[Beowulf] Better C2D or Quadcore

[amjad ali]

Hello,
I planned to buy 9 PCs each having one Core2Duo E6600 (networked with GiGE)
to make cluster for running PETSc based applications.

I got an advice that because the prices of Xeon Quadcore is going to drop
next month, so I should buy 9 PCs each having one Quadcore Xeon (networked
with GiGE) to make cluster for running PETSc based applications.

Which is better for me to get better performance/speedup?

My question is due to following as given in PETSc-FAQ:


*What kind of parallel computers or clusters are needed to use PETSc?*

PETSc can be used with any kind of parallel system that supports MPI. BUT for
any decent performance one needs

   - a fast, low-latency interconnect; any ethernet, even 10 gigE simply
   cannot provide the needed performance.
   - high per-CPU memory performance. Each CPU (core in dual core
   systems) needs to have its own memory bandwith of roughly 2 or more
   gigabytes. For example, standard dual processor "PC's" will
notprovide better performance when the second processor is used, that
is, you
   will not see speed-up when you using the second processor. This is because
   the speed of sparse matrix computations is almost totally determined by the
   speed of the memory, not the speed of the CPU.


regards,
Amjad Ali.
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