New home workstation/pc

[Chris MacDonald]

Hey chaps,

 

Just looking into making a workstation/internet/gaming PC.

 

Basically my idea is as follows; dual boot windows 7 on two seperate hard drives, one for work & producing music, one for gaming & various crap - basically I want to keep the work/music one as clean as possible. Firstly is dual booting win 7 easy? Secondly, the age old question of AMD or Intel?

 

I'm looking at strictly no more than £2000 budget:

 

-i7 4770K or AMD FX 9370 (worth noting that the 9370 is 8 core)

-32GB DDR3 2400MHz ram

-Nvidia k2000 or Nvidia 4GB 770 (x2)

-Primary HDD: 1TB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive

-Secondary HDD: 1TB WD Black

-850W PSU?

[adrianmonk]

I have just built for myself a new workstation, though I keep all stuff in one system. I tried before multiboot but not windows 7 though and it was fine no problems there, it was easy enough, I am assuming win 7 will be even easier. The only thing which put me off was that I had separate [work] and [internet, games and the rest] systems and when I was doing some work I needed to surf the net lets say because rendering was long and boring or I needed to find some images or I wanted to play a game for few min to relax from work and constant switching between them was quite a nuisance.

 

I went with 4770k, and it is great, I had one amd couple years before and was really disapointed with the performance, but things may have changed, with this one but reading reviews, people are always complaining about them so it is your choice

 

If you are going to use GPU based renderer, than maybe titan would be a better choice because it has 6gb of memory and even you will have 2x770 4gb it wont use total of 8gb it will only be able to use 4gb of it.

[Chris MacDonald]

If you are going to use GPU based renderer, than maybe titan would be a better choice because it has 6gb of memory and even you will have 2x770 4gb it wont use total of 8gb it will only be able to use 4gb of it.

 

The titan pushes the build over budget and would mean cutting items out elsewhere.

[adrianmonk]

2x 770 4GB = £730

1x Titan = £780

not such a huge difference

 

2x 770 will be much better choice for games

[numerobis]

...worth noting that the 9370 is 8 core)

The AMD "8-core" is no real 8-core, it's only AMD marketing. I will quote myself from another thread some days ago...

... They can be roughly compared to intels quad cores + hyperthreading. But only for multi core performance. The single thread performance is much lower! (~35-40% at comparable clock rates).

The chip is a bit different compared to intels real cores + vitual (HT) cores. AMD uses "modules" that combine two cores with one shared FPU and cache. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_(microarchitecture)

So it would be more correct to speak of 4 modules than eight cores...

 

Here are some benchmarks (only FX8xxx no 9xxx):

Multicore: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2012/-02-Cinebench-11.5,3143.html

Singlecore: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2012/-01-Cinebench-11.5,3142.html

 

The FX9000 series is clocked higher than the FX8xxx and the intel chips, but still slower than intel (but with a much higher power draw)

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-6.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-3.html

 

So i would say, for a render node: maybe - if you want to save some bucks. But for a workstation: intel!

 

 

-32GB DDR3 2400MHz ram

1600MHz is enough. There is almost NO difference using DDR3 2400 (for a workstation)

 

-Nvidia k2000 or Nvidia 4GB 770 (x2)

which apps?

 

-Primary HDD: 1TB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive

i would definitely go with a SSD instead! Maybe Samsung 840 Pro

 

-850W PSU?

depends on the number of cards and if you plan to overclock... for only one GTX770 even with overclocking a good 600-650W should be enough.

 

Dual boot should be no problem. But i don't know if you would need 2 licenses to activate both. Maybe you could install one, then activate it and then clone it to a second (identical) partition/SSD/HDD. But i don't know...

[Chris MacDonald]

The AMD "8-core" is no real 8-core, it's only AMD marketing.

 

Damn, didn't notice that - I knew that the i7's & i5's used hyperthreading, but Intel never market them as being 8 core because of it. They differentiate between threads and cores. Intel it is then.

 

1600MHz is enough. There is almost NO difference using DDR3 2400 (for a workstation)

 

Perhaps, but the price difference between the two isn't huge in the grand scheme of things (~£20 to £30)

 

which apps?

