Hi

My media center needs a bit of an upgrade and i'm torn between an intel chip (probably E5200) and this:

AMD Phenom II X2 545 3GHz Socket AM3 6MB Cache Retail Box Processor.

Anyone know how these things do on Rosetta?

ta
Danny

---

My media center needs a bit of an upgrade and i'm torn between an intel chip (probably E5200) and this:

AMD Phenom II X2 545 3GHz Socket AM3 6MB Cache Retail Box Processor.

Anyone know how these things do on Rosetta?

According to this page the average credit per CPU for the AMD is 83.41 (136th) and for the Intel it's 62.77 (187th) on this project. But note that there's only 2 of the former but 915 of the latter so it may not be representative.

EDIT: There's also this page on Tom's hardware that lists the AMD as a tier above the Intel from a gaming perspective. That's a good site, so take a look around it for more details to see if it suits your purposes in other respects.

Happy hunting!

---

I'd go AMD just because I'm a fan of them.

And you could go quad core with a tiny bit of more money if you with AMD.
That'll beat any Dual Intel.

---

Hi

My media center needs a bit of an upgrade and i'm torn between an intel chip (probably E5200) and this:

AMD Phenom II X2 545 3GHz Socket AM3 6MB Cache Retail Box Processor.

Anyone know how these things do on Rosetta?

ta
Danny

I am mostly an AMD guy because they are cheaper and the heatsink is easier to put on the motherboard than the Intel one. I dislike the push down and turn style attachment!

There are other variables to consider as to what is actually faster. Memory speed, hard drive size and speed, video card size and speed. Is the video card built in or stand alone, stand alone is faster. The front bus speed of the pc of the mother board will also have a bearing on which is faster, there are soooo many variables that go into saying that this or that brand is faster, that it is just not that easy. You could buy a really fast cpu and then pair it with a poor motherboard, video card, hard drive and memory, and it is no longer the performance beast you thought you were getting.

The key is to buy as much as you can afford because tomorrow it will be older and slower than the new stuff that comes out!

---

Also for an HTPC look at the Nvidia 8300 gpu motherboard series, I have an Asus M3N78-EM motherboard that I bought for the puropose of both an HTPC and crunching Rosetta, and I only have an AMD X2 7850. That Phenom II should do much better with Rosy than mine, I only have a 2 mb level 3 cache, that Phenom II you are looking at has 6mb. Now you may not see it because I have my cores split up between Rosetta and World Community Grid, but when I was crunching Rosetta exclusively on both cores I had a RAC of about 800 a day, and split up I can still get about 400 a day per core on both projects. My processor is also running at 2.8 ghz, the 545 is a 3 ghz. So it's faster by 200 mhz and has more level 3 cache, and I know that since it is a 45 nm chip it uses less power than mine running at full bore, which Rosetta will do. (I've looked at the comparison's on sites like Tom's Hardware.) I think it is a good one to go with, and I mentioned that particular motherboard because you want a motherboard that is made to handle things like 1080P Blue Ray movies, if you really want a good home theater experience. Even if you add a dedicated video card, you still want the motherboard to be blue ray capable.

A quad core like Chilean suggests will require more memory (as well as use much more electricty), and if you configure your memory to use all the slots of your motherboard, and run them at the full speed it is capable of, you may stress the memory controller on the processor and have a lot of glitches, restarts, and BSOD's. (A lot of people have done that, maxing out their memory slots with the max speed memory that the motherboard can take and then wondering why the computer won't run right. The fix for it is a little overclocking knowledge and some voltage increase on the northbridge, which is something I don't even like to mess with. That is why I have decided against a quad core right now.)
I do just fine with one dual core and 2 gb of memory. If I ever want more memory, I think I will get two 2gb chips and still only utilize two of the four slots on my board to avoid problems like the aforementioned ones.

And that link that Sid Celery posted is very telling. The processor you are interested in is being used by only two people and is #133, while the one I use is #162 and is being used by 48 people. Your's scores much higher in average credit per CPU per hour. And the price is good too, only about $15 or $20 more than I paid for mine. I've been kind of interested in that 550 myself, but I'm happy with what I have.

