Which of these CPUs is most productive?

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by Rodrigo

He said that he's trying to back up a hard drive with an old copy of XP, which I'm guessing is how he would like to get that operating system. XP isn't the OS I'm most familiar with, but I have reinstalled Windows 98 fresh onto new hard disks. Win98 has a .CAB file folder with all the installation files: It sounds like that i386 folder with the winnt32.exe file might be the analogous resource for an XP installation, in which case he may be able to copy that and use it.

But of course I could be wrong. (Correct me, please!) Anyway, my idea was that if the situation is that Christenson has XP on a failing hard drive, then he might be able to salvage that installation folder and do a fresh installation off it. Once again, though, we could use more details.

Say, I think you're on to something. I was at first thinking that you'd need an existing Windows installation (of some kind, any version should do) from which to launch the winnt32.exe program. That's how I did it on the Win98 laptop I mentioned before to install 2000. However, I recalled this snippet from the first link you posted:

To find out if the CD-ROM image is on your machine, search for a folder named I386. There may be several but the one we care about will contain close to 7,000 files, two of which will be winnt.exe and winnt32.exe. The I386 directory is typically one of the top-level directories on the distribution CD-ROM but most importantly it is the directory that contains the distributed copy of Windows XP. Winnt.exe and winnt32.exe are the DOS and protected mode setup programs, respectively. (You'd only need those if you were planning to re-install Windows XP from scratch - I use them here as an easy way to identify that we have the right directory.)

He mentions that winnt.exe is the DOS mode setup program for Windows XP. After burning the contents of the i386 directory to a (non-bootable) CD, one could theoretically boot the new computer from a DOS floppy, pop in the CD, and run winnt.exe from the command line. The trick is to get a DOS floppy with CD drive support included; IIRC images for such are available all over the web, so it shouldn't be too hard to obtain. And, of course, the new computer has to have a floppy drive, though it's probably not too hard to find one of those laying around (at least not in my house, at any rate ).

The process would be undoubtedly a little abstruse (between the boot floppy acrobatics and the text-mode XP installer) to someone who hasn't done a Windows install before, but it is theoretically quite doable.

[lavalamp]

If you want to put XP on a new computer, make sure that is it the 64 bit version, otherwise you'll be throwing away performance.

You may also find it pretty hard to buy a computer pre-assembled with no operating system on it, and in any case it would be cheaper to buy the parts and assemble it yourself, then install whatever you want on it.

Assembly isn't as hard as you think!

[Christenson]

Gentlemen:
You speculate too much, just ask!!! I got distracted last night...the situation is that I have an old computer that works, runs WinXP, but has a bad case of molasses (slow) with Prime95. I want to ensure it keeps working, and so want to take the OS and all and image the existing, working hard drive onto a new hard drive that I already have. At that point, I should have two hard drives that can boot the machine, and can afford to do things like repartition the old one. The personal data on these machines is small enough it can be backed up separately. As the operation stands right now, all user files are on a USB external disk with no hope of booting and there's a new EIDE disk with the image that won't quite boot -- I think what I need to do is boot Linux, freedos, or something and do the copy without Windoesn't in the way -- basically, cp /dev/hda1 /dev/hda2 with appropriate switches, which will grab the boot sector(s) as well as the file system.

It's a separate problem from the new machine, except as spending on it impacts the budget. I'll certainly break down and purchase Win7 at $100 for the new machine; there's a few calendar weeks of fooling around it's going to cost me with getting it running any other way and it's not worth it.

I'm about ready to follow Lava Lamp's suggestion and get the PhenomII x6 CPU, except that my chosen KVM switch has a single USB output for keyboard and mouse (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817403056), wondering if USB KB and mouse will complicate that first bootup compared to PS/2.

With the sort of help you guys have given me, $50 one way or the other isn't going to matter -- the question is now, do I get just the Phenom II x6 system, or do I put out and also get the Intel system lava lamp suggests and do the head-to-head comparison over the next few months on Primenet before I have to pay for AC and maybe get the air conditioner to remove the heat? (Right now, the waste heat from the computer replaces electric baseboard heat, so the electricity part is quite cheap at the moment)

[henryzz]

Having read the thread I would recommend the intel. The amd might be a tad faster now but once AVX is up and running the intel should beat the amd hands down.

Another thing to throw into the mix. All of the new sandy bridges can have thier multiplier increased by 4 above the max turbo setting on a P67 motherboard. A high percentage of desktop systems should be completly stable with that sort of limited overclock. It also should take the intel above the amd x6(plus 4 cores is easier to manage than 6).

[lavalamp]

Originally Posted by Christenson

I'm about ready to follow Lava Lamp's suggestion and get the PhenomII x6 CPU

I priced up an AMD system for comparison since mdettweiler said you could get, "two or maybe even three machines for the price of one Intel". I hope I have sufficiently shown that that is not the case. My suggestion is still to buy the Sandy Bridge system.

The Phenom II has the same amount of L3 cache as the Sandy Bridge chips, but it has to divide it up between 6 cores instead of 4 when it's fully loaded, this will have a performance hit associated with it. Additionally, Sandy Bridge performs 25% better than the i7 clock-for-clock, without any code being optimised for it, and a single i7 core was already better than a single Phenom II core (again, clock-for-clock).

