OT: Non Mac - Budget Quad Clovertown

[chelsel]

I was in the market for a Mac Pro but I was disappointed there was no update at WWDC... I will still get a Mac Pro sometime after it is inevitably updated... having said that, I was still in the market for a new workhorse... and this quad system met my needs perfectly (hardware raid, 2GB FB-DIMMs, E5310 quad core upgradeable with dual socket MB)... of course, this isn't a Mac... but for others that were drawn to the Mac Pro for its budget quad processing capabilities then take a look at this AMAZING Dell offer:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/pedge_sc1430?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

In case the offer is no longer available, it was a Quad Core Intel Xeon E5310 (Clovertown) 2x4MB Cache, 1.6GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GBx2 RAID-1 Hardware, crappy graphics, no firewire... for only $$$$$ 849.00+tax $$$$$$$

I purchased one for use as a VMWare server and file server system and to give myself a taste of quad power while I wait for a Mac Pro update.

Anyway, just thought I'd share this deal for others who might be in the market for a budget quad.

Cliff

 

[Zwhaler]

Wow, that is a very good price. But, it is a very wimpy clovertown Nice find though. I would buy one if I... wanted a PC. It is quite stripped down though, it doesn't even come with a CD drive. But those can be bought later cheaply.

 

[chelsel]

From the horses mouth

Check out page 6 of this PDF:

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/358131.htm

The chart clearly shows the 1.6GHz quad-core E5310 beating the dual-core xeon 5160 & 5150...

I grabbed the above PDF link from Intels processor comparison tool webpage at:

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/345648.htm

Me thinks this indicates the Mac Pro line-up will go directly to Clovertown at the next update... and they'll probably keep the 4-core and 8-core but implement 4-core as a single chip...

Anyway... I will be enjoying this quad-core goodness (on Windows/Linux) until Apple updates the Mac Pro

Cliff.

 

[brandon6684]

Those are certainly some good prices if you need a server or a no frills workstation, though not that great as a desktop.

 

[thagomizer]

Check out page 6 of this PDF:

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/358131.htm

The chart clearly shows the 1.6GHz quad-core E5310 beating the dual-core xeon 5160 & 5150...


Cliff.

The chart shows a quad-core 1.6GHz processor beating a single dual-core 3.0GHz processor on a multithreaded app. However, all the Mac Pros have double dual-core 2.0, 2.66, or 3.0 processors. (or, of course, the double-quad 3.0). The chart doesn't show these, but the results for dual dual-core will be similar to a quad at the same speed.

This is a multithreaded SPEC benchmark; it bears little resemblance to real-world performance on desktop applications. On any single or dual-threaded application, that quad-core 1.6 is going to be much slower than even a base model MacBook or iMac. Just wanted to point this out to anyone who might be thinking a Mac Pro is a bad deal -- it isn't.

But yes, the machine you describe will make a decent multi-user server, and you can't beat the price.

 

[chelsel]

Just to further clarify and educate on the differences between Woodcrest (current Mac Pro) and Clovertown (the future).

These are PER chip comparisons... a single E5310 has 4 cores and is more powerful than a single 5150 or single 5160 which has 2 cores.

Also, the single thread performance of Clovertown (E5310) can not be directly compared with Woodcrest because Clovertown executes FOUR instructions per clock cycle vs. THREE on Woodcrest. This is a 30% increase in performance right there (never mind the 2x bigger cache)... 30% makes a 1.6GHz work like a 2.0GHz... and that is PER core.

Anyway, I think that Apple will do a better job convincing customers of the performance benefits... but only as soon as these chips appear in the Mac Pro