Genome, now you're really pusing it :eek: I don't really know what the speed difference is as I have never seen an article comparing the one processor Xeon w a P4. What is evident is that it has hyperthreading. However, you run at a slower 400Mhz FSBus. I believe the significance of the Xeon is that you are able to run multiples of them on a motherboard (between 1-4). I know there are multi chip P3's around, I'm not sure about the desktop P4s. In any case, it's useless to use multi chip anything unless your program supports it, and I don't know of any trading program that does. And MS Office surely doesn't.
I searched on the net and couldn't find anything that shows relative performance either. I only asked because of the big cost difference and that Dell is now offering "business" class machines with Xeons... was just wondering. Tks.
You can't go wrong with the XP! Real nice chips! I have the XP1800 and its a great chip. You can get the XP1600 for $54 at Newegg. I will be building a system with the 1600 in a couple of weeks. I have 2 Athlons now, a 500mhz and the XP1800, both are extremely fast and rock solid stable which is important for trading. If you are building the sys go with MSI board and Win 2000.
I have been building systems for some time for traders a nd I agree with most of these post either brand CPU is fine an Intel 1.8 Ghz or equiv. AMD check the CPU specs to get a CPU with 512K L2-cache (really improves performance) the newer Intel CPUs 2.26 Ghz and above have a faster bus speed of 533 Mhz vs 400 Mhz providing faster data throughput but the most important performance enhancement is probably lots of RAM we recommend 1GB of RAM for Win 2000/XP machines and no more that 768 MB for Win 98. You might also read the hardware guide at the hardware tab above. Remember on all Windows systems you must be vigilant at keeping the amount of background services that are running to a minimum if you have more than five or six background applications running you may applications running that are resource hogs and you don't know it. You can usually right click on the little icons at the bottom right and temporarily disable them. I hope this helps .
Since we are on athlons here. I've been using 1900 for a while and the temperature somewhat worries me. It's almost always in the high 50's to 60 range (MSI mobo). Is this normal? PS. I do not overclock.
For an Athlon XP, idle temp. range is 30 - 45 C. Normal operating temp. under load is 45 - 60 C., and up to 70 C. for real heavy load. Caution temp. is 80 - 85 C. Max. high-end temp. is 90 C. Damage occurs at 95 C. For the XP1800's I have here (with good cooling), heavy load temps run in the high 40's. I have temp alarms set at 50 C, and I've never had an alarm. If you want to run cooler, consider upgrading your headsink and fan. Also, use good thermal paste between the CPU core and the heatsink. Heatsink/Fan (MCX370 w/ 33CFM Papst fan is good): http://www.swiftnets.com/ Thermal Paste (Arctic Silver 3): http://www.arcticsilver.com Buy it here: http://www.newegg.com
Thanks for the advice. The CPU's (have 2 of them) are on original heat sink and temperature touches low 60's on hot days and set off the alarm (very annoying). I will probably replace the thermal paste, if not the whole heat sinks.
My temps never go over 117 degrees with the 1800 which is overclocked to 2000+ specs or about 1616mhz. I am running the Coolermaster heatsink 5400 rpm fan and have good case cooling, 2 exhaust fans. You may need the better heatsink and ventilation. I am not using arctic silver just the thermal interface material used on the heatsink. Right now my temps are 105 degrees @ 80 degrees room temps.