[-Adrian]

What's your budget? If you need a really strong workstation i'd go with two Woodcrest Xeons (5xxx).

[Mihai]

Take a look at this post first:

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... hp?t=17645

The Core 2 Duo 6600 looks like the best buy, plus you can also overclock it. Best buy for now, but I'm not sure when/where they are available...

EDIT: here (but not quite available yet)

http://www.monsieurprix.com/listing/gen/J000166029.html

[noseman]

Buy a mac! You'll get the best of both worlds!

[-Adrian]

You would probably have to safe too much on other important components to stay under 3 grand with a dual xeon setup. So Mihai's suggestion is indeed the best choice in that case.

The Core 2 Duo E6600 is somewhere between 300 and 360€ and scales very well, essentially the best consumer chip you can drop into a socket at the moment. I would get one myself if i had the money to burn.

If you build yourself, make sure to invest in a quality powersupply, i can't say it often enough

[ivox3]

Ubiq, E6600, ..get it or dig deep and just be done with it and get the x8600.



No Xeons in here though .....

http://www.behardware.com/articles/623- ... -test.html

[adamwade]

Hey, all this is great and I wonder if there is a quad system with the Core 2 E6600?

, but what about this:

Single Intel Core 2 Extreme (=2 cores)

or

2 Dual Core Intel Xeon 5150 2.66Ghz (=4 cores)

These two configurations are about the same price. These seem to be my two choices. Is the Core 2 Extreme so fast that it could equal 2 Xeon 5150s. Any opinions?

[ivox3]

I don't even think there's a dual board out for any of the new ones.

....and I'd put my money on the single over the dual X's.

[adamwade]

Hmmm,

I checked the Dell website and the single chip Core 2 Extreme would save me about $500 to $700 over the Dual chip (4 core) Xeon 5150.

Intel's site has some comparisons, but they use pixels per second for the Core 2 Extreme

http://www.intel.com/performance/deskto ... dering.htm

and some totally different figure for the Xeons.

http://www.intel.com/performance/workst ... on/dcc.htm

This doesn't help much.