So despite the two extra cores of the Phenom II, as I said, I don't think there's much in it. Of course, you will have the option of overclocking the AMD system, but if you don't plan to you can avoid buying the $29.99 CPU cooler.

Also, be aware that some time this year AMD plan on releasing new chips based on the Bulldozer core. If you're going to buy an AMD system, it might be better to wait and see what the price/performance of the new chips is like. At the very least it means the current CPUs will drop in price. Since they are non-specific about the month, or even the quarter, they will be released in, it's probably towards the end of the year and may slide into 2012.

Originally Posted by Christenson

my chosen KVM switch has a single USB output for keyboard and mouse (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817403056), wondering if USB KB and mouse will complicate that first bootup compared to PS/2.

That shouldn't be a problem, however there are cheaper 4 port PS/2 KVMs available.

Originally Posted by Christenson

the question is now, do I get just the Phenom II x6 system, or do I put out and also get the Intel system lava lamp suggests and do the head-to-head comparison over the next few months

Heh, I was only joking when I said get one of each. However, if you do actually want two machines, getting both wouldn't necessarily be complete madness. Depending on the type of crunching work you intend to do on them, you may find that some is more efficient on the AMD system, and some is more efficient on the Intel system. It would also make for an interesting comparison between the two systems if you were to post your findings.

If you do intend to buy the USB KVM, and the non-overclockable Intel system, then I recommend switching motherboards to this:
ASRock H67M LGA 1155 Intel H67 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

It's $6 cheaper, and $4.57 less for delivery, you lose a PS/2 mouse port, but gain two USB3 ports, you lose one of the PCIe x16 slots, but gain a ye olde PCI slot (which are still useful for certain things).

Before you buy the components though, make sure you understand their strengths and weaknesses, and consider any future upgrades you may wish to make, or roles you want them to fill.

For instance, with both systems you only get two RAM slots which will both be filled, that means upgrading the RAM capacity requires replacing the current RAM rather than adding to it. On the other hand, I put 8 GB of RAM on the spec, which is a lot. If you don't use much RAM you can knock that down and save some more money.

If in future you wanted a media centre PC, an Intel system with the above ASRock motherboard would be ideal, it has HDMI output and two additional digital audio outputs. Incidentally, there's no reason it couldn't be both a media centre and a compute box, I have one that performs these dual roles very well. Windows Media Centre is built into Windows 7, buy a TV card and maybe a bigger hard drive and you'll be all set to watch and record TV on your computer. Add a blu-ray drive and you can watch HD films from it too.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by lavalamp

I priced up an AMD system for comparison since mdettweiler said you could get, "two or maybe even three machines for the price of one Intel". I hope I have sufficiently shown that that is not the case. My suggestion is still to buy the Sandy Bridge system.

Quick clarification: that remark was intending to compare the Phenom II X6 to the 6-core i7's. Compared to a four-core Sandy Bridge, indeed, the price difference is much smaller.

[lavalamp]

Ah, well in that case then, you are talking about $1300 for a system, so that's accurate.

[Flatlander]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

...(Note that OEM, i.e. manufacturer-preinstalled, Windows licenses cannot be transferred from the computer they came with, so a reinstall CD for another prebuilt computer will probably not be any good.)

I had a computer out of action for some months and ended up building a new one. To my surprise, Windows XP accepted the (totally different) hardware without fuss when I registered. This was an OEM copy. Maybe after a while of no internet access everything is reset?

[axn]

Originally Posted by Flatlander

I had a computer out of action for some months and ended up building a new one. To my surprise, Windows XP accepted the (totally different) hardware without fuss when I registered. This was an OEM copy. Maybe after a while of no internet access everything is reset?

AFAIK
XP is not anal about changes in h/w. It started with Vista and continues on to Win 7. But all of them are anal about "Genuine Windows Advantage" license thing.
/AFAIK

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by Flatlander

I had a computer out of action for some months and ended up building a new one. To my surprise, Windows XP accepted the (totally different) hardware without fuss when I registered. This was an OEM copy. Maybe after a while of no internet access everything is reset?

As axn said--an OEM XP license is "technically" not supposed to be transferrable, but it does it happily enough anyway if you try. You should be legally OK with that too, since Microsoft somewhat fell through on communicating this consistently. For Vista and 7, though, transferral provisions are enforced much more strictly and you can only transfer a retail license.

[Christenson]

Stupid board ate my post!!!

When I looked at what I could get for around $600, I am not joking about two systems, just not both in the same week. The Phenom II x6 has a decent chance of beating the four-core Sandy bridge, especially if it is doing a little more than GIMPs, such as RAM-intensive NFS sieving or a desktop on one of the cores, which aren't cache-bound in the same way. It should run rings around everything I currently own in any case.

Stupid noob question: Is a DVD reader on the far side of the USB port going to be enough to load Windows, or do I need to get a DVD drive on the PATA or SATA socket on these motherboards? Do they do USB flash drive boots?

Time to get a flat panel monitor, which I need anyway.