Advice appreciated: What should I get?

[petrusbroder]

Three of my older comps are down - two for the past 2 weeks, one day before yesterday.
The cause is repaired (a faulty mains line, caused the comps to flicker on/off, the result is mobo and CPU are dead). I have PSUs which are good, the HDDs, DVD-drives, RAM (DDR2, 1066MHz) are all OK (tested on other comps ...). I have good HSF (Tuniq-tower) so cooling is not a problem.

Alternative 1:
Mobo: K10N78FullHD-hSLI R3.0 ((here is a link)
CPU: AMD Socket AM2+ Phenom 9850 QUAD-CORE 2.5GHz 125W

I could purchase 3 mobos and 3 CPUs within budget.

Alternative 2:
Mobo: Asus Intel/775 IP43 DDR2 SATA2 GBLAN Raid, P5QLPRO (here is a link)
CPU: Intel CORE 2 DUO Quad Q6600 2.4GHz 1066/8MB B:2680, BX80562Q6600

I could purchase 2 mobos and 2 CPUs within budget.

The difference in Sweden between the alternatives is less than 35 US$ where Alternative 1 costs more ...

What should it be:
8 cores Intel @ 2.4GHz or 12 cores AMD @ 2.5 GHz?

I am running mostly BOINC, these comps will be running 24/7. One comp will be doing double service as a backup server (with a RAID5-system of 3.6 TiB), the others will be dedicted crunchers.

I have lost 5 cores and am looking to go up to ... what? 8 or 12 cores?

I will not post my personal thoughts about this problem, because I am interested in some new thoughts, ideas, arguments. I plan do do some buying with the next 10 days. I am not interested in waiting longer.

Some limitations:
The Q6600 is by far the least expensive Intel quad core processor.
The Phenom is much less expensive than the Q6600.
I have no bad experience with Asrock, I like ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte, have however had more probs with MSI and Gigabyte than with Asus and Asrock. Other brands are harder to get and will take more time than I like ...
I want new stuff, since this is supposed to last a few years.

 

[Rudy Toody]

I thought the Phenom 8750 is a Tri-Core. Is it different in Sweden?

 

[petrusbroder]

Typo on the site which sells: - corrected: Phenom 9850 ...

 

[Rudy Toody]

Originally posted by: petrusbroder
Typo on the site which sells: - corrected: Phenom 9850 ...

The 9850 is 140W in case that makes a difference in the mobo. Which I think it does.

The 9850 can be overclocked to somewhere between 3.5 to 4.1 GHz using the new ATI 790X chipsets that include the SB750. Of course, you would need good cooling to get those numbers.

The ATI 790X chipset has no onboard video; the 790GX has HD3300.

I see you want mATX mobo, so I'm not familiar with what's available.

I will be upgrading my mobos to ones with the new chipset next month. And water-cooling at the same time.

The mobos I am considering are GigaByte and ECS. Foxcon, Asus, and ASRock also have boards with those chips.

--Fred

EDIT: be sure the mobo can handle 140W CPU!

EDIT2: ASRock mobo I looked at.

 

[petrusbroder]

Hmm, according to AMD's site the 9850 is a 125W part ( link to AMD's site )

The suggested mobo does support the 125 W part (at least according to their specs).,

 

[Rudy Toody]

I wrote that before I had my coffee. I am now sipping Zeitgeist espresso blend and thinking much more clearly. It is 125W.

I'm going to leave the post unedited to show everyone that even Rudy Toody can make mistakes.

 

[GLeeM]

What! No 8800 (or better) for at least one mobo? For F@H GPU client

GPU client only uses one core so goes well with BOINC - at least quadruple (probably more but I can't think right now the word for 5X) your F@H output

 

[petrusbroder]

LoL. @ GLeeM: If I can afford it I may add something later ...

 

[Neurodog]

I purchased a Q6600 a few weeks ago with the mATX Asus P5E-VM HDMI, it was easy to setup and overclocked to 3ghz with only changing the FSB.

 

[biodoc]

RT and I each have 3 quads. I have Q6600s and RT has 9850s. Our production is actually quite close but based our current and previous projects, I think my Q6600s@3.24 GHz are a bit faster and my Q6600@3.0 GHz is a bit slower. (depends upon the project though). AMDs do better on some projects and Q6600s do well on others (F@H for example because of the large L2 cache).

If you can get 3 9850s vs 2 Q6600's, I would go with the 9850s if you are willing to OC to the same level as RTs.

You can push the Q6600 (G0 stepping) to 3.42+ and I have, but I clocked back to 3.24 to save a little electricity and for long stabilty.

As Neurodog said, its easy to OC a Q6600 to 3 GHz and to 3.24 is not too difficult either (depending on the MB, you may have to bump up the voltages a bit).

Cheers and have fun choosing!:beer:

 

[Rudy Toody]

Originally posted by: biodoc
If you can get 3 9850s vs 2 Q6600's, I would go with the 9850s if you are willing to OC to the same level as RTs.

I have 2 OC'd to 2.8GHz and 1 is stock (PSU wimps out on me). The 2.8 is the max you can get without the SB750 southbridge. I have the OCZ Reaper at 1066 by upping the voltage to 2.1 on all 3 boxes. All are unganged because I haven't determined whether reduced contention is more important than bandwidth.

--Fred

 

[petrusbroder]

Thanks for the input, I am reading and thinking ...

 

[Rudy Toody]

Originally posted by: petrusbroder
I am reading and thinking ...

...and walking and chewing gum...

...and rubbing your stomach and patting your head...

 

[petrusbroder]

.. and doing a move Michael Jackson often does ...
e.g. after 1:29!
or here ...

 

[biodoc]

:laugh::laugh:

hmm...in the states, the Q6600 is cheaper than the 9850 by $20 at newegg.

EDIT: Sorry, It's the other way around; The 9850 is $20 cheaper.

 

[petrusbroder]

TTT and ^Bump^