Q6700 or E8500 for business machine?

[Xcellere]

I'm buying four business workstations from Dell, and I was wondering which processor would be better for my needs: Intel Q6700 or E8500. We use a customized Infopath app. on each workstation and other Office apps. Generally there's a lot of multitasking going on on these workstations, so I thought the quad core would be better suited for the task. Also, we'll be running XP Pro.

 

[covert24]

yea the QC sounds like the right one.

 

[COPOHawk]

I just went through this same process myself for a customer...and ended up choosing the Q6600 for just that reason.

They do a lot of multi-tasking with more resource intensive apps.

 

[Xcellere]

What I'm mainly wondering is if the apps they mainly use (Infopath through IE, Exchange, DOS-based apps, IE, Word, Excel) will really benefit from the quad cores in the XP environment or if this situation would benefit from the added clock speeds and cache of the E8500. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

 

[Jax Omen]

really, for those applications, any CPU from the last couple years will be more than adequate.

Hell, my office has P4s running in the realm of 2.8GHZ and only half a gig of RAM and they're more than adequate for having IE/FireFox open with 10+ tabs, 2-5 word files open, 2+ excel spreadsheets, plus the music programs and whatnot that each person puts on there.

Why so high-end for an office environment?

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: Xcellere
What I'm mainly wondering is if the apps they mainly use (Infopath through IE, Exchange, DOS-based apps, IE, Word, Excel) will really benefit from the quad cores in the XP environment or if this situation would benefit from the added clock speeds and cache of the E8500. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Its very doubtful imo that quad-core is needed, muchless be of any benefit, since the apps they primarily use aren't multithreaded, and they will generally only be using one forefront application at time. They are also interactivity driven and not necessarily processor intensive even when they are busy with them, so I'd confidently go with the speed and cost benefit of the dual core.

Otherwise, depending on the usage, if they are kiosks or are in an 'open-user' environment, and not permanently placed with particular ee's, then maybe get one quad and 3 dual cores to hedge a little so it can be available if needed.

 

[richwenzel]

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
really, for those applications, any CPU from the last couple years will be more than adequate.

Hell, my office has P4s running in the realm of 2.8GHZ and only half a gig of RAM and they're more than adequate for having IE/FireFox open with 10+ tabs, 2-5 word files open, 2+ excel spreadsheets, plus the music programs and whatnot that each person puts on there.

Why so high-end for an office environment?

i can write an excel spreadsheet that can cripple any system...there are lots of people that use Excel when they should be using a database (cause its easier/more convenient for unsophisticated users) and those alone can burn up memory....

im not saying you cant do what you are doing, but i would never use excel as an example of what you can do with a minimum system...

 

[COPOHawk]

In this instance, they use ACT 2007, Outlook, Word, Excel, occasionally Autocad, PDF read/create, SAV 10, etc.

Usually the employees have multiple instances of Word, IE, Adobe Reader, etc. open. The issue for me isn't what they can get by with...but rather the productivity/stability bump by going with faster hardware.

Although I haven't tried an E8400 or E8500 in this environment, I have tried the Q6600 and it works well. The other issue is the ability to upgrade to Vista in the future and given the fact that more apps will make use of the quad core, it is the better choice for this environment. Also, it was cheaper to go with the Q6600 than the E8500 (from Dell).

 

[Xcellere]

Originally posted by: richwenzel

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
really, for those applications, any CPU from the last couple years will be more than adequate.

Hell, my office has P4s running in the realm of 2.8GHZ and only half a gig of RAM and they're more than adequate for having IE/FireFox open with 10+ tabs, 2-5 word files open, 2+ excel spreadsheets, plus the music programs and whatnot that each person puts on there.

Why so high-end for an office environment?

i can write an excel spreadsheet that can cripple any system...there are lots of people that use Excel when they should be using a database (cause its easier/more convenient for unsophisticated users) and those alone can burn up memory....

im not saying you cant do what you are doing, but i would never use excel as an example of what you can do with a minimum system...

Then maybe the Q6600 which is the same price as the E8500?

 

[Jax Omen]

Well, they do spreadsheets in my office that are too big for Excel 2003 to accept. Does that count?

 

[PCTC2]

I would definitely have to say the Intel Xeon X3360. It's LGA 775.

 

[Ratman6161]

Originally posted by: PCTC2
I would definitely have to say the Intel Xeon X3360. It's LGA 775.

I would say none of the above. None of the apps you describe are going to be processor intensive and as someone already pointed out, generally only the foreground application will be using much of anything cpu wise and even then no matter how many copies of Word you have open, they are all just sitting there waiting for you to type somthing.

So, the thing to do is go cheap on the cpu and make sure they have plenty of RAM.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Ratman6161

Originally posted by: PCTC2
I would definitely have to say the Intel Xeon X3360. It's LGA 775.

I would say none of the above. None of the apps you describe are going to be processor intensive and as someone already pointed out, generally only the foreground application will be using much of anything cpu wise and even then no matter how many copies of Word you have open, they are all just sitting there waiting for you to type somthing.

So, the thing to do is go cheap on the cpu and make sure they have plenty of RAM.

i have to agree with him.

Your opening 1 document at a time, your not doing what is a true multi tasking.

Even a dualcore could have 50 office documents open, saving and opening them is a different story.

A dualcore would be good on you opening 2 excel documents at the same time. If you do this the dualcore is enough. Quadcore would probably allow for 4 documents to be opened at the same time however, you can always open 2 and then another 2.

How many of these big files are you going to be opening at once? 4 cores doesnt mean faster single thread. Infact its the oposite if your comparing a stock wolfdale with a stock kentsfield.

 

[Gaurav Duggal]

Get the cheapest CPU, 4GB RAM and a fast Hard Disk.

 

[Ratman6161]

Originally posted by: Gaurav Duggal
Get the cheapest CPU, 4GB RAM and a fast Hard Disk.

Yup, that is definitely the way to go. For the majority of users in this sort of environment, plenty of RAM and a fast disk will make their system "feel" fast and responsive. Don't know if I'd go all the way down to the absolute cheapest though.

I'm on a 4 year replacement cycle so I do have to look ahead somewhat and find the sweet spot. That said, my users are currently in the third year with their current desktops with one year to go before replacement. So with a year to go, there isn't much point in shopping now as the sweet spot will change so much before them.

Current systems are Dell GX280s - most with 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4's and a few with 3.4 Ghz Pentium 4's and either 1GB or 2GB of RAM with XP SP2. For office applications these are working just fine even now. And today's low end, something like a Core 2 2180 would probably smoke them.