2 dual cores vs 1 quad core

[idiotekniQues]

i am pricing out comparable rigs for a mac vs pc home build

mac's do not have a single quad core option and i am wondering how similar performance is between a single q6600 and two intel xeon 2.66ghz dual cores.

i priced out a mac pro with the two intel xeon 2.66ghz dual cores, a 250 and a 500 hard drive, 4gb of ram, single super drive and dual nvidia 7300 GT cards & wi-fi card. came out to 3700.

i specd out a Q6600, 4x1gb corsair pc 6400 ram (for a mild OC), $200 for a mobo with built in sound, a 250 and 500 gb 16mb cache WD hard drives, nvidia 8600 GTS card with dual dvi outputs (or an 8600GT 512MB card), wi-fi card, a lite-on sata dvd-rw and a $200 lian-li full tower with corsair hx620 PS for like 1700.

this is to be primarily a photoshop cs3 machine.

no monitor as we already have the monitor ready.

so what would be the performance difference for about $2000 difference for what i think is an overpriced MAC.

 

[bryanW1995]

You do get that cool apple logo on the mac...

 

[idiotekniQues]

lol yeah well it is for my gf who does freelance retouching.

thing is she insists on a mac cause that is what the industry uses and it will just maintain continuity from photographer to her work at home.

i say with this program macdrive recommended to me on anandtech, which can make hard drive sharing between macs and windows machines - you should save the money.

 

[bryanW1995]

you are going to end up doing a lot of computer problem solving for her if you build the windows machine. If you have the extra $$$ you might be better off just getting her what she wants. Unless, of course, you're planning to dump her a$$ soon, in which case you should build her a pc, OC the **** out of it, and run F@H 24/7 on it.

 

[idiotekniQues]

lol im not paying, she is. and not just yet, but we are talking about it for as soon as the money is there in her pocket.

 

[zach0624]

I would go with the windows machine since it is cheaper and seems equal in performance. Also I hate the mac OS. But in terms of hardware there is no choice the windows machine is better. BUT since your girlfriend wants the mac for the OS there is no choice, you gotta get the mac.

 

[idiotekniQues]

im curious though, for sake of argument with her, what would be the performace difference between the single q6600 and the 2 dual core xeons.

 

[A554SS1N]

lol, I wouldn't touch the mac with a barge pole - 1700 versus 3700? You'd have to be either nuts or very rich to even consider the mac. But of course the macs have pretty colours so that makes them ok.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
this is to be primarily a photoshop cs3 machine.

Can you give some details on this? Does she do 30 minute photoshops for things like red eye or simple color changing, or do you mean 100+ hour jobs with hundreds of layers?

Would it be possible to cheap out and get some crappy iMac or maybe even a Mac Mini? They may not be very fast, but they're way cheaper than a Mac Pro.


Can photoshop even use 4 processors at once? We'll need to figure this out before asking which 4 processors are faster.

 

[lyssword]

yeah, photoshop can utilize 4 cores
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...owdoc.aspx?i=3038&p=14

 

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
this is to be primarily a photoshop cs3 machine.

Can you give some details on this? Does she do 30 minute photoshops for things like red eye or simple color changing, or do you mean 100+ hour jobs with hundreds of layers?

Would it be possible to cheap out and get some crappy iMac or maybe even a Mac Mini? They may not be very fast, but they're way cheaper than a Mac Pro.


Can photoshop even use 4 processors at once? We'll need to figure this out before asking which 4 processors are faster.

It looks like it scales.

Benchmark

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
this is to be primarily a photoshop cs3 machine.

Can you give some details on this? Does she do 30 minute photoshops for things like red eye or simple color changing, or do you mean 100+ hour jobs with hundreds of layers?

Would it be possible to cheap out and get some crappy iMac or maybe even a Mac Mini? They may not be very fast, but they're way cheaper than a Mac Pro.


Can photoshop even use 4 processors at once? We'll need to figure this out before asking which 4 processors are faster.

cs3 can use 4 cores from all the benchies i have seen.

and she now does hardcore retouching of 30megapixel high fashion photos, nothing minor going on. she just broke into the high level freelancing world. her latest job is retouching 100 of these 30MP images with tons of layers for a catalog shoot.

her very fresh portfolio that needs updating is at www.jenniferfrances.com - id expect a bunch of her shots from this latest shoot to be up there in a couple of weeks, but you can get a taste there.

she doesnt have a lot of her most hardcore work in her retouching galleries. her latest job is as i stated 30MP digital back shots with massive 16-bit TIFF files not in there yet.

