Who still owns & uses a P3/Athlon MP setup? Or even Xeons?

[MercenaryForHire]

I'm trying to build a number-cruncher & general multitasker that can run silently.

A pair of old-school Pentium 3 Tualatins would be a great combo of Budget and Cooling, but light on the power.

Moving up to Athlon MPs wouldn't be a big Budget step, would help the Power, but would be a lot harder to cool.

Low-voltage Xeons might work, but for the price of the motherboard alone, you can pretty much buy the entirety of one of the above two setups. That said, there's lots of options for silent cooling, and it would likely be the most powerful of them all, esp. if it's dual HT Xeons.

Dual core is just too expensive.

Thoughts? Anyone still own/use a P3/Athlon SMP box? Do Xeons still blow at integer math?

I'm confused.

- M4H

 

[dexvx]

It really depends on what number crunching app you're using.

Used, older Xeon boards are actually quite cheap... can be had regularly for under $50 on eBay.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: dexvx
It really depends on what number crunching app you're using.

Generic multitasking - video/photo editing I guess.

Used, older Xeon boards are actually quite cheap... can be had regularly for under $50 on eBay.

Yeah, but the older Xeons (at least the ones I've found) take RDRAM. Which as we all know, costs somewhere between "Arm", "Leg", and "Left Nut"

- M4H

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

Originally posted by: dexvx
It really depends on what number crunching app you're using.

Generic multitasking - video/photo editing I guess.

If its for generic multi-tasking video/photo editing the older P3/K7 Athlons would fare quite a bit worse than the P4's/Xeon/K8's. AFAIK for most video editting, the then lowly Willamette would match K7-Thunderbirds clock for clock.

 

[ElFenix]

dual celeron 300A on abit BP6