Help me choose a mobo/cpu please

[IggSter]

The plan is simple:

I have 2 x Intel P4 530 based PCs which I use as home servers. (music streaming, web hosting, FTP, file shares, printer shares etc). One runs Windows, One runs Ubuntu.

I want to have a single PC to run all of the above.

This is what I think I know so far:

Each P4 530 uses 40 watts at idle and 135 watts at full load, therefore I would like the new CPU to be far more energy efficient than these two combined.

I would like a multicore CPU as the new server will be running several services 24/7

I would like the motherboard to have onboard gfx that are cabable of running up to 2560x1600 for 2D applications.

The applications that will run are:

Apache
PHP
mySQL
Java
Real Time transcoding of audio
Real time downsampling of audio
An ID3 tag indexer
4-5 web applications (http, php, SQL, java)
FTP server
Multimedia Jukebox application

My indended OS will be Windows server 2008

Please give me any suggestions for a mobo/cpu combination that you feel would:

1. Save the planet by using less power
2. Give me a nice performance increase over the P4s I run atm

Please feel free to make any other suggestions that you think will help me out or to ask for any further information I have missed from this post.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[IggSter]

Bumping in the hopes someone can give some advice.

So far I cant really decide between:

Atom dual core
Phenom
Intel Quad core

Anyone have any insight?

 

[spearman914]

Bumping in the hopes someone can give some advice.

So far I cant really decide between:

Atom dual core
Phenom
Intel Quad core

Anyone have any insight?

INTEL quad core is the best bang for the buck. But you'll have to switch the mobo maybe.

 

[IggSter]

What about power draw on a quad core. will it be less than the 80 watts Idle the my current PCs use and less than the 270watts full load?

Also what are the power management features available for these processors? (will it drop cpu speed when idle etc)

 

[erocker]

Lower end Intel quads such as the Q8200 and Q9300 are 95W processors. There is speedstep and thermal management features built in. Yes, at idle the processor will drop down to it's lowest multiplier, drop voltage and save on energy.

 

[mrhuggles]

i like mine, running at 2.4ghz and 1.100v set in the bios it uses almost no power at all and makes no heat at all, its cheap too, real cheap

 

[IggSter]

How would the performance of a Q8200 at stock speeds compare to a P4 530 when running a single threaded application? (ie core vs core performance)

 

[mrhuggles]

i dont know but the 530 vs the e2140 gets about like +20-+30% per clock so the Q8200 shouldnt be far off. depending on what your doing since the e2140 has 1mb of cache.