I'm shocked I'm outrunning an X3 720, those are listed as #190, but the X3 710's are #101. Weird...
I'm glad now I didn't buy a 720, I wanted on really badly for awhile. But I could also run 3 work units on it instead of 2 on the dual core. Still weird.

---

Hi

My media center needs a bit of an upgrade and i'm torn between an intel chip (probably E5200) and this:

AMD Phenom II X2 545 3GHz Socket AM3 6MB Cache Retail Box Processor.

Anyone know how these things do on Rosetta?

ta
Danny

I am mostly an AMD guy because they are cheaper and the heatsink is easier to put on the motherboard than the Intel one. I dislike the push down and turn style attachment!

There are other variables to consider as to what is actually faster. Memory speed, hard drive size and speed, video card size and speed. Is the video card built in or stand alone, stand alone is faster. The front bus speed of the pc of the mother board will also have a bearing on which is faster, there are soooo many variables that go into saying that this or that brand is faster, that it is just not that easy. You could buy a really fast cpu and then pair it with a poor motherboard, video card, hard drive and memory, and it is no longer the performance beast you thought you were getting.

The key is to buy as much as you can afford because tomorrow it will be older and slower than the new stuff that comes out!

I just mean like-for-like which is going to be better for rosetta. They'll both be fine for everything else the machine is going to be doing.

I'll probably be running Vista MC from an 8 or 16GB OCZ throttle esata flash drive with 2GB RAM, and I might put an additional 80GB drive in it for recording TV until I get a new server up and running and start recording to the network drive again.

---

I'm shocked I'm outrunning an X3 720, those are listed as #190, but the X3 710's are #101. Weird...
I'm glad now I didn't buy a 720, I wanted on really badly for awhile. But I could also run 3 work units on it instead of 2 on the dual core. Still weird.

Unfortunately those stats don't take into account what proportion of time the CPUs are running for. It's the last column that's important i guess, but i'm reclutant to trust it because if you sort by it there's very little grouping - i'd expect the different families of CPU to be grouped and then sorted by speed, at least roughly...

---

Let's go down the list and see where the E5200 lands, but running at only 2.5 ghz I'm willing to get that the 545 smokes it as far as Rosetta is concerned, and the E5200 only has 2mb of level 2 cache. Cache size is important in determining Rosetta performance.

Intel Pentium E5200 is #188. That vs. the Phenom II X2 545 at #133 should make the answer of which is crunches better for Rosetta pretty obvious.

And take a look at what number 1,6, and 9 are AMD fans. Then look down at #17...the vaunted Core i7. Hmmmmmmm?????

---

I'm shocked I'm outrunning an X3 720, those are listed as #190, but the X3 710's are #101. Weird...
I'm glad now I didn't buy a 720, I wanted on really badly for awhile. But I could also run 3 work units on it instead of 2 on the dual core. Still weird.

Unfortunately those stats don't take into account what proportion of time the CPUs are running for. It's the last column that's important i guess, but i'm reclutant to trust it because if you sort by it there's very little grouping - i'd expect the different families of CPU to be grouped and then sorted by speed, at least roughly...

I did a little math on it myself, I'm probably brining down the average for my own processor class by not running Rosetta on both cores 24/7. So the numbers are subjective. A triple core could run Einstein, Rosetta and WCG all at once and so their Rosetta stats might not look so good. But with a larger L3 cache and 500mhz faster I'm willing to bet that the X2 545 will outperform the E5200 on anybody's DC project, especially Rosetta.

---

The key is to buy as much as you can afford because tomorrow it will be older and slower than the new stuff that comes out!

I just mean like-for-like which is going to be better for rosetta. They'll both be fine for everything else the machine is going to be doing.

I'll probably be running Vista MC from an 8 or 16GB OCZ throttle esata flash drive with 2GB RAM, and I might put an additional 80GB drive in it for recording TV until I get a new server up and running and start recording to the network drive again.

