Intel xeon vs Intel i7

[m.thomas]

Going to be seriously speccing up some new workstations soon.
From my initial google searching I am pretty much baffled by direct comparisons between intel xeon vs i7 processors for REVIT use.

Got burnt the last time by going for intel xeon quad core processors which were slower in general use to the duo core processor I was replacing due to the single core clock speed !
Will not make that mistake again.

Have looked at dell and hp which seem to be going down the intel xeon route while looking at http://www.workstationspecialist.com/ they seem to be using i7 for high end workstations.


Would appreciate any words of wisdom.

[ron.sanpedro]

Take a look here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_N...roarchitecture))
From the looks of it, Xeon will give you slightly faster ram clocking (1333MHz vs 1066MHz) and the ability to do multi-socket configurations (think Mac Pro with two quad core hyper-threaded Xeons for 16 total threads). If you a CPU that is Turbo Boost capable then the core vs clock argument is no longer valid, as the chip will shut down some cores and speed up the others when the load demands it. Both Gainstown (Xeon) and Bloomfield/Lynnfield (Core i5/i7) are Turbo Boost capable, so not an issue for either. I think motherboards that can take a Xeon also (can?) support ECC, Registered and Buffered ram. Pretty sure an i7 motherboard doesn't. But this is more of a chipset feature, not a CPU feature. Servers use this kind of ram, and Apple uses ECC in the Mac Pro, but Dell doesn't even use it on their high end workstations. I suspect a Xeon supporting mother board would also support more ram than an i7 board. The Mac Pro can go to 32GB in current configs.
Oh, and it looks like Xeon has a good 50% price premium.

In the end, I am going with i7s, cause the office just won't let us have Mac Pros! ;(
Edit: Those WS workstations look pretty freakin' powerful!
Edit: It seems newer i5/i7 chips can do 1333MHz memory clocking as well. Looks like Xeon buys you dual sockets and not a bunch else. I have no concrete info but I rather doubt the multi-threading of printing and wall join cleanup is going to scale past 8 threads, so probably an i5/i7 is all you need unless you render a lot.

Gordon

[ws]

I got my latest machine from workstationspecialists (formerly cad2.com) and am very pleased with it.

They can offer an overclocked i7 together with solid state system drive for a little more cost than their standard machines - but I just went with their recommendations after chatting on the telephone about the best spec for Revit - they seemed to know quite a bit about the future development of Revit - or maybe it is educated guesswork.

I always used to buy Xeons with ECC memory and had a bad experience last year with an i7 machine and a faulty memory module - which is why I went to workstationspeciliasts (cad2 was a lot quicker to write )

[KaylinR]

The latest i5 based machine we put together runs at 4ghz and has the memory clocked at 2000mhz. An overclocked i5 is a pretty worthy option imho.