Devin Johnston Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 I keep seeing single processor systems that are under $3000 and I'm wondering who's buying dual quad cores systems and how much are they paying. The last system I purchased 16 months ago was about $5600 and in two months I'm buying another one and I want the most for my money. So what are you guy's buying? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leonmagnavox Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 2x Quad Xeon x5450 3ghz 1333mhz fsb 8gb ECC RAM - 533mhz 7600gs nvidia cost me around 6k with (xp64/max64/vray64) even my processor is 2x quad xeon 3ghz 1333fsb the test renders (evermotion archinterior) mostly still done around 30 minutes in 1200x600 resolution weirdly, max32 in the same system is 5 minutes faster so, I dont know if it worth or not since I cant really compare the render time with anyone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macer Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 I am planning on building a dual quad system based on the intel XS5400 skulltrail motherboard. I'm going to use two E5420 (quadcore 2.5GHz xeons) that have a default fsb of 1333MHz and up the fsb in the bios so they run at 1600MHz fsb, using 4 x 2GB 800MHz FB ECC memory (which will run at its default speed after upping the fsb) resulting in 8 cores at 3GHz. Along with two raptors in raid 0 for boot drive and a 750GB samaung f1 for storage, and a 512mb 8800GTS for graphics. All of this will require a full tower case (cosmos), after market air coolers (quiet ones!), and 1000 watt PSU with dual 12v 8 pin connectors. Still waiting on a few parts to come in to stock before I order, but its priced around 2200 GB pounds. Saves over a 1000 by building it myself using lower clock cpus and overclocking them (only a mild overclock so it will still be stable - can always adjust voltage to help - but only with this motherboard!). Might be worth considering if you only need one or two systems and its your money rather than your bosses? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leonmagnavox Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 ow? can u actually adjust the 1333 to 1600? tell me if u can.. im pretty disappointed i cant run 800mhz in 1333 and i know it only after buying the system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macer Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 Depends on your board, with skulltrail you can alter this setting in the bios (just up the fsb from 333 x 4, to 400 x 4) but most workstation/server boards don't have this option. I think there is a simple mod that requires you to put electrical tape over one pin of the 1333fsb cpu's to force them to run at 1600MHz. This will only work on a 5400 chipset based motherboard that supports a 1600MHz fsb. I don't know which pin is taped - try searching at 2CPU.com for info. Not sure how it affects memory speeds either, only (most) of the 5400 chipset based boards support 800MHz memory speeds (+667 and most, but not all, also support 533MHz). I really must read up some more on memroy settings and dividers etc....anyone? Of course there is no guarantee that the cpu will be able to handle the increased speed - but the xeons are generally quite conservatively binned, so at most, they will just require a slight increase to their core voltage (again the ability to do this depends on the motherboard's bios settings). This in turn means a higher thermal load, so better cooling should be used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 ...and be careful when doing that. Keep an eye on CPU temps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 2x Quad Xeon x5450 3ghz 1333mhz fsb 8gb ECC RAM - 533mhz pretty much our setup on all new systems as well. Except we are sticking 2 QuadroFX 4600's in each machine running in dual SLI mode. Really helps out the people running archicad, and I gotta say makes max run as smooth as can be. but at $2000 a card x 2, we are definitely shooting our price up there, so yes we are definately spending over 5g's as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted March 24, 2008 Author Share Posted March 24, 2008 How often would you replace one of those systems? My current workstation is about 1.5 years old and a new system that's about $5500 is only going to be about 2.5GHz faster. That's not much more speed compared to the price I'm paying, how do you guy's deal with this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 Our production side (archicad) is on about a 4 year lifespan for computers. We are just developing our visualization studio which is right now using the same computers as the production group, but I'm looking into keeping our computers at a two year lifespan, and becoming hand-me downs to the production dept. