Have a new budget for new desktops (3-5), no idea what to recommend

[atrask@hksinc.com]

I just got tapped on the shoulder and told that our dept lead got the go ahead to buy new desktop boxes for us.

Now, I've been out of the hardware loop for the last 18 months so I'm trying to pick your talented brains. What would you guys recommend? It's all pretty open-ended at the moment, we'll do the value engineering later.

The role of the boxes are daily work horses. 3-5 artists. Mostly interior and exterior stills between 3k-10k. We'll need to load up sport stadium models from Revit and those are HEAVY. The workflow is 3ds max/vray/photoshop or after effects. We do some animations but the focus right now is to amp up our daily stills output. We'll focus on a legit render farm later.

Right now we use Doghouse Systems machines. I believe they are i7, 32GB ram, and GTX980 card. Is there anything on the market that would blow these away, or is this basically where we are at?

Thanks in advance!

[Morbid Angel]

The limit is your budget Whats more powerful then GTX980? two of them. Or three. Whats more powerful then i7? dual xeon E2699 v3, but they are waaay more expensive.

I think kepler 6000 was a good card for stuff like you describe, but its also very expensive with rig like that you could be easily looking at $15k usd per box.

[atrask@hksinc.com]

Yea I realized I'm basically asking, "how long is a rope", sorry.

But just that little bit you gave about the 'dual xeon E2699' is a huge help because I had no idea that was out there. I'd say a budget of $15k-22k per box wouldn't be out of the question.

[Morbid Angel]

Yeah man. There is a million different options out there, its not helpful of course but new i7 6950x is a beast too, not sure if its out.

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/int...0-threads.html

Generally speaking single powerful cpu is more bang for the buck vs two less powerful cpus. For example i7 overclocked though has less cores can perform nearly as fast as dual xeon, and cost 3-4 times less. But you have to end up dealing with overclocking, which can be a bitch, and without it you might not get the super performance.

[atrask@hksinc.com]

Would it make sense to get an Apexx5 and RenderPRO2 (both BOXX) for each artist?

http://www.boxxtech.com/products/apexx-5
http://www.boxxtech.com/products/ren...tion/renderpro

[Morbid Angel]

Well, boxx does some really nice hardware. You can spec out the hardware as you need and get the price there, but its not cheap. The apex5 you sent is a dual 10 core, you'd want to build your self a workstation that lasts into the future perhaps for next 5 years and at the end of 5th year it still performs well. Getting a mid range cpu is not really desirable in this case. I have a rule - I upgrade worksations every 5-7 years, and I always get the best I can afford. I'd rather get a top of the line cpu, and more ram then a powerful video card, video card is something that changes so fast these days that you can get literally double or quadruple the performance next year and the card you paid 5-7k for is worthless at that point.

For the renderPro machines, they are also expensive if you get the top notch cpus and it's kind of the same thing I said. With farm machines - quantity overwhelms power, so its better to have more less powerful machines then few very powerful ones. The reason being is that certain things cannot be sped up, like scene load times for example if you have a large scene that takes 10 minutes to open, well if you have 5 very powerful machines they will take 10 minutes to open the scene and 5 minutes to render it, or if you have 20 less powerful machines they will still take 10 min to open the scene but because there is way more of them, they can crunch through the count of frames much faster.

Bottom line imo - get best of the best what you can afford, I've learned this rule over many years and it serves me well

[auke]

Generally speaking single powerful cpu is more bang for the buck vs two less powerful cpus. For example i7 overclocked though has less cores can perform nearly as fast as dual xeon, and cost 3-4 times less. But you have to end up dealing with overclocking, which can be a bitch, and without it you might not get the super performance.

This is only partly true. While the overclocked i7 will be more cost effective when you compare cpu pricing to performance, you are forgetting you need to pay for alot of other pieces in your system as well in order to make that CPU work. When you factor this in dual CPU systems are almost always alot more cost effective, especially when using the e5-2630-v3, e5-2650-v3 and e5-2680-v3 CPU's. These systems would be around 15-25% more cost effective than a single socket machine unless you are pushing the CPU to its absolute limits.

@opening poster; You mention you work alot with huge revit models. This probably means you are being slowed down by interface/viewport performance and slow model imports into 3ds Max. These processes are mostly single threaded, meaning you would benefit with as high clock speeds as possible. High clocked Xeon chips like the e5-2667-v3 are expensive and power hungry but support multiple CPU's in 1 system (useful if you use the system for rendering as well). In case you are not using the workstation for rendering a single overclocked i7 CPU might give you more performance as you don't really need the extra cores as much and can achieve higher clock speeds.

[JezUK]

This is only partly true. While the overclocked i7 will be more cost effective when you compare cpu pricing to performance, you are forgetting you need to pay for alot of other pieces in your system as well in order to make that CPU work.

??? What other pieces ?

In any case, I disagree.

