Choosing Quad Core Xeon for a workstation !!!

[robmurphy]

Have a look at the review of the skull trail platform here:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...howdoc.aspx?i=3216&p=3

The linked page has a discussion on FBDIMMs and DDR2. It would seem the latency goes up with FBDIMMs.

If you go with the T3400 system it may be worth having the 4 Gig of memory as 2 x 2 Gig. I know this is more expensive but this would allow an easy upgrade later. With 4 x 1 gig you have to through away memory to upgrade, and to get to 8 Gig you have to throw away 4 gig. Another choice would be get it with the smallest memory, and add your own. May people I know who have bought Dell have taken this route as Dell charge way over the odds for the memory.

Rob.

 

[JAG87]

Maxtor, you are a developer so I don't think I need to explain this too thoroughly for you to understand. Your decision here is solely based on the many threads your applications are able to spawn.

If you are a developer and your compiler is multi threaded, you definitely want 8 cores working for you. It's the difference between waiting 1 hour for a build, or 30 minutes. If on the other hand most of the applications you use spawn a single thread, 7 of the 8 cores are going to sit idle, while the 1 core that's working gets bottle necked by the slow FBDIMM. I hope I am making myself clear. The decision should be fairly easy, and you are the only one who can make it, because we don't know what kind of software applications you are using.