I have seen alot of comparisons between INTEL Pentium 4's Versus AMD 64's for Crunching SETI. What is the exact difference between an INTEL Pentium 4 and an INTEL XEON? Lets say a 3.6GHZ Pentium 4 with Hyper Treading Versus a 3.6GHZ XEON with Hyper Threading. I know the INTEL Celerons are kind of Retarded Pentiums and for the same Clock Speed are alot slower. How do the Pentiums and XEON's stack up per same clock speed?

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The internals of the two are mostly identical. Main differences are cache sizes, FSB and socket.

The core of the basic XEON is featurewise identical to the PIV. Other models have L3 cache in different sizes slapped on to them (like the PIV EE). This should maken BOINC a lot faster.

PIV is always leading in FSB speed (one speed grade further).

In the end, I don't think a XEON is worth the money. Neither is a PIV. Cheap Athlon 64's are faster.

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How do the Pentiums and XEON's stack up per same clock speed?

I don't have a perfect comparison for you in that the P4 I have are 3.2 GHz and the Xeon is 3.4 GHz. But, the Xeon with that small increase in clock gets SETI@Home done with 20 minutes less.

Secondly, the dual Xeon lets me run 4 projects in the same box footprint as one P4 does with two. So, for the shell of one box I have slightly better speeds and more work in progress.

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How do the Pentiums and XEON's stack up per same clock speed?

I don't have a perfect comparison for you in that the P4 I have are 3.2 GHz and the Xeon is 3.4 GHz. But, the Xeon with that small increase in clock gets SETI@Home done with 20 minutes less.

Secondly, the dual Xeon lets me run 4 projects in the same box footprint as one P4 does with two. So, for the shell of one box I have slightly better speeds and more work in progress.

Paul, just add another "guest bedroom" LOL must be nice, being able to say "but honey, I need the zeons, or I'll have to add on to the house". lOL

Paul, just add another "guest bedroom" LOL must be nice, being able to say "but honey, I need the zeons, or I'll have to add on to the house". lOL

Well, I had 4 computers in the guest room and she made me get rid of them. That is why I am donw to only 7 computers now.

Though I still have plans to buy another Apple this year. Looks like it will only be a dual 2.7 GHz G5 as they have not announced anything faster yet. But that should get me a few more numbers per day ...

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Thank You for the Info. I guess the Pentium 4 and XEON are Very Similiar. I hear Intel has an even Newer one called the Itanium but I have not found any Computers on the Market that use it. The Itanium I hear is Faster per given Clock Speed than either the Pentium 4 or the XEON. Wonder if it will ever be made available to the Public?

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Itanium is *NOT* compatible with PIV/XEON on the hardware level. It will not run your everyday programs without emulation.

Yes, it's faster when used with native software, but it comes at a price.

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The next fun Intel CPU due out this year is the Pentium D on the 955x chipset basicly it is 2 cores with HT per core. So in essence you have 4 projects per CPU and 8 on a Dual CPU motherboard. From the pricing structure it looks like the Pentium D 830 (3.0ghz) is going to be the most cost effective in comparison to price and speed.

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The AMD X2's are going to be a great upgrade for those with an existing 64bit socket 939 motherboard CPU but for building a new unit i think the Pentium D's are going to be where it comes down to bang for the buck :).

/just my 2 cents :)

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Thank You for the Info. I guess the Pentium 4 and XEON are Very Similiar. I hear Intel has an even Newer one called the Itanium but I have not found any Computers on the Market that use it. The Itanium I hear is Faster per given Clock Speed than either the Pentium 4 or the XEON. Wonder if it will ever be made available to the Public?

The Itanium is a "fresh-start" design that Intel hoped would allow us to get rid of the "shackles" that bind us with the x86 architecture. Though Intel and AMD are continuing to "push" the x86 with extensions, at some point we are going to have to make a break with the past.

The problem with the Itanium is that it does invalidate all that runs on the x86 architecture. Though I have to point out that we use the x86 Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) but no processor actually executes those instructions internally ... the internal execution engines are all some type of RISC machine that simulates the execution of the instructions.

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