I was think of purchasing some new kit to add to my aging E5000 processor setup.
I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with overclocking and rendering. Would this system be a stable one? They are Core i7 kits from Overclockers which contain just the parts you need and not a whole system. Very tempting.
These seem like really good deals and it’s not too steep in terms of price for investment. Crazy to think 3Ghz versions of my E5000 processors are still nearing the €1000 mark! Crazy. I would have to find out whether they build versions with 8Gb - 12Gb of ram, possibly not. Hope so…
Would continuously rendering with overclocked processors shorten their life? It’s not something I have any experience with, I am not sure if rendering is a good thing as these are primarily sold as gaming. These core i7s do get very good vray benchmarks.
3dspeedmachine.com - You can see the difference to my current system at the moment, mine is at the bottom DHFrame. Would be good if a few of you could take a look at this particular benchmark. Even better if some of you are overclocking.
I was wondering if anyone could do a quick benchmark with the Mac Pro as I am still thinking of going there.
I got all the parts for my i7 920 system from overclockers.co.uk. Good service and price, and nice to deal with real people for a change (as opposed to ebuyer.com). I still use my mac pro as my main machine but the extra memory bandwidth on the 920 means on large scenes it is actually quicker!
Go for a 920 system, in fact, get 2
(Can look out the list of parts I went for if you are interested. I think I originally bought an asus mobo and then swapped it for gigabyte due to oc’ing problems)
and I already had a case, dvd and some crappy graphics card.
this was 6 months ago though so there may be better options. Its all worked perfectly since at 3.4ghz (I’m a bit nervous about going higher than that!)
Maybe worth getting a decent graphics card if vrayRT is going to be upgraded at some point??
Thanks a mill guys. I got this reply from Overclockers in regards to buying the kits with more memory.
Dear Daniel,
Unfortunately not, we can do the bundles with more RAM, however you’d risk having no overclock on the bundle - so there’s really no point in going for it, truth be told. It’s a choice between the RAM or the overclocked CPU. I hope this helps you, and thanks for the web note.
Regards,
James Salmon
---
I think I will definatly go for a similar setup to your’s Peter but with around 12Gb of ram, along with increasing my existing to 12 Gb also. But, since I have had the reply I am wondering, can you overclock these core i7’s using 12Gb onboard?
Ok last post before everyone starts getting bored.
Which is the fastest renderer here?
I presume it is the Xeon. There is about 400 in the difference. The advantage to the Xeon is it has more space for ram. Uses only 3 slots for 12 Gb instead of 6 and has some left over for later. Its a bit cheaper to run in terms of lekkie bills. I need to have a sift around for rendering benchmarks unless someone has some for me.
Thanks for all your help guys!
Core 7i
CPU Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail £184.17 x1 LN27163
MB Gigabyte EX58-UD5 Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £164.17 x1 LN25261
MEM 12GB (6x2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3, PC3-12800 (1600), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24 £190.12 x1 LN26793
PSU Corsair TX 750W ATX2.2 SLI Compliant PSU £78.00 x1 LN20298
CPUCOOL Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366) £45.69 x1 LN25671
CASE TJ07 Temjin ATX Case Black £193.19 x1 LN12817
GPU XFX GTX 275 896Mb £154.27 x1 LN27043
HD 160Gb Western Digital 7200rpm £25.27 x1 LN18052
OS Windows 7 £92.07 x1 LN29163
DVDRW Sony AD £13.69 x1 LN28905
£1140
€1269.33
Xeon
CPU BX80602E5520 - Intel Xeon E5520, S1366, Gainestown, 2.26 GHz, 5.86GT/s QPI, 8MB Cache £487.54 x2 LN27121
MB Tyan S7002AG2NR, Intel 5520, S1366 x2, PCI-E (x16), Triple DDR3 1333MHz, SATA 3Gbps £194.19 x1 LN27139
MEM 4GB Supermicro DDR3 PC3-10600 (1333MHz) Memory, 240 Pin, ECC, Registered, Heat Spreader £269.97 x3 LN27425
PSU Corsair TX 750W ATX2.2 SLI Compliant PSU £78.00 x1 LN20298
CPUCOOL Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366) £45.69 x1 LN25671
CASE TJ07 Temjin ATX Case Black £193.19 x1 LN12817
GPU XFX GTX 275 896Mb £154.27 x1 LN27043
HD 160Gb Western Digital 7200rpm £25.27 x1 LN18052
OS Windows 7 £92.07 x1 LN29163
DVDRW Sony AD £13.69 x1 LN28905
um… I was responding to the comment you got from overclockers:
…we can do the bundles with more RAM, however you’d risk having no overclock on the bundle - so there’s really no point in going for it, truth be told. It’s a choice between the RAM or the overclocked CPU. …
it makes no sense unless they mean the cost to set it up
I agree that the i7 is a great solution at it’s price point but looking at the frybench stats the Xeons are performing significantly better. When you Look at the most recent Vray Benchmarks (which are not as up to date as frybench) some of the i7’s stack up pretty well against the Xeons. However it seems like the current Vray benchmark does not work the processor as hard as the frybench test. Additionally there are so many variations with Max versions and Vray releases that alot of the speed differences can be explained by those elements.
I feel that we need to increase the resolution of the current Vray benchmark so that it gives the processors a longer work out. The current test is over almost before it begins with these new processors. This may not allow the test to run long enough to see the real benefit of the additional cores that Xeons have.
frybench uses a stand alone application for the test which does not use Max. Everyone uses the same software release for the test which is much more controlled than the current test we have for Vray. I know Vlado talked about a stand alone Vray test some time ago that would be a great tool!
I agree, i think a stand alone test would be fabulous. It would also drive more people to the site in my opniion it would benefit chaosgroup in a whole.
