MP 7,1 28-Core vs. 24-Core 7,1

[Aboo]

Ok, hear me out - I have an opportunity to get a 28-Core MP for about $500 more than my current 24-Core. I'm still able to return my 24-Core machine for a full refund. Is it worth going for?

I am using this mainly as a research machine and it will be used for some statistical modeling and algorithm development with supervised machine learning. I know the statistical software suite I will use will likely max out at 8 cores, unless I switch to using one of the Windows based software suites (which may be happenign anyway).

The reason I specifically ask is that the CPU is not considered user upgradeable and for an additional $500 I may as well just max out the CPU. Especially since I want to keep this machine for at least another 6-8 years. My only qualm is that going from 24- to 28-Core is the drop in clock speed which for single core applications may produce some minimal decrease in performance. In fact, according to the Geekbench benchmarks, the 24-Core machine actually outperforms the 28-core in single core benchmarks. While this is not necessarily an accurate representation of real day-to-day usage, its still something to consider I guess.

I feel like I have benefited immensely from the collective knowledge base of this forums and so I really appreciate any insight that you guys and gals can offer on this.

 

[SayCheese]

Personally for $500 I'd go for the upgrade. But then I always want the very best I can afford.

 

[chengengaun]

The differences in recommended customer price between the two CPUs (W-3265 vs. W3275) is US$1,100 (US$3,349 vs US$4,449). If you purely consider from a cost perspective the swap proposition is very attractive. The differences in turbo clock speed between the two models is about 200MHz which is probably not very significant considering if you have use cases justifying a 20+ core processor?

Personally I have access to a workstation (not Mac Pro) with an Xeon 8160 24-core processor. It's rated at 2.1GHz base clock speed but can run at 2.6-2.8 GHz when all cores are utilised under sustained loads. So in my use case the rated clock speed seems very conservative.

 

[Aboo]

Thanks for the advice. I have been thinking along the same lines as what both of you have said. I guess I will just go ahead and pick up the 28 Core version.

 

[SayCheese]

Thanks for the advice. I have been thinking along the same lines as what both of you have said. I guess I will just go ahead and pick up the 28 Core version.

Enjoy.