Over the long haul I am not sure there is a hill of beans difference. Intel and AMD do things differently but they both get to the end at nearly the same time. That is why you are asking the question about which is faster, because they are so similar in the end. There is no hard fast answer though, so go with cost and buy as much pc as you can because tomorrow something newer and faster will come out and blow yours right out of the water! Everyone went out and bought i7 chips, now the i9 is coming out with 6 cpus, 12 with HT, and it should be a screaming fast cruncher!! Good news is it will work in most existing i7 boards with a bios update. Bad news is it will not be cheap, cutting edge technology never is!! I saw a link to Tom's hardware site that had a dual core i9, 24 cpu's!!! and it had a 12mb L3 cache!!! Only a 256k L2 cache but a HUGE L3 cache!!!

whats the saying?
the moment they manufacture something new it is already out of date?
something like that.

Buy within your budget and ask a computer shop for a good processor for number crunching. I don't have the fastest processor but it was within my budget and performs very well. I was AMD but switched to Intel due to cost and that I could get a higher speed processor for the same money.

Thats a simplest's view of this whole thing.

For a HTPC, the most important CPU feature is performance per watt. You don't want a very hot CPU causing the fans in the PC to run on high all the time (noise); you want a quiet system with enough power to deliver media and whatever else you do from your living/family room.

With that in mind, a higher-clocked dual core will have significantly lower thermal output than a quad core. Compare the quad cores from AMD and Intel: They go from 95W to 130W thermal output. You can get a dual core at 45W.

I would recommend a WolfDale (45nm dual-core Intel Core2 Duo) for your application. If you really want a quad-core, then it would make much more sense to choose a lower-speed AMD Phenom II x4 CPU (because of price per watt). Make sure the thermal output is 95W or less, such as the 945 or even the "energy efficient" 65W 900e or 905e. I found a 905e on NewEgg for $185; that is twice what you were going to pay for a dual-core, but you'll be so happy that you chose the lower-wattage CPU.

Thanks for the replies guys. I've had a slight change of plan this evening as there's no way for me to get a freeview signal where I'm currently staying and I don't watch that much live TV anyway, so I'm gonna have to ditch the media center while I'm here. I'll probably look at this again in a few months when I've moved...

I might have a look at building a new server for storage to get the noisy drives out of the way so i can just run my main machine from an OCZ throttle.

---

For a HTPC, the most important CPU feature is performance per watt. You don't want a very hot CPU causing the fans in the PC to run on high all the time (noise); you want a quiet system with enough power to deliver media and whatever else you do from your living/family room.

With that in mind, a higher-clocked dual core will have significantly lower thermal output than a quad core. Compare the quad cores from AMD and Intel: They go from 95W to 130W thermal output. You can get a dual core at 45W.

I would recommend a WolfDale (45nm dual-core Intel Core2 Duo) for your application. If you really want a quad-core, then it would make much more sense to choose a lower-speed AMD Phenom II x4 CPU (because of price per watt). Make sure the thermal output is 95W or less, such as the 945 or even the "energy efficient" 65W 900e or 905e. I found a 905e on NewEgg for $185; that is twice what you were going to pay for a dual-core, but you'll be so happy that you chose the lower-wattage CPU.

Excellent points!

Thanks for the replies guys. I've had a slight change of plan this evening as there's no way for me to get a freeview signal where I'm currently staying and I don't watch that much live TV anyway, so I'm gonna have to ditch the media center while I'm here. I'll probably look at this again in a few months when I've moved...

I might have a look at building a new server for storage to get the noisy drives out of the way so i can just run my main machine from an OCZ throttle.

Oh well it was fun while it lasted. It's okay we have all delayed our plans once or twice. The key is you now have more time to do more research AND save up more money for the time when you can do it.

Thanks for the replies guys. I've had a slight change of plan this evening as there's no way for me to get a freeview signal where I'm currently staying and I don't watch that much live TV anyway, so I'm gonna have to ditch the media center while I'm here. I'll probably look at this again in a few months when I've moved...

I might have a look at building a new server for storage to get the noisy drives out of the way so i can just run my main machine from an OCZ throttle.