right now she has a core2duo Dell inspiron at 2.00ghz with 2GB ram (max for laptop specs, cant put in more ram) and i threw on there a 4gb sandisk cruzer all dedicated to ready-boost on Vista. you can see the difference of ready-boost FYI.

she is pretty happy with the results with ready-boost.

my Q6600 is ordered and i am going to throw it in my rig in sig this week. ill add an extra 2gb of ram and dual boot vista so she can test out the difference in speed. ill probably be able to afford the extra 2gb of ram & vista in early september.

along with a lian-li case that is as sexy as any mac case, i hope to convince her to not overspend the 2K on a mac. i still have not heard any guesstimates on performance difference between the Q6600 on a pc build vs the 2x dual core xeons.

the 2 dual core xeons are at 2.66ghz while the Q6600 is at 2.4 but i would overclock her Q6600 to 2.8-3.0ghz. the ram i spec'd out for her is pc6400 so that would be easy peasy. just have to add an ultra 120 to her cost in the OP.

 

[idiotekniQues]

i seriously am amazed at how much mac leverages the brand name.

while i admit their OS is sexy, it isnt worth 2K IMO.

 

[lyssword]

In most of the situations I've heard, 2x 2cores would be slower than a quad core, due to latency in communicating between them (via fsb). Just like first dual core opterons were faster than 2x 1 core opterons (and that tells a lot, since xeons have slower link communication than opterons)
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...howdoc.aspx?i=2897&p=9

5160 is the core-based two socket (2x) dual core, 53xx is a quad core.

 

[Falloutboy]

since when did you need such a beefy machine for photoshop? a simple 24" imac with a bunch of ram would be enough

 

[Spikke]

PC > Mac, but I'm biased. I hate Apple.

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: Falloutboy
since when did you need such a beefy machine for photoshop? a simple 24" imac with a bunch of ram would be enough

i thought abobut the iMAC route.


you can put 3 gigs of ram in an iMAC tops. also i dont see any quad-core options. if you see the quad-core benchies on the retouchers CS3 test, the quad-core is almost double in speed of the dual core. well, the iMAC does not have any option beyond a dual core right now.

also, i see only room for one internal drive with no options to add more internal drives.

the iMAC may be sexy and nice but leaves zero room for future upgradability.

go try editing 30 megapixel shots as 16 bit TIFFS with many many layers. and as the industry grows, being able to adapt is nice. in a year when you have 40MP shots for billboards or what not, upgradability will be nice.

ok you can add external hard drives, but is that the answer?

with an iMAC stuck in a glorified monitor case, adaptability is not so easy to achieve.

http://images.anandtech.com/gr...040907100447/14400.png

 

[dmens]

the mac pros use xeons cpu's, fb-dimm's, a really sweet cooling solution, and a ridiculously featured motherboard. so maybe the price different is justified. but then again, mac users don't need xeon qualifications, and they can't afford the insane amounts of memory that fb-dimms enable, so maybe it's just a load of crap.

that said, you should get the pc. you can even put os x on it.

 

[rklaver]

Since everyone that's posted doesn't even own a mac I guess I'll be "that guy" that chimes in. Now not being the typical biased Mac owner I do have a home built Core 2 machine (for games) and I use a e6600 machine at work as well. Now I haven't used a quad core yet, but I can tell you with the new CS3 screems like mad on the Mac Pro's. The differences are clearly noticeable, granted the processors are different than the normal core 2's but I feel it was worth the price. As for $3,700, I wouldn't pay that much for one. Get it for the cheapest price you can, maybe even a refurb from Apple's website and add your own components as you would with a PC. You can get the "over priced" FB-DIMMs for as low $50 a gig module now. If you want to tinker on it yourself, you can find an ATI Radeon 1900xl off ebay and flash the mac firmware, and now your free from the shit 7300 card and may now you can boot into windows and play a game. It doesn't have to be $2,000 more expensive you know what your doing and you won't sacrifice any quality.

Since you have a Quad coming, if you want to put together a photoshop test with one of her files I'll run it for comparison. That's got me curious now.

 

[idiotekniQues]

how can you put osX on a pc? i read of a program that lets you run windows from within OSX but not the other way around.

also, ill do that test with one of her files. maybe ill do it on my dual core in the next night or two before my quad core comes, as i am selling my e6400 the next day. otherwise ill ftp you the file and we can test.

the link in my post above (2 up) is a retouchers test showing quad vs dual core.

 

[rklaver]

I'll be dumping my e6400 too, got my eyes on the new e6750.

 

[nonameo]

Get her a box of crayons, pad of paper, and a few oversized envelopes.

The plus side with the mac, though, is that it will hold it's value longer. The total "cost" at the "end of it all" might wind up being not so bad.