Theoretical workstation build

[Donald2B]

But at that point, what are you gaining by going with a cheap machine? Even if you go with a 980X, 24GB RAM, GTX460 2GB you are still looking close to $3500! What is another $500 to get the ability to almost double the performance after a year, not to mention hardware should have come down in price quite a bit by then.

My question to you is what are you looking for in a computer? You seem to be all over the map.

You must have bought your current system late. We have dual Xeon5355 for almost 2yrs before the iCore7 stuff came out. I am almost 4yrs into my system and it still works great. I even built an iCore7 machine based around the 920. It is decent, but is still 35% slower in some cases than my Dual Xeons.

[jujubee]

My question to you is what are you looking for in a computer? You seem to be all over the map.

If that is your perception than I'm sorry. I've simply pointed out the components to one of the highest performing computers you could possibly purchase at the moment. I never said I was looking to buy one - I was just dissecting it for fun.

My second point is/was, that one should probably consider that there is a chance that it may be somewhat outdated six months later with newer technology.

I don't see what's so difficult to understand about my statements. I thought I was being very clear.

As for the x5355 - I bought that system pretty much right away (I think there were only 3 boards at the time that supported it.) Maybe my timing is very far off - it seems like yesterday. But I don't think I got a good two years before the first i7s were released - at least not that I could recall. If I'm wrong about my timeframe, then you have a valid point.

Edit (from Wikipedia):
i7 Release: Nov 2008
Xeon Clovertown Nov 2006

You were right. My memory of time is WAY off. it's about 2 years of use assuming you bought it right at release. I think I didn't buy mine until maybe April or May - about 7 months until the prices came down from an astronomical level. So I got maybe about 1.5 years of good use out of it before the first semi-comparable consumer-level chips hit the market. Even then, there still not Xeons. In some things they would outperform (games and other non-multi-threaded applications.) In others such as Max, they didn't quite match up.

But at that point, what are you gaining by going with a cheap machine? Even if you go with a 980X, 24GB RAM, GTX460 2GB you are still looking close to $3500!

Actually, I priced a system out at around $2,500. $1,000 for the chip, $200 for the mobo, case is reused, $500, for the memory, $300-$500 for a graphics card. I could reuse my drives. You bumped the 12GB of RAM you said you were going to get above to 24GB in this example.

So the question is to turn it back around is, "what can you save for $1,500?" Get 2 more graphics cards and/or more memory? The same price for an i7 will well outperform a more expensive/stripped down EVGA SR-2. Of course, that's assuming you don't upgrade the SR-2 any time soon.

To summarize, if you think you can make your time and money back by going the more expensive route within an estimated 2 years, then I'd say go for it.

[Donald2B]

If that is your perception than I'm sorry. I've simply pointed out the components to one of the highest performing computers you could possibly purchase at the moment. I never said I was looking to buy one - I was just dissecting it for fun.

My second point is/was, that one should probably consider that there is a chance that it may be somewhat outdated six months later with newer technology.

Ah, no worries. Unfortunately with technology, if we always waiting six months to buy something, we wouldn't buy anything because there is always something better coming along.

My point about being clear was more along the lines of what you were trying to accomplish with the new computer. I misunderstood the fact that you were doing it for fun. My bad.

I am actually going to be putting in almost 3 different types of workstations when we upgrade. Each of them specialized to the type of work most likely to be done on them. I still feel that a renderfarm is a much better investment and will be more versatile than high-end workstations (Which can't be used for rendering during the day because someone is trying to get work done.) So my situation may be very different than everyone else here. Most of my stuff doesn't really work within the VRayRT constraints and so I look at things a little differently. Since I am hopefully going to get another 3+ years out of these machines, I am looking for a LOT more flexibility, especially for potential GPU upgrades that only certain motherboards allow. Not to mention that with that EVGA motherboard, I also get 6GB/s Sata III and USB 3.0.

Unfortunately though, at the end of the day, I have to make a huge presentation to the owners and pitch the hardware costs and all the pros/cons of each different type of workstation. At the end of the day, everything costs money and with my new workflow revolving around Nuke, I am able to easily stretch these current workstations another year if needed. In a way, the slower hardware has forced me to become more efficient with my lighting/material/render settings so I am getting a much better image out with a LOT less rendertime and I have a ton of flexibility now too which I have never had.

