Dual Xeon E5345 or single E5540 Quad-Core?

[fastman]

Besides gaming, one of my other hobbies is computer graphics (Maya, ZBrush etc) and I've always wanted a dedicated system for it, so I'm looking at some used components to build a nice system.

Which would be a better system in your all's opinion?

Dual Xeon E5345 (2.33 Ghz Quad Core) Socket 771 (4 core / 4 thread per processor)
32GB Fully Buffered DDR2
Dell Perc 5i SAS/SATA card with SAS to SATA breakout cable
4x 3.5" Hard Disk Tray
4x 500GB Western Digital Blue SATA 3.0 HDD
Gigabit Ethernet
USB 2.0
750w PSU

http://www.dell.com/us/dfb/p/precision-690/pd

Or

Dell Precision T5500
1x E5540 Quad-Core 2.53 Ghz / 2.8 Ghz Turbo (4 Core HT / 8 Thread)
24GB ECC UDIMM
1x 1TB Seagate HDD
Gigabit Ethernet
USB 2.0
eSATA

A good numbers comparison of the CPU's is here: http://.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5540-vs-Intel-Xeon-E5345

I'm re-learning about hyper threading and such and I know not all programs benefit from it.
I leaning towards the T5500 as it runs faster and the numbers seem to support that all around and I guessing it will run cooler and be a bit more quiet!

Thanks for looking.

 

[/dev/null]

53xx/54xx are core based

55xx is nehalem based. You REALLY want the nehalem over core, even just for the cheaper memory if not speed.

You should be able to find dual xeon (nehalem basd) for the same price and it'll be a lot faster.

If you are near microcenter, why not grab an E3-1230v2 for $199 and a single socket xeon board & some ecc dimms? Do you really need more than 8 threads?

If so, check out the dual x55xx systems on Ebay.

 

[iamwhoiamtoday]

I own both a dual L5420 setup, and multiple dual L5520 setups. You really want the 55xx series, if for no other reason that DDR3 is that much cheaper then those damn DDR2 FB-DIMMS. (Plus, 4GB+ sticks vs 2GB sticks.)

If you can manage to, I'd lean towards the L series. They use a lot less power, produce less heat, and work fantastically