itanium2 or core 2 duo?

[jhu]

i'm thinking about getting another computer mainly for 3d rendering with povray. as far as i can see, intel's processor with the fastest fp performance is still the itanium2. however, that holds for the one with the 12MB L3, but i don't know if it's true for the processors with smaller L3 caches. dual itanium2 systems are going for about $750 on ebay. for a little bit less, i can get a 2.2 ghz core 2 duo from dell. what would be your call?

 

[PCTC2]

Go with a Core2Quad system. The Itanium2's you see on eBay for less than $1000 are old Madison 130nm single-core, non-HT Itanium2's. Not worth it at all.

 

[firewolfsm]

A dual core 2 quad system can be built for about $1000. $500 for the processors, $200 for the motherboard, and the rest adds up.

 

[exar333]

C2D system unless you have a specific program that would benefit from Itanium...

 

[jones377]

You're in luck, Povray is part of SPEC CFP2006 test suite. And even though the Itanium2 and C2D are about equal overall, C2D is about twice as fast in Povray.

http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/re...06-20071015-02285.html
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/re...06-20071112-02560.html

 

[AmberClad]

So that's why the INQ insists on calling the Itanium the "Itanic" ...

 

[jhu]

Originally posted by: jones377
You're in luck, Povray is part of SPEC CFP2006 test suite. And even though the Itanium2 and C2D are about equal overall, C2D is about twice as fast in Povray.

http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/re...06-20071015-02285.html
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/re...06-20071112-02560.html

oh crap! i didn't even notice that povray was a part of the spec bench. well, nevermind then. commodity computing ftw!

 

[mruffin75]

I'd hate to know how much money Intel and HP have sunk into that thing...would probably make AMD's budgets look tiny...

 

[jhu]

Originally posted by: mruffin75
I'd hate to know how much money Intel and HP have sunk into that thing...would probably make AMD's budgets look tiny...

indeed. even the new york stock exchange is starting to use commodity x86 on their back-end. my how times have changed.

 

[Idontcare]

Don't be lulled into the trap of comparing single or dual socket Itanium to single or dual-socket Conroe/Penryn.

Itanium was designed to enable performance in systems scaling to 32, 64, and higher number of sockets.

Itanium has its place, so too does Conroe/Penryn.

I'd also add that this is the same analogy I'd use to separate a topic of Phenom vs. Barcelona discussions.

Phenom competing with dekstop Kentsfield/Yorkfield is one topic...and yes Phenom is in a woeful position in that market segment.

I'd bet this is true for 2-socket workstations for Barcelona versus Harpertown as well. But Barcelona is supposed to compete well in the lucrative 4 and 8 socket systems (remains to be seen if this holds true though).

Point being that price/performance and even performance/watt vary across the targeted market and applications. What sucks for desktop markets can do quite well in mobile or HPC markets.

 

[mruffin75]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
Don't be lulled into the trap of comparing single or dual socket Itanium to single or dual-socket Conroe/Penryn.

Itanium was designed to enable performance in systems scaling to 32, 64, and higher number of sockets.

Itanium has its place, so too does Conroe/Penryn.

I think the problem with that is, that Intel didn't expect the whole "cheap x86-based supercomputers" to come around when they were designing the Itanium.

The cost of one of those 32/64 socket beasts would far outweigh the cost of just implementing the same using standard x86 hardware in a cluster. Also the software needs to be written for the Itanium, whereas the x86 cluster can run x86 code.

Oh yeah, and don't be lulled into the whole "Itanium was designed for the high-end" rubbish as well...it may well have been, but Intel had plans to use Itanium for the entire range of computing. From desktops/workstations all the way up to supercomputers. Although that was before AMD announced they were designing 64-bit additions to the x86 architecture...

The only reason why it's not a complete failure is because Intel narrowed it's focus only on the high-end.