Intel Quad Core

[flipside]

What's the difference between these 5300 series and the QX series? Do they all have four cores? Can they all be used in a dual config (so 2*4cores)?

I have little technical insight and I get completly lost in this CPU discussions. I'm thinking of buying a new workstation and I simply want to know what the best price/speed buy is, and maybe if I need to wait a few months until these quad cores dropped in price already?

[joconnell]

The qx are single only cpus, the 5300s are also quad core but can be used in multi-cpu machines.

[RenderMonkey]

As for PSU, the Apple Pros with the dual 5160s come with a PSU which I believe is under 400 watts. I looked this up because I was considering putting in a 8800GTX which has steep power requirements.

Actually the Mac Pro draws around 250 watts in normal usage with 7300GT. But the PSU can feed up to 1200 watts. It is a hefty one inside there!


cheers!

[jujubee]

It's a 1200 watt PSU??? Are you sure? That's pretty excessive even by most computer standards.

[RenderMonkey]

I really don´t have any evidential source to point to at this time but it is what i have been told.

Those are all peak useages. The Pro's PSU may be *rated* to 1200 watt, but won't ever actually come near that. If you put 4 high RPM drives in the pro, used all the PCIe slots, all the ram slots, 2 optical drives and both mobo power rails, then you might begin to approach the rating at boot time. Remember, this is Apple and (much like enthusiast home PC builders) they're going to put in a PSU that is rated above whatever the machine will actually need so that less stress is put on it.

Just a couple of cents in this matter.

cheers!

[loafer87gt]

These Kentsfield scream in 3dsMax. Rendering out a scene that previously took a little over 13 minutes on my dual Xeon 3.2 system now takes just a shade over 3 minutes! Currently, I am running my QX6700 at a mild overclock, running it at 9x355FSB at 3.2Ghz (1420 FSB). One thing that I have noticed is that these chips love extra bandwidth. Just increasingly the multiplier gave me modest gains, but upping the FSB and lowering the multiplier gives a dramatic boost. Right now I am having some seating issues with my Tuniq Tower heatsink, so I don't want to push the machine any further until I can can reseat it to lower temps a smidge, but overall, I am very impressed with the chip.

Too bad the viewport performance still leaves a lot to be desired though. Even with my new 8800GTX, its still crawls along. In fact, under OpenGL, the card actually benches about two times as slow as my old Softmodded 6800GT.

[jujubee]

loafer- I wouldnt be using OpenGL with Max.

[timmatron]

loafer- I wouldnt be using OpenGL with Max.

What are you supposed to use? I hear with Max9 DirectX is best, but I don't know about Max8.

[jujubee]

D3D as well - however I can't speak for the Quadro series. I can say there was a huge performance increase in 8 using D3D with all my 'gamer' level cards.

[Neilg]

Just to add to this on a relevant note - will DX10 affect max at all, or is just shader stuff that it wont even look at?

[timmatron]

D3D as well - however I can't speak for the Quadro series. I can say there was a huge performance increase in 8 using D3D with all my 'gamer' level cards.

Ahh, thanks. Lately I have been using the geforce 7900 & 7950 series in our workstations so I will try that.

[jujubee]

Just to add to this on a relevant note - will DX10 affect max at all, or is just shader stuff that it wont even look at?

It's just viewport performance. I think I got at least twice as much performance switching over to DX.

[loafer87gt]

Just thought I'd post back my results from switching from OpenGL to D3D. Performance has jumped through the roof. Using the bmark4 benching script my scores have jumped almost ten fold in some instances. Here is a comparison between OpenGL and D3D on my system.

=================================================
Video Card: eVGA 8800GTX @ 1920x1200
Display Typeirect3D
File Name | FPS
=================================================
4viewports.MAX | 278.552
8direct.MAX | 609.756
8omni.MAX | 609.756
8spot.MAX | 557.103
blitting.MAX | 1084.99
dualplanes.MAX | 978.394
geometry1.MAX | 436.681
geometry2.MAX | 266.667
multitex.MAX | 80.0
rasterize.MAX | 653.168
textured1.MAX | 533.428
textured2.MAX | 179.051
textured3.MAX | 192.827
transpar.MAX | 333.333
wireframe1.MAX | 136.178
wireframe2.MAX | 72.7273

Comp High: 314.749
Comp Low: 315.119

=================================================
Video Card: eVGA 8800GTX @ 1920x1200
Display Type:OpenGL
File Name | FPS
=================================================
4viewports.MAX | 29.9043
8direct.MAX | 50.9944
8omni.MAX | 51.2033
8spot.MAX | 50.9944
blitting.MAX | 695.571
dualplanes.MAX | 839.161
geometry1.MAX | 8.40242
geometry2.MAX | 6.90147
multitex.MAX | 76.1615
rasterize.MAX | 77.5735
textured1.MAX | 1170.05
textured2.MAX | 124.883
textured3.MAX | 183.891
transpar.MAX | 45.9812
wireframe1.MAX | 12.4275
wireframe2.MAX | 10.202

Comp High: 35.4016
Comp Low: 109.19

[loafer87gt]

BTW, the benchmark script can be found here.

http://rapidshare.com/files/3108339/bmark4.rar.html

[flipside]

What's the comp high and low message in the results?