bang/buck ratio, you will need to look at the specific thing you want to accomplish.
My bet is that the i7 will beat the oct core setup more often than not and sometimes by a pretty significant margin, but in *some* cases, the oct core setup will blow the i7 away.
Again, this is a really oversimplified means of describing the potential performance difference, I am not trying to be super accurate here, but rather just point out the potential differences in areas where the performance between dual/quad/oct core setups are very different.
I am at work now, but will cite some specific benchmarks when I get home if nobody else adds them in after mine. I egt home in ~7 hours.
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M$
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M$
That he's considering an oct-core setup at all implies he wants to do something that can make use of the cores to some extent. I'd definitely be putting 6GB+ in such a system, just because it's cheap (Even with DDR3, it's not that much, and i7 boards use 3 memory channels, so I'd go 2x2x2GB)
If it's for games and cost is no object, i7 + a very fast video system is the best way to go, but with only one video card, there's absolutely not going to be a difference between a C2Q and i7 setup - video would be the total limiting factor. Video cards to pair would be either 2xGTX260, 2x 4870, a 4870x2 (or consider 4850x2 2GB), or 2x GTX280. Anything less than that won't do a damn thing with i7 for games.
Hard disk is a matter of application. I'd run 3 drives in a cost no object system - a pair of 750/1000GB drives, using the #2 as a backup, and an SSD as the 3rd if massive read performance is needed.
But he could be looking for a server, something to play games on, a 3d graphics workstation, a movie editing box, a photo editing box, something he'll be running a lot of virtual machines on, or any number of other things. What goes in to his system should be optimized for his needs - a video editing workstation doesn't need a high end gaming card for graphics, and a gaming PC doesn't really need an uber SSD.
So, bobbyedward - if you can help with usage, I can offer far more suggestions than the very general response I made earlier.
The Intel X25-M SSD will provide you with an order of magnitude increase in secondary storage random access speed over mechanical disks and extremely fast data load and write speed.
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M$
This was on a Mac, but it has some quad vs oct core numbers with the same processors in cinebench, on probably a similar, if older platform that you'll be running:
http://www.barefeats.com/octopro1.html
Given those numbers, you can see that it (Cinebench, at least) scales very well from 4 to 8 cores. It may depend on the specific application you're using, too, so you'll probably want to look in to that before you make a final commitment in building the computer.
Here are some quad vs quad numbers:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/11/03/intel-core-i7-920-945-965-review/10
The i7 has a significant lead, but nowhere near big enough to make up for double the cores. Best case, the i7 will be slightly slower than Core 2 Oct.
RAID 5 is probably a good idea for a performance/redundancy standpoint - do you have a real backup solution? Just making sure here! I've seen a few too many people think that RAID = backup with terrible consequences. I can't comment on the specific RAID card you've got.
You imply you'll be playing a few games, so I'd recommend at least a halfway decent video card. The current state of using GPUs to accelerate stuff like video encoding is currently pretty poor, but keep an eye on it for the future - it might at some point be worthy to move to high end gaming cards... but not now.
Here's a nice, relatively inexpensive video card that'll be more than adequate for occasional games, and is damn cheap for the level of performance it offers:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102803
For no games at all, you can get away with less, of course. Even modern low end cards help decode video with certain codecs, but I don't think that's going to be a major issue with that much computing power. For no gaming at all, here's a card that won't bottleneck your system for anything else, and won't make any noise:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131135
This is also fanless, though is a worse performer than the 4650 linked above, might be of use if you're going to run Linux (for Nvidia with some decent gaming performance, look at a 9600GT, 9800GT or better):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187035
There are versions with fans of either of those cards for a few bucks less.
If you want something more capable, look at an HD4870 or a GTX260, which are pretty close in price/performance, and there's not much reason to go to a GTX280. SLI will speed games up but it doesn't seem it'd be worth it for you, as games are the only area where it'll really do anything.
Good luck with the build, looks like you'll have yourself a damn nice machine when it's done!