Is an Intel i7 (4 cores, 8 HT-based logical cores) better than an Intel Core 2 Quad for VisualC++ development?

Question

I have to make a recommendation to management regarding whether or not we should spend the extra money to purchase new computers with Intel i7 CPUs (i7 950s) or whether we should buy Intel Core 2 Quad processors (Q9550s or something equivalent.)

Our main task are Microsoft Visual C++ development, thus we are aiming to ensure the best compile and link times for our money.

The i7 systems are $600 more each than the Intel Core 2 Quad systems. The GHz of the CPUs is basically equivalent.

Is that extra money justified in terms of additional compilation/link performance?

Answer 1

I'm going to go for the trite answer and just say "Yes!!!!!"

Pretty sure this is too late for the OP, but for anyone else reading this... don't think that that $600 will be wasted (and it should be getting smaller as time goes by as well), the core i7 will own the Core 2 Quad. I've had both and have seen my compile times drop from about 27 min to 11 min.

Core i7 all the way!

Answer 2

We tested i7 systems where I work, and had major stability problems on all of them.

Core 2 Quad will give you the biggest bang for the buck, but going with dual quad core Xeons will give you the biggest bang.

Any way you go, stick as much RAM in the machines as you can, and setup a fast RAID 1 array in the machine with high quality drives, both for a bit higher speed and data integrity. Normal drives are fine, SSD drives are still spotty in terms of performance; a lot of the good deals you see on SSDs are for drives that are slower than standard magnetic HDDs.

Answer 3

Compiles that would use all cores are probably disk bound anyway. Go for the Core 2 Quad and you'll be happy for years to come.

added from comments:

If you have $600 to spare, get a nice SSD for the code OR the libraries, you'll get a very decent compile time speed increase from that.

Answer 4

While my answer is definitely to late for you maybe someone else is reading it. If you develop multithreaded software then always go for the highest number of cores.

It's not really for your day to day work but the more cores the better you can test scalability and the more likely is it to run into race conditions and deadlocks on your developer machine.

I would better buy 2xi7 with 8+8 thread and 2GHz then a 3,2GHz quad core - both cost the same.