CPU difference: P4 3.2 GHz vs Xeon 2.0 GHz

[HomeSA]

I scored a beat up Compaq W6000 PC for free. It has:
One HDD (36 GB, SCSI)
RAM (1.3 GB)
nvidia Geoforce3 Ti 500 64 MB AGP 4X graphics card
No optical drive
Loud PSU (430W)
mangeled case.


I have hammered the case in shape (sorta). According to specs, it has Xeon 2.0 GHz CPU. I have no idea how fast that CPU is. My main question is how does that compare to my P4, socket 478, 3.2 GHz desktop?

Is this thing fast enough for basic school work, and some multimedia stuff? Can I add an old IDE HDD to it? I'd like to buy an optical drive, and XP Pro for it. Is it worth it?

[sassie05]

Most of those EVO workstations came with XP Pro or Win2000.

The SCSI drive is most likely rated @ 10,000 RPM. I would use the SCSI controller to beef up your storage.

I believe there is a UATA/100 controller on board, so, yes you could add an HDD to that.

The RAM is RDRAM.

Sorry can't answer the other questions and I may be corrected on the info I supplied.

Good score.

[jlreich]

It's worth putting in an optical drive and some extra storage if you like. It would be a decent second system to use for school work and multimedia. But I wouldn't invest a ton of cash into it.

I would install the OS and commonly used programs on the SCSI drive. Use an ATA drive for storage. Make sure you have the SCSI drivers on a floppy and press F6 when you go to install the OS.

If it is using RDRAM that shoots down the possibility of adding a second Xeon because you would also need to add more ram for the second CPU.

[rond36]

A 2.0GHz Xeon = a 2.0GHz P4

Desktop processors and Xeon processors have the same core and are equal in performance if comparing single processor systems.

The advantage to having a Xeon is you can install 2 of them if your board has duel-sockets, if you only have 1 installed it isn't any faster then a desktop processor of the same speed. In some cases a single Xeon will be slower because overclocking options are not available in BIOS on most Xeon motherboards.