Hi,

I currently work in the area of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and am
running a numerical computer code. At present I run the code on a 3GHz Pentium 4 'Northwood' (800MHz FSB) CPU.

I am considering changing my 3GHz Northwood machine to a dual Xeon 'Nocona' (800MHz FSB) machine at the same clock speed.

Both CPU's have the same FSB and I plan on using the Asus NCCH-DL motherboard based on the i875 chipset for the Nocona. (I currently use an MSI board based on the i865PE chipset).

All other components in my system will remain the same so I think the main
factor is going to be the CPU (the chipsets are similar).

If I run the code as a serial job (since it does not always run in parallel) on a single 3GHz Nocona CPU can I expect similar (or better) performance compared to a run on my existing 3GHz Northwood CPU?

I was just wondering whether there is any major architectural difference that would cause a performance decrease with the Nocona. I think that this is not the case but I can't find benchmarks to back this up.

Thanks for your help,

Anthony.