CFD Online Logo CFD Online URL
www.cfd-online.com
[Sponsors]
Home > Forums > General Forums > Hardware

Intel Sandy Bridge vs Westmere vs Nehalem

Register Blogs Members List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Old   February 20, 2011, 08:49
Default Intel Sandy Bridge vs Westmere vs Nehalem
  #1
New Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 14
Rep Power: 17
jakaranda is on a distinguished road
Hello,

I am looking to buy a high end laptop to do my meshing and pre/post processing on the go.
I am wondering which Intel architecture would give me the best performance.

It is not clear ot me which of the 3 intel chips (Sandy Bridge/Nehalem/Westmere gives the best performance for a laptop. I know that the Westmere is better then the Nehalem for CFD desktops applications (higher memory bandwidth and more cores for same price). But what about for laptops and what about hte sandy bridge chip?

Does anybody have any recommendations for laptops/manufacturers giving what they feel is currently the best high end bang for the buck?

Thank you
jakaranda is offline   Reply With Quote

Old   February 22, 2011, 15:49
Default
  #2
Senior Member
 
sail's Avatar
 
Vieri Abolaffio
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Always on the move.
Posts: 308
Rep Power: 16
sail is on a distinguished road
afaik, while cfd calculations can be efficently parallelyzed, meshing and postprocessing is usually done serially (at least for commercial programs) so you should not have a huge advantage in having lot of cores. i would instead give my preference to speed, cache, and architecture (plus, obviously tons of ram).

given this,by hearth i would go with sandybridge (higher clock speed, bus and newer architecture), but not enought data have been available, especially on mobile versions, about the single thread performance, probably because of the sata controller bug of the build 2.

as for a specific manufacturer I would reccomand dell. i have a precision m6500 and it is a joy to use. if you can wait a couple of months there should be the sandybridge version coming out soon...
sail is offline   Reply With Quote

Old   May 1, 2011, 11:45
Default
  #3
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Germany
Posts: 636
Rep Power: 21
abdul099 is on a distinguished road
Nehalem and Westermere are pretty much the same but the production process and memory controller. Therefore I would use no Westermere, because the memory controller is no longer included to the cpu die, but only connected with a qpi. This results in bad latency when accessing the memory.
Sandy-Bridge should benefit most when the cpu has a lot of cores due to the difference in communication.

Opposed to sail, I think, more cores could help a lot. When meshing (a seriell process) takes long, it will be a big mesh and therefore the solver will need a lot of computing time as well and can benefit from more cores.
abdul099 is offline   Reply With Quote

Reply

Tags
intel nehalem westmere

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
CFX11 + Fortran compiler ? Mohan CFX 20 March 30, 2011 19:56
OPTERON SHANGHAI / ESTAMBUL versus INTEL NEHALEM pbohorquez OpenFOAM Running, Solving & CFD 3 October 30, 2009 16:42
Intel Nehalem (i7core) benchmarks? andy2O Hardware 23 May 3, 2009 18:53
Suitable Intel Fortran under OpenSuse 10.3 Christoph Meyer Siemens 12 December 3, 2007 01:54


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 05:40.