Quad P3 700MHz or Dual Xeon 1.6GHz LV cruncher?

[Got Chow]

So I have a dilemma. I am about to pick up one of these items.... Either a dual Xeon 1.6GHz LV cruncher, don't know stepping, but it is on the Asus PC-DL motherboard... OR, I could pick up a quad Pentium 3 700MHz server. Both will have ~2GB of RAM, and should be able to do 4 WUs simultaneously. I don't know if the Xeon should do 2 WUs instead of 4 though because it's just hyperthreading, but that's besides the point...

Pricing is similar, about $300 for either setup. Which one would you guys get? Which one would crunch more WUs? I've heard those P3s are legendary crunchers, but better than some OC'd dual Xeons??

So, what to buy....?
TIA.

[rob725]

I would get xeon because 3.2 vs 2.8 and since scaling isn't 100% linear, 2x at twice the speed s/b a little better than 4x.

[[XC] DragonOrta]

I'd go with the Xeons, simply because that ASUS board is pretty good at overclocking.

[Movieman]

I'd grab the dual 1.6...if they are the good 1.6 LV's they will do 3100 or maybe a bit better..
that's 2 cores at 3000+ versus 4 at 700..
Plus buss speed is at least 4 times as fast and so is the memory..
get the DX1600...you'll be happier

[feedmemonster]

The stepping you want to get is sl6xk for the 1.6GHz chips and sl6xl (I think?) for the 2.0GHz chips.
Also, everything you need to know about 1.6GHz LV Xeons and the Asus PC-DL can be found in this thread (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=50314).
Go for it - DX rigs are fun:D

EDIT: Datamine.tk (http://www.datamine.tk) is also a great resource for Asus Dual Xeon Rigs.

[lv_dicedealer]

Shoot me a PM if you are in need of some 1.6G LV D1 chips. I have 4 total chips.

[Got Chow]

Well, looks like I'm going to pick up the dual Xeon then. I talked with the guy today and asked him about the board revision and CPU stepping. Right then he knew exactly what I was doing, and told me that he had the board up to 2.4GHz right now on the IWT air cooling and the pin-mod. He's using it for folding right now so we're basically in the same boat. ;)

lv_dicedealer, I'll let you know if I need some CPUs. Let me find out what stepping the CPUs that are already in there are. Or, if this crunches real well, then I might have to pick up another setup. :D

[[XC] flat-four]

You'll have fun with that board. I inherited a pc-dl, and got some 1.6lv d1's from Victor a while back. Most OCing fun I've had in a while. Got mine running with the 1.5v pin mod @3.1ghz

[Got Chow]

w00t! Got it running last night... C1 stepping though... :( Still, 200x14 isn't too shabby. What's worse though is one of the sticks from my Crucial Ballistix 2GB kit is bad. Gotta RMA...

[brot]

...and since scaling isn't 100% linear, 2x at twice the speed s/b a little better than 4x.

It is when you are running 4 threads that will eat up 100% cpu each. Well, at last in linux it scales linear ;)

Anyways, go for the xeon setup...

[Got Chow]

100% CPU loaded... but it looks like it's returning errors right now. And I can't get home in the middle of the day to turn the rig off! Should have ran Prime95 for a while longer.... That, or the rig is restarting and aborting WUs and throwing those as errors...

[[XC] Teroedni]

The xeon cruncher if you can overclock them:D