An i7 5960x, nicely overclocked (which just about anyone can do these days if you build your own systems) is a very capable machine. I keep an eye on upgrading all the time - right now I'm waiting to see the arrival of the new 6960x and soon swapping out my 5960x to that new processor (which'll give me more life from my mobo).

Even though there is no data out yet, I'd wager that that new processor will certainly give those dual 2696's a very good run for their money (and there'll be very little performance increase in those dual xeons to justify them once more).

Every time I look at these things, the i7 path just keeps winning the argument.

[auke]

As you state yourself, the motherboard for example. Besides that your system needs at least a boot drive, RAM, a psu, a case, software licences, a GPU and so on. Most of these are fixed prices when comparing single to dual CPU systems or only add a small premium to the price. When you factor in all the costs of the components, and I'd advice you to, you'll see that dual CPU systems are on average 20% more cost effective than single cpu systems. The only way a single CPU system is able to get at the same cost effectiveness is very heavy overclocking, with all the associated issues that come with it.

[JezUK]

As you state yourself, the motherboard for example. Besides that your system needs at least a boot drive, RAM, a psu, a case, software licences, a GPU and so on. Most of these are fixed prices when comparing single to dual CPU systems or only add a small premium to the price. When you factor in all the costs of the components, and I'd advice you to, you'll see that dual CPU systems are on average 20% more cost effective than single cpu systems. The only way a single CPU system is able to get at the same cost effectiveness is very heavy overclocking, with all the associated issues that come with it.

You wrote "a lot of other pieces to make that cpu work".

Those happen to be the same pieces you'd need to make the xeons work

An i7 5960x can be bought for around £550 new.

Dual 2696v3 bubble around £1200 each (2nd hand) - 2699's are much more expensive.

Removing all other components from the equation (as for all intents and purposes they're the same in both systems) that's a lot of extra cash to lay out for a machine that's only about 20-30 percent faster in rendering (and that percentage will come down with the new 6960x).

Finally, it's not at all necessary to apply "very heavy overclocking" to an i7 and it is not advised.

[auke]

that's a lot of extra cash to lay out for a machine that's only about 20-30 percent faster in rendering (and that percentage will come down with the new 6960x).

I did not say 20-30% faster in rendering. They are 20-30% more cost effective, meaning you will pay 20-30% less for when comparing performance to price for efficient machines. Of course this will not add up when you will compare the absolute top of the line CPU's, these are meant for max performance regardless of price, but when comparing the 2630-v3, 2650-v3, 2680-v3 for example you will see the big differences. I would strongly advice anyone looking for new rendering workstations to open up excel and just make a quick comparison and see for yourself.

[JezUK]

I did not say 20-30% faster in rendering. They are 20-30% more cost effective, meaning you will pay 20-30% less for when comparing performance to price for efficient machines. Of course this will not add up when you will compare the absolute top of the line CPU's, these are meant for max performance regardless of price, but when comparing the 2630-v3, 2650-v3, 2680-v3 for example you will see the big differences. I would strongly advice anyone looking for new rendering workstations to open up excel and just make a quick comparison and see for yourself.

*I* am saying the speed differences are around that much (especially with the new VRay 3.30).

[dlparisi]

Removing all other components from the equation (as for all intents and purposes they're the same in both systems) that's a lot of extra cash to lay out for a machine that's only about 20-30 percent faster in rendering (and that percentage will come down with the new 6960x).

Cost differences aside, won't the dual 2696's (2699's) be several times faster than the OC 5960? 20-30% seems like way to low of an estimate, at least for rendering horsepower. AFAIK, a moderately OC'd 5960 (say 4 ghz) will net you about 1500 on Cinebench r15 while a dual 2699 will get you between 4200-4500. Even allowing for differences in rendering between C4D and Vray this is more like 200-300%, not 20%-30%. The 5960 probably still wins in terms of bang-for-your-buck but it just can't compete in raw horsepower.

[JezUK]

Cost differences aside, won't the dual 2696's (2699's) be several times faster than the OC 5960? 20-30% seems like way to low of an estimate, at least for rendering horsepower. AFAIK, a moderately OC'd 5960 (say 4 ghz) will net you about 1500 on Cinebench r15 while a dual 2699 will get you between 4200-4500. Even allowing for differences in rendering between C4D and Vray this is more like 200-300%, not 20%-30%. The 5960 probably still wins in terms of bang-for-your-buck but it just can't compete in raw horsepower.

It's actually around 40% depending on the amount of overclock (I was being lazy in re-checking my stats ). Mine's a really light oc. Nevertheless, the point is that £500 proc versus a pair of procs totalling circa £2600 (for 40%) ??....... Come'on ! There's no contest

[glorybound]

Now, my understanding is you can't overclock the XEON's, correct? People chose the i7's because they can be overclocked. People buy the ZEON, because the number of cores. I hear both sides saying that theirs is actually faster than the other.