Xeon vs. i7

[Kim-n-Dean]

I'm looking at some Dell Workstations for CAD and...

I'm trying to figure out if Xeon is better. In the old days it was the shit, but I'm seeing that the i7 might be better. So, why are the Xeon machines more expensive? Also, the clock speeds on the Xeons are confusing. An E5-2630, 6-core, 2.6GHz is $5,200 cheaper than the Dual E5-2670,10-core, 2.5GHz. They add cores, slow down the clock and jack the hell out of the price. All the Xeon machines show a slightly lower processor rating than the machines with i7 CPUs. And, the i7 machines are waaaay cheaper but, their recommendations for CAD systems are Xeon CPUs.

Also, are solid state drives noticeably faster? Like, big-time faster?

Anyone, anyone....

[Native]

I think the zeon has a bigger processor cache and some bus is also bigger. the i7 is pretty fast and way cheaper, I have an i7 w/ssd if you want to come and try it

[birchyboy]

I support an actuary that has both an i7 workstation (16gb RAM, 1TB drives) and a dual Xeon workstation (48GB ram, 256 SSD). He is very sensitive to anything that slows his work down, which is primarily Excel 2007/2010 spreadsheets and Statistica work. The i7 absolutely stomps the Xeon workstation, but I think has more to do with how Excel utilizes the processors for VBA than anything else. I have tested 64 bit Excel on a dual Xeon server, and when configured correctly Excel can be much faster if VBA isn't involved.

SSD's can be the shit for reading massive amounts of data. I haven't done much in the way of formal testing, but I like them.

All that said, if I were you I'd focus on users groups for the software that you are using and try to cull out what other users recommend.

[~Barn~]

SSHDs > Dope processors

[Kim-n-Dean]

I support an actuary that has both an i7 workstation (16gb RAM, 1TB drives) and a dual Xeon workstation (48GB ram, 256 SSD). He is very sensitive to anything that slows his work down, which is primarily Excel 2007/2010 spreadsheets and Statistica work. The i7 absolutely stomps the Xeon workstation, but I think has more to do with how Excel utilizes the processors for VBA than anything else. I have tested 64 bit Excel on a dual Xeon server, and when configured correctly Excel can be much faster if VBA isn't involved.

SSD's can be the shit for reading massive amounts of data. I haven't done much in the way of formal testing, but I like them.

All that said, if I were you I'd focus on users groups for the software that you are using and try to cull out what other users recommend.Stomps it, ay! That's what I was afraid of. It probably is how the software uses the CPU. Just about every high-end CAD station is using Xeon, where office machines use i7. I'm strictly CAD (AutoCAD, 3-D Studio, Revit, Solid Works). The problems with user groups are the people that know the software never know anything about the hardware and vice-versa.

[rforsythe]

Stomps it, ay! That's what I was afraid of. It probably is how the software uses the CPU. Just about every high-end CAD station is using Xeon, where office machines use i7. I'm strictly CAD (AutoCAD, 3-D Studio, Revit, Solid Works). The problems with user groups are the people that know the software never know anything about the hardware and vice-versa.

Might be worth calling Autodesk and asking them what they recommend. They might have optimized it for one chip over another.

[Kim-n-Dean]

SSHDs > Dope processorsAre you saying it's better to have SSD than the latest CPU? Should we discuss this over lunch (with a view, of course)?

[Kim-n-Dean]

Might be worth calling Autodesk and asking them what they recommend. They might have optimized it for one chip over another.They just list minimum specs for all their software, which my ten-year-old box smokes. I'll email them and ask them specifically if there is a better CPU over another for their ware's.

[Native]

They just list minimum specs for all their software, which my ten-year-old box smokes. I'll email them and ask them specifically if there is a better CPU over another for their ware's.

sure, you will get a canned response from the help desk, you are welcome to come try it with a large file on my machine (Lone Tree)

[dirkterrell]

It depends greatly on the specifics of what you do. For my work (floating point codes that peg the cpu for long periods of time), the Xeons have an edge. The E5-2687 and E5-2697 are smoking chips for floating point, and if you can make use of the additional cores, the 2697 is where it's at. The only way to really know what's best for you is to see benchmarks done using the software you use. And SSDs are nice if you're moving lots of data around. A RAM disk might be useful in certain situations. I use all three approaches depending on what I'm doing.

[Kim-n-Dean]

sure, you will get a canned response from the help desk, you are welcome to come try it with a large file on my machineI really appreciate that, but it would be over two hours to install and customize to see how it really runs. Basic install is well under an hour, but without the custom programs and other items, it wouldn't be a 'real world' test.

[Kim-n-Dean]

A RAM disk might be useful in certain situations. I use all three approaches depending on what I'm doing.I've was using RAM disk in 1990. Wrote a cool little script for the AutoExec to execute on start-up. Took a while to copy everything to and fro... but it definitely sped up the machines back then. Haven't messed with it since about 1995. Aren't SSDs basically today's RAM disk?

