Newest Hardware

[jujubee]

I've been "out of the loop" for a bit after having built my last dual Intel Xeon 5355 processor machine with a Geforce 260. The last I left off, a single Intel i7 were almost comparable to this machine. If you had a Mac with Bootcamp too, this was also similar in performance. I can still use it and my electric bill is higher, but I'm wondering what I'm missing out on.

With the economy and resulting slowdowns, I've put off buying any new hardware.

I'm just wondering what are the latest and greatest computers? Top of the line? Best for the money at the moment?

I see for graphics cards, nVidia's 480s are king of the hill currently, but to get the most out of it (3-5% increase), you need a PCI express 2.0 motherboard. I'm certain with any new motherboards, that PCIE 2.0 is supported.

[jujubee]

Does this thread summarize what I'm asking as of today?
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...n........(help).........

[flino2004]

I just to buy my main wortkstations from HP or Xicomputers but the WS that I'm using it right now I bought the pieces and i paid assembly service. It's a I7 920 overclocked (3.9 GHz) 12GB ram and initially it had nvidia 280 but i changed to 480....I expended around $1500 without the 480 card...it should be cheaper now. So far I'm very happy with it taking in consideration in the past I've paid 5k-7k per WS....the computer is very fast and stable.

Fernando

[Donald2B]

I have been doing a LOT of testing trying to determine the best upgrade path for my office. Here are some of my findings...

If you are most concerned about working on projects, Max, Nuke, Photoshop and those types of applications, and not overly concerned about rendering power. The sweet spot is the Intel 980X processor with 12GB+ RAM. It will perform very similarly to a dual Xeon of the same type (NOTE: It will NOT render the same!). Put in a GTX480 and you have yourself a pretty rocking workstation for around $2000-$2500 US.

If you really need to get some renders done and work with VERY large data sets and large arch viz type scenes, than a dual hexacore Xeon is going to be the way to go. Pair that with a Quadro 5000 video card and you have a killer workstation! You will have 2GB of memory with the Quadro which makes it attractive for GPU type stuff, while still giving you VERY good viewport performance. These machines will definitely be more, probably closer to $8k US.

It all really just depends on what you are looking for in your computer. IMHO, I would keep your current workstation for at least another year or two, because you have a pretty good core machine there. I would upgrade to a 480 video card to help out with any GPU related stuff. If you need to increase your rendering, I would build a small iCore7 930 box for around $1k and use DR. That will almost double your rendering performance and only cost around $1k to build. You could then put another 480 in the iCore7 machine and use it to DR in VRayRT GPU. It gives you a LOT of flexibility with very minimal cost, when compared to buying a completely new workstation.

[dlparisi]

It will perform very similarly to a dual Xeon of the same type (NOTE: It will NOT render the same!).

Sorry to hijack, but can you post some shots of any differneces? I haven't seen machine related differences in my farm since a problem with amd vs. intel several years back.

[Donald2B]

I meant that the render times would not be the same.

As for mixing hardware, I haven't noticed any differences there between the different machines that I have.

[dlparisi]

Thanks for clarifying - you had me scared there for a second.

[Donald2B]

Sorry, I was trying to type it up quickly. Sometime my mind works faster than I can type! LOL