Time for a new test

sgtwilliamssgtwilliams Grand Rapids MI
edited February 2006 in Hardware
I have dabbled in AMD now for a year, havent built a new Intel system since the 2.4 P4 I am folding with.

New Intel Pentium D 830 and Intel 955 board just arrived. I am excited to do Raid 5 on the mobo and see how this rather expensive experiment goes and compares.

Using the same 7800 GT OC I have in my X2 so I will do some benchmarks and post results.

Comments

  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2006
    You are in for some dual core fun! If the 955 chipset is anything like the 945P chipset, your setup and stability should be a snap and rock solid stable respectively. Note of caution: if you experiment with overclocking watch the CPU temperature like a hawk!

    Please post your system specs. I would really enjoy tracking your progress and providing advice where I can.
  • sgtwilliamssgtwilliams Grand Rapids MI
    edited February 2006
    No overclocking planned, I dontmind paying for the latest and greatest but I like to see what stock performance is. I will for sure keep you posted.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2006
    Even if no overclocking, I would still monitor temperatures closely if you will be using the stock heatsink. The stock sink is very good, but 100% CPU utilization will still get those two Prescott cores roasting. Just to be safe, I recommend you download and install Throttlewatch. It's a useful, simple monitor that will let you know if either core is clock throttling due to heat.
  • sgtwilliamssgtwilliams Grand Rapids MI
    edited February 2006
    Well here goes my impression of the Intel Pentium D chips.

    For starters as far as building systems goes I have done my fair share of both AMD and Intel.

    In my case money was not a speed bump for me so I was able to get what I wanted regardless of price.

    Went with the Intel D955Xbk boards, man this board comes with everything, 2 RAID controllers capable of RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 One Intel one SIS.

    All the SATA cables you can use WITH the little clickys on them which are worth everything when you have big fat fingers like I do.

    Only 1 Standard IDE connector but plenty for the 2 optical drives.

    The Pentium D 830s came with a decent heatsink fan combo but the click in installation method made me feel that I had to really put some M.A.N into it and I am not that happy pressing on a mobo that way.

    I built 2 of these and per Leonardo's recommendation checked with Intels site on their temp guides. In the smaller Antec case I installed a couple additional front panel intake fans to keep the case temp down. Using Intels system monitor this system under load was in no danger of having problems. hovering at 56c.

    the 2nd system I put in a bigger Antec case with a bottom mount PS and 3 bigger fans, one of which is a top exhaust, this case kept things much cooler and I never exceeded 51c under load.

    Both systems did a RAID 5 with 3, 300 GB drives. and Dual channel memory 2GB. Went with a 7800 GT OC from BFG as the video as they are both just power workstations and will do little to no gaming.

    I only ran a couple quick benchmarks in Aquamark 3d and not surprisingly these systems barely outperformed my 3800 X2 and as far as general speedy "feel" to them they are nice. Both the users in my office who got these were using powerful 2 or 3 year old Dell Xeon workstations with 2GB of RAM. And they are both running 10 plus apps at a time. Overall the experience was good in building these and I liked the ease of the Intel mobo CPU combo.

    I might need to grab another round of parts and try some aftermarket cooling and see if I can keep the system temps even lower.
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