 

3DS Max, VRay, Cubase 6.5, Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere

 

i would definitely go with a SSD instead! Maybe Samsung 840 Pro

 

I'm looking for a minimum of 500Gb for the system drive, due to the enormous file sizes my work produces, both visual and audio. The price of large SSD's is still prohibitive, plus the momentus XT has 8gb NAND storage for hot data. So super fast read/write times for regularly accessed files.

 

if you plan to overclock...

 

I do not.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Multi-card setups: VRam cannot be shared between GPUs. Same goes for single cards with more than one GPU cores on them (GTX 690, Radeon 7990 etc). The fact that with 2x 770 4GBs you will have 8GB of VRam in your system, doesn't mean it you can load anything past the actual capacity of each card. Same would be with 4x 2GB cards etc. Each card has to load everything independently and do its trick independently.

　

 

SLI or CFX don't change that. You link the cards to "sync" them, it is not like RAID where you virtually combine things to work simultaneously. VRay RT or other progressive, GPU accelerated renderers don’t need or care about SLI/CFX to work with all compatible cards. Actually you don’t even need to have the same kind of cards for them to collaborate.

 

　

Finally, 256bit cards like the 670/680/770 – when gaming – cannot effectively access more than 2GBs of Ram*.

Even with multi-monitor gaming setups, 2GB cards perform identically with the 4GB variants, and this has been tested and proven IRL by various sources. 4GB versions might be nice for GPGPU, but redundant in gaming- always for 256bit cards.

Radeon 79xx cards and GK110 cards like the 780 & Titan are 384bit and play fine with larger buffers.

 

At the end, yes, 2x 770s will beat the Titan in gaming, but will also be pulling more than 60% more power doing so, for far less than 60% performance gains. Same for GPGPU - The theoretic advantage with stock clocks approaches 40% in favor of the 770 duo over a Titan, in reality it is a bit less as the Titan turboboosts (and overclocks) higher (% wise) so you will be looking at 25-30% difference.

 

*note that keeping more than 2GB worth of ram chips feeding you data simultaneously is different than having more than 2GB worth of data in your card. Windows will page more than 2GBs in some cases, and monitoring software like GPU-Z will report that, but real life tests prove that there is zero performance or quality difference. Again - for GAMING, and ofc viewport acceleration, not GPGPU.

 

K2000 vs. 770(s) : Depends on the program and scene complexity - for viewport. For GPGPU, the K2000 cannot even come close being a contender.

For most demanding viewports tho, especially openGL based, will humiliate all GTX cards. BTW, the performance difference between GTX cards in programs like Maya or Solidworks, is negligible. Less than 10% increase between a 660 (non Ti) and a GTX Titan in fixed benchmarks like SpecAPC or Specviewperf.

 

4770K vs. 9370 - No contest. Me being an AMD fan, I have to admit, there is no contest. Intel wins hands down.

 

PSU: Single card (any card) 650W is more than enough. More than one cards keep adding 100-150W per mid range card, 200W for high end ones if you plan on overclocking them (even slightly). That's all for exteme cases tho, as in real life you won't be stressing CPU and GPU(s) 100% simultaneously, so your real power draw will be in the 300W range for one card and a i7 quad, or about 450-500W with two cards. Overclocking changes the game, and can literally double those figures.

[adrianmonk]

I'm looking for a minimum of 500Gb for the system drive, due to the enormous file sizes my work produces, both visual and audio. The price of large SSD's is still prohibitive, plus the momentus XT has 8gb NAND storage for hot data. So super fast read/write times for regularly accessed files.

 

Why do you have to keep project files on the main drive?

 

I have mine configured this way:

1. 256GB 840 pro - system and programs

2. 2TB Black - Work files, films, whatever else.

3. 1.5TB Green - Backups.

 

If the app you are using insists on keeping it's stuff on the main drive and there is no option to change it in the settings, just make symbolic link to second drive and you're done. This is working nicely for me and keeps my SSD from wearing off to quickly.

[Dimitris Tolios]

keeps my SSD from wearing off to quickly.

 

There is no realistic workload for a basic user that would threaten modern MLC based drives like the 830 and 840 Pro.

Actual stress testing from XtremeSystems - in a workload designed to kill the drives it is tested on - had a 256GB Samsung SSD 830 at more than 6,000TiB of writes. Its WLC hit zero at 828TiB of writes, which means its endurance is over seven times higher than what the SMART values predicted. That doesn't mean all drives are as durable but especially SSDs from NAND manufacturers (e.g. Intel, Crucial/Micron, Samsung etc.) seem to be more durable than what the SMART values and datasheets indicate.