Looks like I'll be purchasing the Precision T7610 - Not too bad @ $3,100:

Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2630 v2 (Six Core HT, 2.6GHz Turbo, 15 MB)
32GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1866MHz
3 GB NVIDIA Quadro K4000 (2DP & 1DVI-I) (2DP-DVI & 1DVI-VGA adapter)

[Native]

I really appreciate that, but it would be over two hours to install and customize to see how it really runs. Basic install is well under an hour, but without the custom programs and other items, it wouldn't be a 'real world' test.

point taken, I have only 50GB left on my hd, maybe just get the i7 w/ssd. just like our bikes, the Ducati or BMW will cost you 3x

[dirkterrell]

Aren't SSDs basically today's RAM disk?


Similar in many respects, but RAM will usually be faster at the expense of volatility. Again, it depends on what you're doing whether one is better than the other.

[Native]

I've was using RAM disk in 1990. Wrote a cool little script for the AutoExec to execute on start-up. Took a while to copy everything to and fro... but it definitely sped up the machines back then. Haven't messed with it since about 1995. Aren't SSDs basically today's RAM disk?

Looks like I'll be purchasing the Precision T7610 - Not too bad @ $3,100:

Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2630 v2 (Six Core HT, 2.6GHz Turbo, 15 MB)
32GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1866MHz
3 GB NVIDIA Quadro K4000 (2DP & 1DVI-I) (2DP-DVI & 1DVI-VGA adapter)

jeez, that thing it freakin heathy, why does the ssd add $5k?

[Kim-n-Dean]

jeez, that thing it freakin heathy, why does the ssd add $5k?
The $5K more gets you dual Xeon ten-core CPUs, 64Gb RAM, 4Gb K5000 Video and two 256 Mb SSD's. You would never have to buy another computer!

[Kim-n-Dean]

Similar in many respects, but RAM will usually be faster at the expense of volatility. Again, it depends on what you're doing whether one is better than the other.That was always the problem with RAM disk. One hick-up and EVERYTHING is goooone!!!!!!

[Native]

That was always the problem with RAM disk. One hick-up and EVERYTHING is goooone!!!!!!

the ssd is way better, and definitely much faster (than an HD)

[dirkterrell]

That was always the problem with RAM disk. One hick-up and EVERYTHING is goooone!!!!!!

Yeah, you have to use them the right way. Nothing that can't be easily recreated should be on a RAM disk. I use them, for example, when processing astronomical images. The processing creates intermediate files that I don't ultimately care about. I just want the final one. So, I do all that intermediate processing in a RAM disk and then write the final one to something non-volatile.

[Native]

they used to have a hardware equivalent to an ssd back in the 90's. It used ram chips and was very expensive. you could use it when there was no other solution for performance

[~Barn~]

<Snip...> You would never have to buy another computer!

:lol:

Yeah.. Just like back when I was a kid and we purchased our first home PC - A Packard Bell desktop with a 500MB HDD - and my Uncle (An HP employee at the time) proclaims to me... "Wow! You're never going to be able to fill that thing up!"

Truth is, there's processing power that's going to be needed for technologies that we don't even know are going to exist on the consumer front in 10... 20 years from now; same thing with storage requirements. Full holographic rendering and immersion anybody? Anyway... just sayin'.

[Kim-n-Dean]

:lol:

Yeah.. Just like back when I was a kid and we purchased our first home PC - A Packard Bell desktop with a 500MB HDD - and my Uncle (An HP employee at the time) proclaims to me... "Wow! You're never going to be able to fill that thing up!"

Truth is, there's processing power that's going to be needed for technologies that we don't even know are going to exist on the consumer front in 10... 20 years from now; same thing with storage requirements. Full holographic rendering and immersion anybody? Anyway... just sayin'.I was meaning more along the lines of what I use computers for. My current machine is ten-years old and still hauls ass (knowing how to set up 'processes' and 'services' can really free up a lot of speed). I bought the most computer that I could back then, knowing it would last a long time. The only reason I'm getting a new one is because MS stops XP support on April 8th and AutoCAD 2014 is the last version that AutoDesk will support on XP. So, since I have AutoCAD 2015 and my current machine is ten-years old....

[I`m Batman]

Pentium 2?

[Kim-n-Dean]

Pentium 2?Nope. Although, my original computer, a first gen. Pentium 120MHz running Linux hauls some serious ass, too.

My current box is a P4, 3.4GHz, 3 Gb RAM, GeForce 6800 256 Mb Video. The key is disabling most of the three-hundred some Win services that you don't need.

