looking for advice on an older dual Xeon system

Captain Hilts

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Sep 5, 2002

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Toronto, ON

• Oct 11, 2005

• #1

Hi everyone,

I don't know a great deal about SMP nor do I have a particular use for it, but at the same time I wouldn't mind getting a cheap SMP system to play around with. I have come across someone who is selling an HP X4000 with dual 2GHz Xeons, two 18GB scsi drives and 256MB RDRAM for around US$315. Is this a good deal? I know that it's a bit weak on memory but I could add more. I can also get the system without the scsi drives and use a regular IDE drive instead to make it quite a bit cheaper.

 

ihrsetrdr

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May 17, 2005

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High Desert, Calif.

• Oct 11, 2005

• #2

There's a bunch of Dell 530 Precision workstations for sale on ebay. must have come "off lease" from some large company a few months ago. I bought one- has 2x 1.7ghz xenons, 2 18gb scsi hdd's 1024mb's of RAM, a legit copy of W2Kpro, etc. You got to look closely at these auctions...some of the sellers have removed like one processor, one hdd or half of the ram are are selling them seperately in other auctions.

 

OP

Captain Hilts

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Sep 5, 2002

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Toronto, ON

• Oct 11, 2005

• Thread Starter
• #3

thanks, I'll take a look at those as well.

Would the scsi hard drives make a big difference in performace vs. IDE for video editing and rendering kind of stuff? I'm thinking that this would be a decent machine for that.

 

ihrsetrdr

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May 17, 2005

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High Desert, Calif.

• Oct 11, 2005

• #4

Would the scsi hard drives make a big difference in performace vs. IDE for video editing and rendering kind of stuff?

Click to expand...

It may to a degree, but I think the amount of RAM you have would make a more noticable difference.

 

OP

Captain Hilts

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Sep 5, 2002

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Toronto, ON

• Oct 11, 2005

• Thread Starter
• #5

yeah I'll have to make it 512 at least. That's the main drawback with this system though, since it's RDRAM it's a bit harder to find and more expensive

 

Shelnutt2

Overclockers Team Content Editor

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Jun 17, 2005

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• Oct 12, 2005

• #6

Captin Hills. I'm guessing this is a 603 xeon setup? If it is I have a Supermicro P4DPE board. It requires ECC REG DDR. PM me if you are interested.

 

OP

Captain Hilts

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Toronto, ON

• Oct 12, 2005

• Thread Starter
• #7

yes it's 603. Thanks for the offer, but I was really just considering this because someone has this system setup and ready to go locally. I haven't actually thought about putting together an SMP system from scratch though.

 

A

AdvanS13

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Dec 10, 2002

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Hillsboro, OR

• Oct 12, 2005

• #8

only drawback is the rdram, stuff is spendy.

 

OP

Captain Hilts

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Sep 5, 2002

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Toronto, ON

• Oct 12, 2005

• Thread Starter
• #9

maybe I could add a few 64MB modules since this board has eight slots altogether, they're pretty cheap on ebay

 

icyicy

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Mar 13, 2005

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New York

• Oct 15, 2005

• #10

Why not use PC-DL and 1.6Ghz LV xeon? that'll cheap and better.

 

OP

Captain Hilts

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Toronto, ON

• Oct 15, 2005

• Thread Starter
• #11

yeah that certainly would be better, but it would still be more expensive and more of a hassle. Like I said, I don't really have any need for this, just thought that it might be something cool to play around with since someone local already had some pre-built systems ready to go.

 

M

mateo

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Dec 7, 2002

• Oct 25, 2005

• #12

What's the L2 cache listed as for the chips? If its 256k, which I suspect it is, they're Fosters, which are basically Willamettes with defective HT. The RDRAM also poses an obstacle, although I don't know the price these days. Still, $315 total is tempting...

What may be better is to find a system or parts with low-end Prestonias. A pair of 1.8/512k's should be cheap, and they can be modded for 2.4 at just stock voltage. If you don't need AGP, an e7500 (or e7501 if you want to mod) can be had cheap, and DDR is DDR. With some good shopping you could get a much better system for a decent amount.

 

OP

Captain Hilts

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Toronto, ON

• Oct 25, 2005

• Thread Starter
• #13

Actually I went ahead and picked up the system a few days ago. I just went with one SCSI drive instead of the two but I got the whole package for only CAD$290 (about US$240), which I think is pretty good for a system to play around with.

They're 512k Prestonias, HT is enabled. The machine has actually already come in handy because the mobo in our second box died so this gives us a nice backup machine while we wait for the RMA. Despite only having 256MB right now it seems to run pretty well and it beats my 2.4GHz Barton when it comes to encoding video files to Mpeg2. The case is pretty nice too.

 

M

mateo

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• Oct 25, 2005

• #14

Captain Hilts said:

They're 512k Prestonias, HT is enabled.

Click to expand...

That is one sweet deal I think you can get just the CPUs alone for that, let alone mobo and PSU etc...

 

OP

Captain Hilts

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Toronto, ON

• Oct 25, 2005

• Thread Starter
• #15

yep, that's what I figured. I know you don't have to spend a great deal more to get something better and with some overclocking options, but this'll do fine as a little server-type box.