Core i7-3930K vs Xeon E5-2630 For Long-duration Financial Calculations

dima777 · Nov 29, 2012

Quote from WinstonTJ:

I should probably send you this via PM vs. here but:

There is no difference between the two. Either you get it and can build a compuer/server or you can't.

Just get a decent desktop machine and let it run - don't even get ECC ram since it'll be just running on bare metal - just go as cheap as you can and let it ride. Once you have income and cash it'll be a totally different story. You'll be able to afford/lease hardware or virtual machines that will give you the uptime you need. In the meantime if your site is down for 3-5 minutes it may look like a refresh issue.

Just get 2 cheap desktops and hope you don't have major outage issues.

thank you for this reply....yes later on - provided I have enough subscribers I can think about building a more reliable server grade setup (that will be looked after by a hardware professional)..for now I might just stick iwth i7 3990k lots of non ecc ram ...btw do you think modern ram is very reliable - I mean does it ran as smoothly or closely to ecc memory? thanks!

can you also clarify what you mean by - don't even get ECC ram since it'll be just running on bare metal -

J.P. · Nov 30, 2012

I have a similar question. Why wouldn't you get ECC RAM (outside of the small speed hit)? Hypothetically, if both price and speed were equal wouldn't everyone choose ECC?

dima777 · Dec 5, 2012

yes thanks...I have been thinking of that...)

I wonder if any one with i7 3930K or XEON E3 127V2 can comment on the multi-threading boost to EXCEL 2010 or EXCEL 2007 performance???? I need this to make the final decision between these two setups...do you think the multi-threaded EXCEL 2010 in the case of i7 3930K or XEON E3 127V2 can be significantly faster than the single threaded EXCEL 2003?
thanks a lot!)

dima777 · Dec 6, 2012

I have done some investigation and found this twin-brother of i7 3930k - INTEL Xeon E5-1650 (similar price as well)â¦.it runs at the same frequency and support all kinds of features as well as the ECC memoryâ¦I wonder if anyone here can comment on how this CPU works in practice? I have seen comments that this CPU is out of stock everywhereâ¦..do you think it can be hard to find??? Thanks!)

vicirek · Dec 6, 2012

Quote from dima777:

I wonder if any one with i7 3930K or XEON E3 127V2 can comment on the multi-threading boost to EXCEL 2010 or EXCEL 2007 performance

I was visiting this discussion from time to time and I realized that you might not really know what you are trying to accomplish and this is in some dream phase.

200-300 Mb Excel worksheet is probably worth fraction of real data and the rest is just formatting. Excel will be inherently slower anyway because it is designed to cater to wide user base.

With multithreading you might gain speed but on some occasions it will slow your application because there is overhead associated with creating and scheduling additional threads.

I suspect that your "calculations" would run on bread and butter simple machine without a problem. If you had a problem then you would be able to provide some details of memory and processor utilizations from your experimental runs and then you would know where to take this project from there.

One way is to use different or more optimized software and the other way is to throw it on better machine. Using faster processor without software optimization will give you max of 10-20% increase in speed if any.

Multithreading is more tricky because it sometimes involves trial and error approach to arrive to the fastest code. Not all algorithms and data structures are suitable for multithreading and most of the generic software is unable to fully utilize multiple cores and threads. Same applies to Excel.

I think that the processor is the least important factor especially that you looking at very similar if not the same processor just branded for different users because one of my system properties program just recognized my i7 2600K as Xeon. So at the very core they might be the same with few changes and tweaks.

J.P. · Dec 7, 2012

Quote from dima777:

I have done some investigation and found this twin-brother of i7 3930k - INTEL Xeon E5-1650 (similar price as well)â¦.it runs at the same frequency and support all kinds of features as well as the ECC memoryâ¦I wonder if anyone here can comment on how this CPU works in practice? I have seen comments that this CPU is out of stock everywhereâ¦..do you think it can be hard to find??? Thanks!)

