To EO or not to EO, that is the question

[Mathelo]

I?ve decided to put together an Intel rig on a 775 socket instead of AMD 939. This machine will be optimized for Digital photography / Photoshop. I really don?t care about games. I want maximum performance within my budget ($1,500 or less without a monitor) and I do want to overclock. I?m planning on water-cooling.

I?ve researched the various Intel CPUs that are available and the confusion is enough to make me go back to AMD. ;-)

Here is what I think I know about available Intel processors. Of the Intel chips that are currently available, these features seem to be considered most important based on what I?ve read:

- Everybody says get the CPUs with the ?J.? These include EO stepping for reduced thermal load and other related features.
- Thermal design power of 84W instead of 115w
- Drop multiplier for overclocking to reduce stress on the system and get more headroom.
- Retail verses OEM for extended warranty

It seems impossible to get all these features in the same chip.

Option 1: My first choice has been to get a 3.4 (550J). They are at a good price point although they seem to be rather scarce right now. You can get this CPU with EO, 84W, retail but does not include the drop multiplier feature. To get the drop multiplier feature I?d have to go with a DO version and loose the EO.

Option 2: If EO feature is important, and as there are no EO Intel CPUs below 3.6 that you can drop the multiplier, then I?ll need to get a 3.6 (560J). They don?t cost that much more than the 3.4 (550J) and they are more available, at least right now. But ? there is always a but ? the 560Js that include the ?drop multiplier? don?t appear to be available in a retail version; just OEM. I prefer retail for the warranty but I suppose I could risk it. I also haven?t seen any of the OEM versions listed online.

So help me understand what is really important here. The biggest holdup seems to be the drop multiplier. How important is this really? Maybe I?m just better off buying faster ram and not worry about it. I was considering the new PDP Patriot PDC22G4200 XBLK matching 1 GB sticks.

Thanks!

Louis

 

[acadian]

Athlon 64 S939 is faster than Pentium 4 in Photoshop. Here is the link to a benchmark:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...howdoc.aspx?i=2275&p=8

Plus an overclocked Pentium 4 is going to get very hot so you can kiss your silent PC goodbye. I say go with AMD.

 

[ssvegeta1010]

Originally posted by: acadian

Plus an overclocked Pentium 4 is going to get very hot so you can kiss your silent PC goodbye. I say go with AMD.

Did you read that he would use water cooling?

 

[acadian]

I did but he still needs to cool down the case. Again why bother with P4 if Athlon 64 is faster and cooler?

 

[ssvegeta1010]

To cool a case, 120mm fans with slow rpms could be used with low noise

I do agree that he should go A64 though, its better price/performance and with water cooling you could get a major OC on a winchester

 

[imported_Bleh]

Wow you guys dont read, he doesnt want to OC the cpu at all. Op if your not ocing then you dont need water cooling, good air cooling will do.

 

[mwmorph]

" and I do want to overclock. "
buy oem if you oc, your warranty is void anyway. and youd better not oc, break it and rma it.

 

[imported_Bleh]

Lol looks like I dont read lol my bad, trying to watch Charlies Angels Full Throtle and forum looking at the same time. O MAN CAMERON DIAZ.....

 

[Acanthus]

I see the wanker squad beat me to the first posts. Now that ive read your post i will post a legitimate response.

I would go with the OEM cpu as your warrenty will be void from overclocking anyway, and you will save a few bucks as you wont use the stock cooler anyway.

 

[Mathelo]

Man, you guys are fast! LOL I've gotten multiple responses from other forums since I posted this. Damn high latency's rates. |-) Just kidding of course.

I appreciate all the help I can get. I have been back and forth on the AMD verses Intel debate and have even consider dual processor, which gives the best performance for Photoshop. It just doesn?t look like there are any dual processor mobos that you can oc.

I don't have any loyalty to either company. I simply want the best system that gives me the best performance for Photoshop for under $2,000 ? Yea, I?ve bumped up the budget ? and has a reasonably good upgrade path; thinking particularly about dual cores.

I know that anandtech reports AMD beating Intel for Photoshop but I don?t see that anywhere else and in fact see contradictory information. I wish I could see better how these benchmarks are put together because they clearly aren?t the same. More importantly, those that work on Photoshop for a living will tell you that Photoshop simply runs faster on Intel. And of course a dual processor is the cats meow and lets not even discuss the Mac?

