new development machine

[TiziteLayinLow]

I am a software/website developer/network engineer.. don't ask..lol

anyways I have been assigned a new huge project over the span of the next 2 years possibly more and I want a new computer to handle the task. I will be running.. dreamweaver, vb, photoshop, paint shop pro, windows components, multiple websites and numerous other big things mainly all at the same time.. I also will be do some work of video editting and manipulation.

Gaming is not an option for me as there won't be any games except solitare..lol

I am thinking that I want more memory bandwidth and processing power compared to the cpu bandwidth of 64 bit..

here is what I am thinking, let me know your thoughts..


Dual Pentium D HT
2gb pc4200 ddr2
striped SATA-2 hdd for faster access
onboard 100/1000 NIC - must be proven in benchmark tests.

here is my questions - having 2 pentium d ht cpus will that appear as 8 processors? will win xp pro handle this?

what is a good mobo to use for this system, keep in mind it must have nvidia gig nic..

i will be transferring all my data at the end of the day and possibly working from a network server and gig with least overhead is best for me.

thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[evilbix]

I'd recommend about 4 gigs if you're going to be doing heavy photoshop work + other stuff at the same time.

For the hard drives I'd get two raptor 150's if you're going to be doing disk intensive operations. Then run daily backups onto a 320gig 7200.10 seagate drive and I'd also backup to a network if possible.

A supermicro motherboard/case is also a really good idea. They are AMAZING for the price and they offer 2 and 4 cpu boards. I've built about 10 production systems using them so far, and I've never been disappointed.

 

[Aluvus]

Pentium Ds do not have Hyper-Threading. Pentium Extreme Editions do. Neither supports having more than 1 processor in a system. For that you would need a Xeon. But yes, with 2 dual core processors with Hyper-Threading, the OS would see 8 cores. I believe XP Pro should have no objections, especially since there are only 2 separate physical processors.

If this is what you want to do, I would suggest you grab 2 Woodcrest Xeons (the 5100 series). They do not support Hyper-Threading, but 4 real cores is still a lot of power. If you absolutely must have Hyper-Threading, then a Dempsey Xeon (5000 series) would be the logical choice.

 

[Howard]

I wonder if you really need multiple CPUs for 2D graphics and web site development.