Please review & advise New Computer Specs

[thickly]

Finally getting the company to pony-up for a decent workstation. Every speed test I have seen leads me to believe the Dual Opterons are the way to go - but I'll admit, I'm not super technical so any advice you have would be awesome. I'm only going to get one chance to order this machine so I better make it count. This will be used mainly for arch viz using 3DS Max, Autocad, Maxwell and the other usual suspects (PS, Illust., etc...) -- the price tag and budget is approximately $2,500. Hopefully the attachment detailing the specs posts correctly.

Thanks,

SD

[tecton3d]

not seeing your attachment mate:p

[thickly]

sorry - up there now, took it down for an edit -- all items listed as options are included in the system I spec'd

[tecton3d]

You should know (before you drop $2500 on a new system) that AMD is supposed to be releasing thier new Socket F technology this summer and IMO, it would be worth the wait for you to assemble a socket F monster that gives you access to faster DDR2 memory and the ability to plug in the quad core processors when they come out sometime in '07-'08.

 

Intel also has the Woodcrest 51xx line of Xeon processors on the horizon and they aren't the same old xeon's...it will be a server version of the Intel Core 2 processor and it is a real monster, actually on-par with the current dualcore Opterons.

 

you may not have time to play the waiting game with new technology so... for now, your system looks pretty good to me but I'd change a few things:

 

Procs: go for a pair of 265's instead of 248's they don't cost much more and will prove themselves worthy when this machine is used for rendering. With 4 cores you can set processor affinity per task... so you can render with 3 cores and have the other free to work in other apps ~ real multitasking

Video Card: most people tend to stay away from ATI for workstations, unless it's a fireGL card... for the budget you have, I'd go with a Quadro 1400 or FireGL 5200

MOBO: The Tyan K8WE S2895A2NRF is one of the best choices for high-end workstations... (it's what's in my Boxx) but that's another $200 on top of an already tight budget

PSU: 460 is underpowering a dual opteron rig that you're expecting to hammer on for 8+ hours a day. I'd go for at least the 660 to allow for a little more cush for future upgrades (vid.card, hd's, higher end procs, etc), but you could probably get by with the 550 as long as you didn't have the case loaded up with power hungry RAID arrays.

 

I spec'd the above system for 2927... how "approximate" is your 2500 budget?

[thickly]

Hey Daron - thanks for that in-depth review. The budget is probably already near the high-end that they will be willing to shell out. We are a very large company so I'm not sure if we are able to obtain agressive pricing from our IT vendors -- so I'll try to put in for some of the upgrades you mentioned, the worst they can say is no. Unfortunately, I don't think I can wait on the new processors you mentioned -- my machine at work is almost unusable (IBM P4, stock video card...), to the point where I just take most of the stuff home to do it. We are not an arch viz company, I am the first person here that will be doing viz work.

 

Anyway - thanks again!

[tecton3d]

no problem, I'd at least try to talk them into the dual core Opterons... they'll cut your rendering times.

 

one of the many benchies out there.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=opteron285&page=6&cookie%5Ftest=1