Regarding the heat issue, Intel seems to be getting that under control with their EO stepping but AMD certainly has less of an issue here. Hence the water cooling solution and it gives incredible oc headroom on these CPUs.

So the Intel system I was settling in on includes:
Intel 560J (might go lower. Many people are ocing the 530J to 4ghz)
ASUS P5AD2-E Premium
PDP Systems PC2-4200 XBL RAM
ATI X800XL PCIe (if it ever comes out?!?)
Antec SLK3000B case
500 watt Power supply (haven?t picked one yet)
Water-cooling system

More money than I want to spend but I hoped would be with me for a while and include an upgrade path to dual-core. But ? there is always a but ? that idea just went out the window when I read the anandtech Intel Roadmap report <http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...howdoc.aspx?i=2329> indicating that 915, 925 won't support dual core. New chipset is required so this ASUS P5AD2-E Premium mobo isn?t so Premium after all.

I might just reconsider the above choice since AMD has committed to a dual core that plugs into existing 939 socket mobos. But who knows until you actually see it on the market. ?

For about the same amount of money I probably could build a system based on a AMD64 3800+, which should be competitive with the Intel. The CPU is more expensive but the mobo and memory cost will be less. However, the Intel systems have been on the market longer and through more revisions at this point so should be more reliable.


Other options including just doing the dual processor (probably will still perform better than the dual core when it comes out) or I could wait another month or 2 and see how the technology shakes out. I do have a working computer but it is dog slow ?

Decisions, decisions?

 

[IamTHEsnake]

Change your ram to OCZ PC2- 4200 EB. I don't know what specific name it has but it has really low timings. I think 3-2-2. It's been tested and at stock it is faster than ddr400 at 2-2-2!!!!!!!!

It's great ram that you will want.

 

[Mathelo]

OCZ PC2-4200EB is hard to find right now and also looks incredibly expensive.

 

[acadian]

The reason some benchmarks show AMD ahead and some show Intel ahead in Photoshop is because on some filters AMD is faster and on others Intel is faster. Since you cannot predict what filters you are going to use you can consider the performance to be the same (the performance delta on different filters is small anyway, it's not like one CPU is 50% faster than the other). As far as the people that use Photoshop saying that Intel is faster than AMD they are probably right but they are talking about Pentium 4 vs Athlon XP. Athlon 64 S939 has closed the gap.

The Intel systems haven't been on the market longer. Actually Athlon 64 is older than Prescott and socket 939 was released about the same time as socket 775. Also E0 stepping didn't do anything for heat, a lot of people were hoping it will and that's why the rumor is still running around. You have to understand that Intel had many good CPUs over the years and people used them and they were satisfied so now they are trying hard to find reasons to stay with Intel so that's why they keep saying that the next stepping is going to fixed the heat problem. First they hoped that stepping D0 is going to do it, than they said E0. The fact is that P4 2.8, 3.0, 3.2 and 3.6 are drawing as much power in stepping E0 as before. The only difference is P4 3.4 which has a lower power draw because they lowered the voltage not because they fixed the heat problem. If you overclock you will increase the voltage so you're back to square one. P4 3.8 is stepping E0 and it is the hotest PC CPU ever released. As far as overclocking ability is concerned, going from 3.2 GHz to 4.0 Ghz is a 25% overclock. That's not bad but I overclocked my Winchester 3200+ from 2Ghz to 2.5Ghz (25%) with the stock cooler man.

The bottom line is that if you go with Intel you have to pay more for the memory and water cooling plus as you said you don't know if you are going to get one that supports all this confusing thermal management crap (sleep state, drop multiplier, whatever) which is basically Intel's copy of Cool & Quiet which all Athlon 64 have. Plus you will not be able to upgrade to dual core. AMD's dual core for S939 (Toledo) will come in Q3 according to Anand probably a month or so later than Intel but that's not such a big deal. Technically Intel has fallen behind so I say why bother, why put up with all this crap like heat and expensive DDR2 memory when you don't have to.

Now if you really want to buy Intel, it's ok, a lot of people are still buying it because of the brand name but you should know that you are paying more for a technically inferior solution.