NEw workstation Xeon E5-2687W

[sedus]

Hi everyone,

We are looking for new Workstations hardware to replace our I7-2600k Pcs.
We hesitate between 3930K Oc workstation or a Big dual Xeon 2687W.
For sure It is a big price difference, but what about Vray performance??

Our main concern Is the ability to render many Render region test, as we debug our scene.

Anyone With numbers ? bench?

thanks !

[vlado]

If you use a lot of proxies in your scenes, you will need an updated build of V-Ray - we did some optimizations for good performance on many-core machines.

Best regards,
Vlado

[sedus]

Good to Know, thanks for the "tip".
Do you have any benchmark or rendering time comparisons as a Dual Xeon E5 system Versus I7 3960k PC?
Can't find anything over Internet, only Mental Ray, or Vue test.

thanks.

[peterguthrie]

I'm considering a similar xeon based machine to replace my ageing macpro. For me stability is very important, as is the ability to do quick test renders (and region renders).

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

OC is the way to go in either case. It will render respond and be a lot more snappier at 4.5 ghz than at 3.2 ghz.

[peterguthrie]

OC is the way to go in either case. It will render respond and be a lot more snappier at 4.5 ghz than at 3.2 ghz.

maybe I had (2) bad experiences with my i7 overclocked machines, but for my main workstation I'll be steering well clear of overclocking. Both my i7-980x slaves crash quite often (once or twice a week) whereas I'm not aware of my macpro having had a single hardware-caused crash in over 4 years. Thats the kind of reliability I want in my main machine

besides, I reckon 2x e5-2687w xeons will be snappy enough for my needs!

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Heya

Uhh really? Thats very bad ! Now Im sure you did it but did you run prime95 for 48 hors and log in all temperatures/voltages and checked for spikes and so on to make sure it run stable? As well as had max if 70c?

2x E5-2687 Will still be slower than OC in single threaded tasks which there are A LOT in max/maya atm... for the price of that CPU u can have 2 workstations and DBR them together which would give you more render performance than e5-2687w I gues... not that I'm pushing any1 todo it... just chattin...chattin...

NN

[tecsun]

Maybe reading this will help a bit:
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...s-i7-SB-IVB-OC

Cheers~

[Micha_cg]

I plan to buy a 2x E5-2687w system too. At single CPU usage the turbo mode will bring the task to 3.8GHz, not so bad. I looked at the Maxwell and the Cinebench charts and some reviews at the www. The 2x2687w should bring 25 CB points, an overclocked 3930k could bring around 11 points.

I don't want to have to much machines here. My current 5 machines has approx. 20 CB points. If I would upgrade the machines, I would lost the old CPU power. After long time of CB point and money calculation I decided me for the Xeon. So I will get all together 45 CB points.

Important for me is too, that I'm a Vray for Rhino user and DR isn't so good for render animations. Much power in the main machine will help me a lot.

Next thought - I could buy additional 3939k for my current little farm, but the power usage and the noise will increase. Also I think, the Xeon will stay a good working machine for the next years and if the CPU power is much cheaper, than I will upgrade the slaves.
The price for the Xeon will be around 4800,- €, for this I could buy four or five 3930k with 44..55 points. Not so much more points and the power ist splitted over the network, the next CPU upgrade would be less effective.

Since the 2687w can't be overclocked I will try to minimize the power usage by a lower CPU voltage. So I hope to get a very quiet system.

[Micha_cg]

Here a good CB comparsion:

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/c...660_e5-2687w/7

[TutanMark]

I recently bought a new render-node. dual E5-2630 - Supermicro MB - 32GB Ram

Cinebench 11.5 :14,81 (2xE5-2687 = 25,29)
PassMark = 19,90

proc. price 650€ x 2 = 1300€. think is a good price vs perfomance result... since a don't like to overclock my pc's

sure.. if somebody wants a single powerful workstation... nothing is better than a 2x2687

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

I recently bought a new render-node. dual E5-2630 - Supermicro MB - 32GB Ram

Cinebench 11.5 :14,81 (2xE5-2687 = 25,29)
PassMark = 19,90

proc. price 650€ x 2 = 1300€. think is a good price vs perfomance result... since a don't like to overclock my pc's

sure.. if somebody wants a single powerful workstation... nothing is better than a 2x2687

Nop that is not really true...

U get more power from
EVGA SR 2 with 2x 6 core xeons OC to 4.6ghz... nothing beat it till today.

[Micha_cg]

Good to know - what are the CB points and which CPU is used?

[Donald2B]

I've just built a couple of workstations running the Xeon E5-2670 w/ 64GB Ram, 256 GB SSD, etc. We are extremely happy with the stability and performance for the money. I also have a couple of the latest iCore7 machines also, but they are just not in the same category of performance in our day to day usage.

Many of the overclocked machines that we have, still exhibit stability problems even after watercooling. They just can't run for weeks at full tilt without crashing at least once, requiring some type of intervention.

I'm not saying that you can't get a decent speed increase with an overclocked machine, it just takes WAY too much time and effort to get it running reliably. I need to know that it is still going to be rendering on Monday after a crazy long weekend of rendering. It's to a point now, it's just not worth my time / effort to keep it reliable when I need to be in production, and not constantly messing with memory / voltage tweaks.

YMMV.

[duke2]

I guess it depends on the system. Some setup are just not good at it. My old 920 machine at home has been running rock solid at 4ghz since the day I bought it.