 

Under normal workloads, a TLC drive like the "vanilla" 840 (non-pro) is expected to last almost 10 years.

MLC based NAND of the same quality - like those in the 840 Pro, should last at least 3 times that, or 30 years - given the workload in a decade from now has anything to do with today's - right?

 

If the test data for that 830 are true (and those numbers are repeated with drives from multiple manufacturers), it would actually take almost 2 centuries to kill the drive. And by killing, in SSD world, we mean no more writes...you should be able to read data from it just fine!

[numerobis]

i think the last time i watched this thread at XS the 830 was at 2000TiB... LOL 6000TiB!

[Dimitris Tolios]

i think the last time i watched this thread at XS the 830 was at 2000TiB... LOL 6000TiB!

 

Yes, it is nuts...

K, the figures above are unreal, but I believe it is safe to say that pretty much any SSD from respectable sources/brands made the last couple of years will probably last long after the technical obsolesence of any workstation built today.

 

Yes, there is wear, but much like there is wear in any solid state component. You don't need to worry that your CPU will wear out and die - unless you overclock and more importantly over-volt it VERY high, you don't need to worry for your RAM chips, your don't need to worry for your GPU die itself. Mechanical parts (like fan motors and HDDs) and electric capacitors will probably lead to the system dying - not the chips wearing out.

It is almost the same with SSDs after all.

[Chris MacDonald]

So we're saying an SSD is worth the cost, compared to a hybrid drive?

[Dimitris Tolios]

So we're saying an SSD is worth the cost, compared to a hybrid drive?

Worth the cost...(?)

 

Depends on what you are doing, and how deep you are willing to go in your pocket.

 

You being a video editor, dealing with lots of video 1080p and soon 4K streams of video simultaneously etc - yes, kinda hard to have a local HDD array support the required throughoutput. Pros in this field have been using not just SATA SSDs, but PCIe SSD drives for quite some time now.

 

Is it cheap? No, def. not, but they actually use it for more than launching apps or initiating a render a couple of seconds faster.

 

 

 

Hybrid HDDs, are doing just the latter. Usually based on an already high-end HDD drive, the small NAND addition monitors your disk's activity and moves the often used files in the SSD portion for them to load faster in the coming times for them to be recalled/accessed. So, for stuff that do happen often, as launching say your 3DS exe and the most common dlls for it, or routines your OS calls for common tasks and/or reboots, the storage feels (and is) reacting much much faster than a regular HDD of the same generation - again, on those repetitive tasks. For stuff it is accessing for the 1st or 2nd time, it is indifferent.

 

 

Now, for storage itself...it depends. 3DS files are rarely ginormous. Those could be sniffed by the Hybrid’s HDD bios and be loaded into the Cache…but remember, it is only 8GB, and only the most accessed files will be loaded to it…a scene and a few assets, sure. Some executable from this and that, ofcourse.

 

 

 

If you are working with huge files approaching or surpassing a GB in size, often in HD video projects, the HDD will probably never choose to "NAND" them…

 

Also, for really large, sequential reads and writes – what probably those files should be as a workload if you are defragging your drives every now and then, you are at the sweet-spot for HDD performance. Unless you are dealing with multiple streams of uncompressed footage, a single HDD will do fine.

 

 

 

So, in a nutshell after my morning rant…if you want the faster HDD you can get to make your applications feel faster, you get a Hybrid drive. Good $/GB, nice boosts in loading apps, maps in games and small projects. The NAND portion is useless for a storage drive, storing MP3s, movies and large files in general.

 

 

 

If you have to have 1TB of space, then ofc $700+ 1TB SSDs won’t be a great value for a home workstation.

 

 

 

If you really need the speed, you should weigh it, and see if a 240/256GB SSD can suit your needs. Let me say upfront that if you are loading your PC with Win7/8 (not that OSX is that thinner), full adobe suite, 3D CAD suites and/or this and that, the 120-128GB drives will be too small…70-90GB of space could go just for the basic program and OS installations. That leaves you with 100-120GB or so for really fast storage for your current projects, which should be enough, while you maintain a 1-2TB HDD drive for permanent storage, and the rest of your "staff" that don’t need to be accessed @ 500MB/s.