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slinger Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 I am planning on building a dual quad system based on the intel XS5400 skulltrail motherboard. I'm going to use two E5420 (quadcore 2.5GHz xeons) that have a default fsb of 1333MHz and up the fsb in the bios so they run at 1600MHz fsb, using 4 x 2GB 800MHz FB ECC memory (which will run at its default speed after upping the fsb) resulting in 8 cores at 3GHz. Along with two raptors in raid 0 for boot drive and a 750GB samaung f1 for storage, and a 512mb 8800GTS for graphics. All of this will require a full tower case (cosmos), after market air coolers (quiet ones!), and 1000 watt PSU with dual 12v 8 pin connectors. Still waiting on a few parts to come in to stock before I order, but its priced around 2200 GB pounds. Saves over a 1000 by building it myself using lower clock cpus and overclocking them (only a mild overclock so it will still be stable - can always adjust voltage to help - but only with this motherboard!). Might be worth considering if you only need one or two systems and its your money rather than your bosses? http://www.guru3d.com/article/processor/495/ Great review and testing of the skulltrail set-up. I find it odd your going to spend that much coin on a system and go with a GTS512...Why not go all out and get the QuadroFX5600. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slinger Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 How often would you replace one of those systems? My current workstation is about 1.5 years old and a new system that's about $5500 is only going to be about 2.5GHz faster. That's not much more speed compared to the price I'm paying, how do you guy's deal with this?I think the one thing you need to realize is speed for a system is not just considered by a cpu. Remember your memory can be a bottleneck, your gfx card can be a bottleneck. The whole system needs to work as one cohesive machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gordo3di Posted March 24, 2008 Share Posted March 24, 2008 A year and a half ago i bought a $5000 alienware laptop (I figured a system that is made for heavy gaming could withstand the rigors of rendering) and it was my single worst investment in any electrinic device to date... dual core 2.4 ghz, 2 gigs of ram (maxed out), win xp, geforce 7900gtx 256 meg, 1920z1200 display. The system is very unstable and overheats frequently and although the display looks great i cant even run hd video or full resolution programs at decent framerates. Worst tech support and the system performed only slightly better than the 3 yr old single proc single core 1.5g of ram pc i built. Im still fighting with tech support and it runs so poor i cant even use it (blue screen about every hour and i just got it back from tech support. they claimed it works perfectly). But enough of my rant... Since that complete failure I just bought a 2x quad 2.0 ghz xeon dell with 4 gigs of ram, vista 32 bit, quadro 570 256 meg card and it runs amazing... It renders about 8x what my laptop can do and about 10x my old pc. Saves me tons of time and has already paid for itself. I literally got it this month and paid just under $3k. Im hoping this system will hold out for about 4 yrs. Seems to be about right. I really was just waiting for the quad cores. I know they have 6 and 8 cores coming out but this should be great for now. So far the system is real stable and the 8 core systems have really come down in price. I highly reccomend it Hope this helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gfa2 Posted March 25, 2008 Share Posted March 25, 2008 A year and a half ago i bought a $5000 alienware laptop Ouch...been there, done that. I'll never do Alienware again. I just recently got 2 of these and am very happy with them... http://www.boxxtech.com/products/renderfarm/Renderfarm_Overview.asp Obviously not something you'd replace your current system with, but it supplements nicely. Coupled with my 2 dual-dual core Opterons, every time I hit render I get 40 buckets cranking away...quite nice. With each $6k system you get 2 dual quad cores. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted March 25, 2008 Author Share Posted March 25, 2008 I think the one thing you need to realize is speed for a system is not just considered by a cpu. Remember your memory can be a bottleneck, your gfx card can be a bottleneck. The whole system needs to work as one cohesive machine. True, but I'm looking for something that is much faster in rendering speed than what I've currently got, the only way that will happen is if my GHz speed or my processors doubles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leonmagnavox Posted March 25, 2008 Share Posted March 25, 2008 whats the relationship of graphic card with rendering speed actually? (not animation) so far I always thought GPU has nothing to do with rendering an image any advice i cud be wrong guys? thx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted March 25, 2008 Author Share Posted March 25, 2008 Graphics cards have no relationship to rendering speed, it's really all about CPU and Memory, graphics cards are used while your work on your scene and the bigger the card the better display performance you will have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leonmagnavox Posted March 25, 2008 Share Posted March 25, 2008 yup. thats wad i always thought =) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hazdaz Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 pretty much our setup on all new systems as well. Except we are sticking 2 QuadroFX 4600's in each machine running in dual SLI mode. Really helps out the people running archicad, and I gotta say makes max run as smooth as can be. but at $2000 a card x 2, we are definitely shooting our price up there, so yes we are definately spending over 5g's as well. Please show me proof that Quadro's running in SLI do anything for us 3D guys. Everything - and I mean everything - that I have ever read has said that SLI is useless to anyone but gamers. I personally think that dropping more than $2000 on a single system is absolutely insane - even if it is someone else's money too. There is no chance that the "investment" in a $5000 system going to pay off, versus a fast $2000 workstation with a separate box (or boxes) just for rendering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 I bought an hp that has a q6700 & 4 gigs in it for $1,1000. It was supposed to be a stop gap till I got a new boxxtech but its pretty darn fast and really cheap. I am used to boxxtechs support and this is a pain with the crashes I have had with it but still 3 more or 1 boxx? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted March 27, 2008 Author Share Posted March 27, 2008 I personally think that dropping more than $2000 on a single system is absolutely insane - even if it is someone else's money too. There is no chance that the "investment" in a $5000 system going to pay off, versus a fast $2000 workstation with a separate box (or boxes) just for rendering. It all comes down to time you spend waiting, take this case for instance. If I purchase a $2000 system it more than likely has a single processor, it's got a smaller hard drive, video card, and slower processor. Compare that to a $5000 system that's going to be at least twice as fast. On your cheaper system let's say it takes 10 minutes to render out a standard scene, on the more expensive unit it takes 5 minutes. If you render out say 30 test scenes per day with the more expensive system you've saved approximately 2.5 hours of time where with the cheaper system you'd just be sitting there waiting. So in an average month you will have saved about 50 hours, multiply that by hour hourly rate which we'll say conservatively is $50/hour and that's $2500. So by buying the more expensive unit in a span of 2 months you have already paid for the system and you’re twice as productive as you would have been with the cheaper one. In my mind you'd be insane not to buy it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 Please show me proof that Quadro's running in SLI do anything for us 3D guys. Perhaps I can try running cinebench with and without the SLI enabled. I have heard comments like yours before about SLI...... however I also know that on our dual SLI machines you can spin orbit a full BIM model shaded in openGL without a problem, however on other machines it just makes the video refresh die. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hazdaz Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 If I purchase a $2000 system it more than likely has a single processor, it's got a smaller hard drive, video card, and slower processor. Compare that to a $5000 system that's going to be at least twice as fast. You are making a HUGE assumption that a $5k system is going to be 2x as fast as a $2k. Huge. I think if it is even 20% faster, then you'd be lucky. You can easily get a quad-core workstation today for well under $1000 (not counting monitors of course). Another $1k would net you a very quick render node, which when used together with the workstation I say would equal, or even surpass the one single $5k system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 I have a system and farm built on the q6600 processor. I have 8 machines, all q6600 +4gb Ram on xp64. One machine has a decent graphics card which is the workstation. Total cost? about $7.5k including all the OS's. That means I can pull in about 30 cores to render with @ 2.4gHz each.... I have heard the arguments about extra peripherals costing more in the long run (power/space etc) but when I did the math and figured these machines are so cheap theyre kind of disposable, it just made sense for me and starting a new business. And yes, thats 30 cores working together, 72gHz, when DR in Vray, for about $7500... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hazdaz Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 Please show me proof that Quadro's running in SLI do anything for us 3D guys. /QUOTE] Perhaps I can try running cinebench with and without the SLI enabled. I have heard comments like yours before about SLI...... however I also know that on our dual SLI machines you can spin orbit a full BIM model shaded in openGL without a problem, however on other machines it just makes the video refresh die. That would be a cool test, but Cinebench might be based on a real app, but it is still not the same as using the real program. Would be great if we could cross test everyone's computer using the real software (like MAX) with a consistent file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slinger Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 I have a system and farm built on the q6600 processor. I have 8 machines, all q6600 +4gb Ram on xp64. One machine has a decent graphics card which is the workstation. Total cost? about $7.5k including all the OS's. That means I can pull in about 30 cores to render with @ 2.4gHz each.... I have heard the arguments about extra peripherals costing more in the long run (power/space etc) but when I did the math and figured these machines are so cheap theyre kind of disposable, it just made sense for me and starting a new business. And yes, thats 30 cores working together, 72gHz, when DR in Vray, for about $7500...Smart set-up...I'd like to see some pics of this if you don't mind Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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