[bluedogok]

I run Revit on a dual-Xeon at work (Nvidia Quadro 4000, 32GB, SSD) Core i7's at home. Max works better on Xeons because it addresses multiple cores and the Xeon has more, Revit 2014 doesn't (yet).

In Austin we moved from Dell to Boxx Technologies (http://www.boxxtech.com/) systems (they were about a half mile from our office at the time) and they seemed to run much better because they were made for the higher end work and cheaper than the higher end Dell computers with much less crap software loaded on them. You can get either Core i7 or Xeon with Boxx.

[Kim-n-Dean]

I run Revit on a dual-Xeon at work (Nvidia Quadro 4000, 32GB, SSD) Core i7's at home. Max works better on Xeons because it addresses multiple cores and the Xeon has more, Revit 2014 doesn't (yet).

In Austin we moved from Dell to Boxx Technologies (http://www.boxxtech.com/) systems (they were about a half mile from our office at the time) and they seemed to run much better because they were made for the higher end work and cheaper than the higher end Dell computers with much less crap software loaded on them. You can get either Core i7 or Xeon with Boxx.I agree! I hate all the extra crap Dell sends installed. The first thing I do when I buy a Dell is reformat and install only the stuff I want. Then, I make an image and that's my "recovery" to how it was delivered.

Damn! I got excite about Boxx, checked them out and they have not even half the machine Dell does for $500 more. One of Boxx's machines is $19,000. You can get the same from Dell for $8,500. Oh well...

[Kim-n-Dean]

Got my new machine the other day and shit, it freakin' hauls ass!!!

Xeon E5-2630 v2 - 6 Core
32 Gigs of DDR3 ECC 1866MHz RAM
Nvidia Quadro K4000 w/ 3Gigs of RAM Video Card

...and to answer my own question, the reason Xeons are so expensive is they are server CPU's. The QA is considerably higher than on regular CPU's, they are designed to run at 100% load 24/7 and they support ECC RAM.

I can run six instances of AutoCAD, four instances of Design Review, open ten .PDF's and run Solid Works all at the same time and it doesn't even phase this box! It is amazing!

[birchyboy]

Got my new machine the other day and shit, it freakin' hauls ass!!!

Xeon E5-2630 v2 - 6 Core
32 Gigs of DDR3 ECC 1866MHz RAM
Nvidia Quadro K4000 w/ 3Gigs of RAM Video Card

...and to answer my own question, the reason Xeons are so expensive is they are server CPU's. The QA is considerably higher than on regular CPU's, they are designed to run at 100% load 24/7 and they support ECC RAM.

I can run six instances of AutoCAD, four instances of Design Review, open ten .PDF's and run Solid Works all at the same time and it doesn't even phase this box! It is amazing!

That's quite the machine. Now throw some porn at it and see how it does.

[birchyboy]

As an update to this topic, I'm in the midst of testing machines for the same actuary. The baseline machine is a 3 year old Dell Optiplex 990 with an i7-2600 (3.4ghz) processor, 16gb of ram and 1TB drive. The other machine is a Dell Precision T5600 with dual Xeon E5-2620 procs (2ghz), 8gb ram and a 500gb drive.

The damned i7 machine is kicking the Xeon's ass as far as Excel is concerned. A simple test, using macros, is to open and save an Excel workbook that is 124mb in size. The times are recorded during the test. The old i7 can do it in 11 seconds, the dual Xeon is 22 seconds. I've expanded my test to other, new i7 machines as well as other dual Xeon machines, and the results are nearly identical. The i7's are vastly superior from a file I/O standpoint for Excel. I'm quite surprised that the results are that repeatable across similar hardware of different ages. Some of the Xeon machines have 48gb of ram and some have 32gb. No change, almost twice as slow as an i7.

Xeon's might make good servers or CAD stations, but they aren't great for Excel :-(

[Kim-n-Dean]

As an update to this topic, I'm in the midst of testing machines for the same actuary. The baseline machine is a 3 year old Dell Optiplex 990 with an i7-2600 (3.4ghz) processor, 16gb of ram and 1TB drive. The other machine is a Dell Precision T5600 with dual Xeon E5-2620 procs (2ghz), 8gb ram and a 500gb drive.

The damned i7 machine is kicking the Xeon's ass as far as Excel is concerned. A simple test, using macros, is to open and save an Excel workbook that is 124mb in size. The times are recorded during the test. The old i7 can do it in 11 seconds, the dual Xeon is 22 seconds. I've expanded my test to other, new i7 machines as well as other dual Xeon machines, and the results are nearly identical. The i7's are vastly superior from a file I/O standpoint for Excel. I'm quite surprised that the results are that repeatable across similar hardware of different ages. Some of the Xeon machines have 48gb of ram and some have 32gb. No change, almost twice as slow as an i7.

