Dual Opteron vs Dual Athlon MP

[adkim]

I'm trying to build a very high-performance, low-cost SMP workstation. I have narrowed down my decision to one of the following:

1. Dual Opeteron 240 (1.4GHz chips) (64-bit)

or

2. Dual Athlon MP 2800+ (2.08GHz chips)

Cost-wise, they are pretty close. I can't seem to find a good comparison of the two. And I can't make up my mind about which way to go. I'd like to find out which of the two will yield higher performance under winxp pro 32-bit. So, basically, I'd like to know what you guys think. I'm hoping that the Opterons will be faster (i.e., 64-bit capability, HyperTransport technology, and faster RAM support is enough to offset the difference in GHz marks). Educated responses only, please.

One more question. Regarding disk I/O performance, I have come to another cross road between:

1. 10,000RPM Seagate Cheatah U160 w/8MB cache on a 64bit PCI LSI Ultra 160 Controller (in a 64-bit PCI slot, of course)

or

2. Four (4) 40GB ATA133 Maxtors w/2MB cache on a Promise ATA133 Raid card in 4-disk-striped array (ala Raid 0)

TIA, for your comments.

 

[Vette73]

What programs will you be running, and also what kind of storage do you want/need.

I would get a Pair of Raptor 74gig 10,000rpm drives and the opteron setup and run that.

 

[aka1nas]

If you don't consider the price difference to be significant go for the opterons. The MPX platform may have a lot of clockspeed compared to the opterons, but it is very bandwith limited as its limited to a 266Mhz FSB with PC2100. You are also sticking yourself to a more-or-less end-of-lifed platform. Also, the MPX chipset has some quirks with regard to PCI bandwith and you will not great performance if you use a RAID card on the regular 32 bit PCI slots. Finally, going with the opteron(though I would maybe go up to the 242 or even 244s) will give you a lot more room to upgrade as the socket will be supported a bit longer and you may be able to add faster procs later.

 

[hytek369]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
If you don't consider the price difference to be significant go for the opterons. The MPX platform may have a lot of clockspeed compared to the opterons, but it is very bandwith limited as its limited to a 266Mhz FSB with PC2100. You are also sticking yourself to a more-or-less end-of-lifed platform. Also, the MPX chipset has some quirks with regard to PCI bandwith and you will not great performance if you use a RAID card on the regular 32 bit PCI slots. Finally, going with the opteron(though I would maybe go up to the 242 or even 244s) will give you a lot more room to upgrade as the socket will be supported a bit longer and you may be able to add faster procs later.

good synopsis. i had a dual MP1900 system. I will be building my new dual Opteron 240s next week. I will keep you all posted.