You made a good choice. I recently built a machine using the E5-1620 (rather than the 1650). I combined it with an Asus P9X79 WS motherboard and 64 GB of ECC using two 32 GB Kingston KVR16E11K4/32 kits. It all works flawlessly together.

You are correct, either may be little hard to find but you can get the 1620 from the same place I did: intellixpert.com.

dima777 · Dec 7, 2012

Quote from J.P.:

You made a good choice. I recently built a machine using the E5-1620 (rather than the 1650). I combined it with an Asus P9X79 WS motherboard and 64 GB of ECC using two 32 GB Kingston KVR16E11K4/32 kits. It all works flawlessly together.

You are correct, either may be little hard to find but you can get the 1620 from the same place I did: intellixpert.com.

thank you very much for your reply))
I think I have finally nailed a very attarctive offer that might well suit my needs perfectly....well nearly perfectly....
I have found a workstation by HP whichh features the much coveted Intel Xeon E5-1650 processor!!!!!!! and its price is within the constraints

that I have -

HP Workstation Z420 - Xeon E5-1650 3.2 GHz

take a look here - http://www.amazon.com/HP-Workstation-Z420-Xeon-E5-1650/dp/B007TMY6OS/ref=pd_sim_sbs_pc_6

I am slightly weary of building my own custom build so this one looks very attarctive....it features the e5-1650 as well as the 8 gbs of ram

and is all factory packed and of course ecc and everythign super fail prooof I guess...please let me know what you think!!!!!)

I have a couple of more questions...do you think it mitgh be possibel to add more 8GBs of Ram and a video card without voiding the warranty?
thanks!!
feel so close to the final step!)

dima777 · Dec 10, 2012

any happy owners of z420 here?

ofthomas · Jan 4, 2013

If you are doing number crunching in excel and then moving to matlab for charting, why not just move your code from excel to matlab, handle the whole thing in there and then just use GPGPUâs to get the job done? That would be my first question, specially if you are looking to do analysis for saleâ¦

Anyhow, like Clearinghouse stated â reliability is driven by component quality, not necessarily the CPUâ¦ yes, Xeonâs are âmadeâ for enterprises and you can use thoseâ¦ but it all depends on what you are using the CPU for in the end..

Someone suggested Virtual Machinesâ¦ stay away from that notion, you are adding an overhead layer that is not neededâ¦ and amazon EC2 will cost you a pretty penny monthlyâ¦ that is another nuts ideaâ¦

Breaking your workload will certainly help you, if you are still thinking CPU vs GPU, then just go with a dual prod machineâ¦ that will get you (depending on the CPU) at least 32 threads to handle the workloadâ¦

I just read about you using excel 2003 and excel 2010â¦ hmmmâ¦. You should move your VBA code to Excel 2013â¦ I mean, you will see performance improvements â¦ significantâ¦ I have âheatmapsâ on excel and get my data from CQG RTD that model the Dow and Nasdaq and moving off 2010 improved my overall resource consumptionâ¦ and if you are looking for stability, you definitely should be off 2003.

I think I can agree with everything that vicirek statedâ¦ you need to have a clear plan and idea of what you are doing and trying to accomplish, it doesnât sound like you do right now.. or when you started the threadâ¦

If you are truly going to travel overseas and need to bring things with you, just get a monster laptop like the Lenovo Thinkpad W530â¦ I donât know the SLA to posting your analysis on the websiteâ¦ but if you basically have close to 8 hours.. then I donât see any major obstacles to getting it doneâ¦

Funny, I just realized a lot of the advice that I am giving has already kind of been given, but you didnât necessarily listened to some of itâ¦ oh wellâ¦

Scataphagos · Jan 4, 2013

Quote from dima777:

"... I have a couple of more questions...do you think it mitgh be possibel to add more 8GBs of Ram and a video card without voiding the warranty?

Your mobo will spec its max RAM it can support. It MAY also spec a max wattage video card it will support. So long as you don't exceed that param, if any, no worries on the warranty.