I love new hardware! I love the potential GPU rendering has to offer! I just don't know if any of it will be able to help us within the next couple of years or not. So it makes it a little bit more difficult to plan for major hardware upgrades.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Well, assuming you can get a case for under $500, I managed to assemble an entire system for around $6,000. This would include:

1) Two nVidia 480s: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130551
2) 1200W EVGA PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817438003
3) 120 GB SSD drive for the OS: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227551
4) Two Intel 5650s (6 cores each): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117231
5) SR-2 Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813188067
6) Two WD 600GB Velociraptor drives: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136555
7) 24GB DDR3 1600 memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136555

I didn't include the case or the DVD Drive, and on the fence about a separate RAID card. There's a slight package deal on some of these items at present. Of course, you could also bump the memory and processors up as well as down - but if you're spending that kind of money in the first place and are looking for a sweet spot without paying the absolute premium (which could easily run an extra $3,000)... You could also always upgrade the memory and add in even two more graphics cards later. This system should last for 3 or so years before the average consumer systems start to catch up (assuming tablets don't start dominating the market driving traditional PCs up in price.)

Thats something I'm thinking of buying. But I will w8 until December to get final RT GPU + Ati support to decide my final farm...

However I will go with

2x 256 SSD raid 0 HDD for Windows
and 2x 64 or 1x 128 SSD For photoshop files cacher drive. Tired of w8 1h for file to save...
Also 48 gb of ram, I wish I could go higher argh !

And great deal from scan to hit 4 ghz+ cpu oc

Bah cant w8 for final ATI support, their shapphire 4gb 2x gpu should smoke anything thats on the market now

But anyway until December theres lots of time, hope something new will come up

[jujubee]

Who mentioned RT GPU will support ATI? I thought GPU was based on CUDA which is a nVidia technology only... But eh, I don't know - that's why I'm asking.

Unfortunately with technology, if we always waiting six months to buy something, we wouldn't buy anything because there is always something better coming along.

lol. Well, you can just wait six months so that they "latest and greatest" drops exponentially down in price. But who is to really say - it could stay up there for a whole year.

Also, I just received an email back from the Passmark Benchmark regarding some of the discrepancies we saw:

Hello,

1. The "Intel Core i7 x 995" CPU was recently submitted, we have a script that should update the date of when the first benchmark was submitted. However, it seems that the script has stopped working, we are investigating it now. I have manually entered the test date for this CPU according to the submission date we have received.

2. Looking at the raw data for the 2 CPUs you mentioned, there seems to be more samples for 980X in a CPU Marks (5000s-14000s) that are from NON-OVERCLOCK CPUs, please note that the lower values are from some "UNDERCLOCKED" CPUs, currently we do not filter out these results. Just for reference, the 970 has a smaller sample size with the CPU Mark ranging of 9000s-12000s from non-overclock cpus.

Regards,

Richard Ng
PassMark Software

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Who mentioned RT GPU will support ATI? I thought GPU was based on CUDA which is a nVidia technology only... But eh, I don't know - that's why I'm asking.

lol. Well, you can just wait six months so that they "latest and greatest" drops exponentially down in price. But who is to really say - it could stay up there for a whole year.

Also, I just received an email back from the Passmark Benchmark regarding some of the discrepancies we saw:

Vray RT is OpenCL Based. Not CUDA... So all we are waiting for are better ATI OpenCL Drivers and we can have lots of fun

[Crayox13]

I'm also trying to decide between Xeons, which to choose. I went to Intel http://www.intel.com/design/intarch/...tions_xeon.htm to see what's out there (since our stores have only few of them ) but now I see that there are more Xeon versions than on Intels site! How come? Like 5650 is not even mentioned. I would like to go with SR-2 since it has all the latest technology which I want. But still, I'm considering to go for i7 system also.

[jujubee]

I priced out a high-end single i7 system with 2 480 cards and 24 gigs - $3,500 exactly. You could do a SR-2, single processor which is still slower, 1 card, and 12 gigs memory for $4,500. Adding double the ram and a card will run you an extra $1,000 for a less than a equivalent system. The extra processor is $1,000.

So in reality, in order to almost double the top-end i7 performance (probably closer to 75% performance gain on CPU for limited programs) you need to spend an extra $3,000, otherwise your system is slower. The likelihood of actually upgrading the processors for that too (stepping up a model) is slim as well. Consumer chips tend to be much less expensive.

The question is - do you have an extra $3,000 to spend or will you?

[meanadam]

I'm a little late to this discussion....
You can buy these dual 6 core setups from BOXX for a hefty premium (like all of their hardware). We just benchmarked our $800 i7 rig against a uber-expensive dual 6 core. The result stock for stock the 24 core machine was only 50% faster than the i7. For $1200 we could build 2 of these and get the same render result (albeit at the cost of 2 copies of windows for 2x the update headaches, 2 power supplies, etc).

The big variable right now is the RT stuff. Is it even worth investing on hardware if we are all gonna be rendering on our PS3s by the end of next year?

Oh, sorry, to answer the original question. Yes Tricky, there are 24 cores on the screen with dual 6 core cpus.

[simon123]

just to make you jealous im sure, just ordering water cooled 3.33ghz x2 xeon 6 cores + 24gb ram + 6gbs 450gb rapter + quadro 4000 card. yummy! x 2