Xeon's might make good servers or CAD stations, but they aren't great for Excel :-(Is that Excel file something you can send me or is it linked to a bunch of stuff on your end? I would like to see the times on my machine.

I have friends running i7s for things like MicroStation, SolidWorks, 3D Max and my machine smokes theirs. Never tried any "heavy" Excel files. Since I never use Excel, I don't care, but I am extremely curious as to what is the difference on why you see the results you are seeing.

I wonder if the dual proc. is causing the slow down. I've seen it before with other programs. I've seen machines speed up when hyper threading is turned off or a separate processor disabled. Curious...

[laspariahs]

Excel isn't multi threaded, so ghz wins of course, 3.4vs 2. Dual Xeons will excel at stability ECC ram and other things of course will help in this regard. In multi threaded applications the xeons will do better.

[birchyboy]

Is that Excel file something you can send me or is it linked to a bunch of stuff on your end? I would like to see the times on my machine.

I have friends running i7s for things like MicroStation, SolidWorks, 3D Max and my machine smokes theirs. Never tried any "heavy" Excel files. Since I never use Excel, I don't care, but I am extremely curious as to what is the difference on why you see the results you are seeing.

I wonder if the dual proc. is causing the slow down. I've seen it before with other programs. I've seen machines speed up when hyper threading is turned off or a separate processor disabled. Curious...

I'll look at the file and see how proprietary the data is. It isn't the calc that is slow, it's the opening of the file. It's a very odd issue, but it's reproducible on every dual Xeon machine I have access to.

[Kim-n-Dean]

I'll look at the file and see how proprietary the data is. It isn't the calc that is slow, it's the opening of the file. It's a very odd issue, but it's reproducible on every dual Xeon machine I have access to.I understand it's the opening, that's what I want to try it. I have a drawing file that when you double click on it to open the file at the same time AutoCAD starts, it takes 68 seconds to open on a Pentium 4, 3.4GHz. It takes 9 seconds on my 2.6 Xeon. In that example it's not so much the file as it is AutoCAD starting. Either way, a huge difference!

[birchyboy]

I understand it's the opening, that's what I want to try it. I have a drawing file that when you double click on it to open the file at the same time AutoCAD starts, it takes 68 seconds to open on a Pentium 4, 3.4GHz. It takes 9 seconds on my 2.6 Xeon. In that example it's not so much the file as it is AutoCAD starting. Either way, a huge difference!

I took a look and it has too much information that I would have to scrub. Thanks for offering to test it though.

[Kim-n-Dean]

I took a look and it has too much information that I would have to scrub. Thanks for offering to test it though.If you're close buy, come over for a beer (and some slot cars) and we'll try it. We can open it from your thumb drive, if that would be an accurate test. Not sure if it needs to be on a hard drive.

What version of Excel are you using? Are you opening Excel first, then open the file? Or, are you double clicking the file and the file loads as Excel starts?

[Generic]

Just an FYI the opening and processing is probably much more closely tied to the subsystems of the associated systems than the CPU itself. The i7 is likely going to have a faster bus and be able to pull the pull the data off of storage faster than the older Xeon. I'm curious if you know if the machines are are comparing are running the same chip-set and storage type. E.g. Intel X79 Express and SATA 2 or something else.

And as mentioned above, as Excel isn't multi-thread aware a Xenon isn't the best choice for it either.

[birchyboy]

Just an FYI the opening and processing is probably much more closely tied to the subsystems of the associated systems than the CPU itself. The i7 is likely going to have a faster bus and be able to pull the pull the data off of storage faster than the older Xeon. I'm curious if you know if the machines are are comparing are running the same chip-set and storage type. E.g. Intel X79 Express and SATA 2 or something else.

And as mentioned above, as Excel isn't multi-thread aware a Xenon isn't the best choice for it either.

The primary Xeon I'm dealing with is a month old Dell T5600 that came with the PERC adapter. I moved the hard drives to the onboard SATA thinking that the PERC might be an issue but that didn't help. The drive is a 7200 rpm SATA drive, same speed as the 3 year old i7. All of the Xeon's are equally slow opening the file; the time is consistent whether it's a single 7200 disk or a RAID 50 array of 15k disks. I'm chalking it up to a Xeon issue and we're trying to get new i7 workstation for the actuaries to use.

Up until 7 months ago, when I worked for a company of 20, I could call Dell and get a machine ordered immediately. Since we've been gobbled up into a company of 60k, it takes much longer to do anything.

[birchyboy]

If you're close buy, come over for a beer (and some slot cars) and we'll try it. We can open it from your thumb drive, if that would be an accurate test. Not sure if it needs to be on a hard drive.

What version of Excel are you using? Are you opening Excel first, then open the file? Or, are you double clicking the file and the file loads as Excel starts?

Yeah, we could do that but not until next week most likely. Thanks for the offer.