I don't watch much t.v. either. But I chose a setup that is good for an HTPC for the purpose of watching Blu-ray DVD's with at least 5.1 surround and doing it on a budget, which I have pretty much done. I prefer to use my computer as my central hub for everything. I think that setting up a surround system without a computer, using a stereo reciever and all that other crap, is a nasty mess of wires and a big waste of money. I have seen my step dad do it and I keep wondering if he will ever realize he can do all of that with a computer...a cd stereo,dvd player, Blu-ray at 1080p, and 5.1-7.1 stereo surround with a computer and avoid all the mess of a set up he has now.
Besides you can watch the best t.v. online anyway...Lost, Heroes, Miami Vice, The A-Team, Chad Vader... pretty much whatever you want to from the non-cable networks and home movie junkies.
And Star Wars, Jurassic Park and Iron Man are a blast in surround sound.

If you want extra storage, why set up a server? You can get a nice 1-2 terabit external hard drive and that should satisfy all your storage space, and be very quiet as well. That's what I'm going to eventually do for a lot of the storage I use my main hard drive for, an external hdd that can be powered down or turned off to conserve on power. I have used a second internal before, but I realilzed that is really a waste of power, like having a DVD and a CD drive both hooked up at once. Waste of power when I only used on at a time anyway.
Besides I don't trust flash memory cards all that much. I managed to ruin a 16 gb one that belonged to my ex-girlfriend and had an 8gb one of mine go bad, any data copied to it ends up corruped by the time I get it to another computer. Neither one of these were cheap by any means.

---

If you want extra storage, why set up a server? You can get a nice 1-2 terabit external hard drive and that should satisfy all your storage space, and be very quiet as well. That's what I'm going to eventually do for a lot of the storage I use my main hard drive for, an external hdd that can be powered down or turned off to conserve on power. I have used a second internal before, but I realilzed that is really a waste of power, like having a DVD and a CD drive both hooked up at once. Waste of power when I only used on at a time anyway.
Besides I don't trust flash memory cards all that much. I managed to ruin a 16 gb one that belonged to my ex-girlfriend and had an 8gb one of mine go bad, any data copied to it ends up corruped by the time I get it to another computer. Neither one of these were cheap by any means.

I want it in a different room because of the noise. I do a lot of CAD on my PC so it needs to be pretty quick but also quiet (the thermalright ultra 120 helps with that!), and I use the server to do menial tasks like downloading (in a virtual machine for security), ftp, backups recording (my media centre recorded to my last server because it booted from compactflash - cheap version of an SSD!). I did run a trial of windows home server before which i really like - might buy a copy of that...

---

I had to look up CAD to see what that meant, and the reading definition of a virtual machine has given me a headache and reinforced my decision not to pursue a career in computers. I'll stick to just upgrading my computer and making DVD home movies.

---

I did run a trial of windows home server before which i really like - might buy a copy of that...

I have one of those I built myself, buying the software like you are thinking. It is not hard and over the last couple of years it is actually doing what I want it to do!! Until recently it would not delete the older backups, they must have pushed out an update because it does now. You can only put up to 10 machines in the backup queue but for most people that will be plenty. I have more than that running here at home, but since most are Boinc only machines that is not a huge problem. I have just had to find another way to create an image backup system for them. I have 3 drives in my Windows Home Server, they total 1.6TB and I have 6 machines doing daily backups using 1TB of space. The 600GB free is pretty steady so I have not put another drive in it yet. I am running a dual core 3.2 ghz Intel cpu with 2 gig of ram in a home built machine.

---

It looks to me like one of the best CPU's to have for crunching Rosetta, saving energy and using for either a HTPC or probably your server would be the AMD Phenom II 905e. Right now it is #9 on that CPU chart, right underdeath the X4 965<--- a power hungry beast of a processor. I find this interesting in that the only difference between the two, other than power settings and voltage is that the 965 runs at 3.4ghz and the 905e runs at 2.5 ghz. 905e is made to be energy efficent and not overclocked at all. And it's about $65 cheaper than the 965. So it's easier on your wallet all around in both initial cost and power consumption and it looks like it will crunch almost as well as it's power hungry big brother.

---