isagreg Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 (edited) Currently have an ancient (2008) workstation: CPU: 2x Xeon E5420 (2x quad core 2.5GHz) RAM: 16GB GPU: nVidia Quadro FX 1700 HDD: 250Gb + 500Gb + 500Gb OS: Windows XP 64bit Soft: CAD, 3dsmax+VRay, Photoshop Need something that will be at least two times faster. Should I look at Xeons or Core i7s? Thanks Edited January 29, 2014 by isagreg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 This is an old system, so you can get roughly double the performance with either a Xeon or a i7 system , and depending on your budget and/or willing to overclock much more than double. Using a less than "perfect" but convenient comparison measure, Cinebench, we can see a 2x E5420 would score around 4.9~5.0 points (all threads). That's a single threaded performance of around 0.6 CB points, when modern i7s and Xeons easily do above 1.6 CB points Multithreaded performance is roughly: i7-4930K - 10.95 i7-4770K - 8.08 i7-3770K - 7.98 A 4771/4770K will be the current "king" in single threaded performance (roughly 3x your current) regardless of price. 2P Xeons are faster than i7s if you go for the good models in multithreaded, but slower in single threaded. What is you budget? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isagreg Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 Thanks, This is a company computer, so no overclocking. The budget is "the less the better", in 2008 we spent more than $4,000 on the above computer, so let's say $4,000-ish. It's a modeling AND rendering computer, so multithreaded performance is important too. According to your numbers one i7-4930K is 2x faster than what I have? I kinda doubt that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 Its a 2x faster in multithreaded (all numbers are in stock clocks), and close to 2.5x in single. You can do a very very decent 4930K tower with half your budget. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isagreg Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 (edited) Thanks, One thing that bothers me a little is that 4930K is older generation Ivy Bridge E and 4770 is newer Haswell, but only quad core. Should I be concerned? And is it NOT possible to build a decent dual Xeon tower with my budget? Edited January 30, 2014 by isagreg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joelmcwilliam Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5420+%40+2.50GHz Thanks, One thing that bothers me a little is that 4930K is older generation Ivy Bridge E and 4770 is newer Haswell, but only quad core. Should I be concerned? No. The amount of money you want to spend depends on how professional you are. The fact that you are still working on a system from 2008 gives me some clues. The trick is to not spend too much cash and get only what you need. In a few years your system will be old and needs upgrades. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 (edited) Thanks, One thing that bothers me a little is that 4930K is older generation Ivy Bridge E and 4770 is newer Haswell, but only quad core. Should I be concerned? And is it NOT possible to build a decent dual Xeon tower with my budget? It has been the case for some time that the "Extreme/Enthusiast" i7 Line, along with the Xeon architecture that those derive from are a generation "behind" the consumer side of things. It was the case when you bought your current machine in 2009, it is still now. The basis of the architecture might be older, but in most cases those CPUs include features that might be more than one generation ahead of the consumer line, so consider them a hybrid of "trusted" and "new" technologies. That said, it was the case and it will probably be for some time, that the higher clocked, top of the line quads will be faster than the equivalent hex or octa cores, as the latter are limited to the thermal envelope set by the industry requirements. The goal is to increase compute density with the same thermal requirements, and apparently you cannot linearly scale those past some clocks: a 3.4GHz Octa-core Ivy bridge, is not "just double" the TDP of a quad etc, unless there are hand-picked / perfectly binned chips etc. That's the case for my fav s2011 IV-EP Xeon, the E5-2687W, that is an 8-core with 3.4GHz base speed. Issue is, this is a $2,200 part. Long story short - you can make a 2P Xeon workstation with $4,000. It will just have to utilize relatively slow CPUs to keep the cost within those limits, and you will end up with barely beating a fast 1P i7/Xeon in multithreaded, but lack quite much in single threaded performance. For Cgarchitect related applications, almost 100% of the modeling process and a big portion of the viewport fluidity are still bound to single threaded performance. But there are little choices... A 6-core E5-2630 V2, a CPU easily fitting the bill (@ $650 ea), is a 2.6GHz part. The 8-core E5-2650 V2, 8-core 2.6GHz @ $1,300 ea. won't do much more in single threaded. Just the same. If you go with Sandy-EP (wooooo, 2 generations behind Haswell, I'm scared), your could squeeze a couple of E5-1660 six-cores, which @ 3.3GHz base / 3.9GHz turbo and $1,100 each, will at least give you identical oomph with a 3930K/3960X (virtually undetectably slower than a 4930K for the most part). Multithreaded performance will be nearly double, but already we had to spent 4 times the cost of a 4930K to get us there, just in CPUs. RAM also needs to be "adapted": as CPUs increase from 1 to 2, we end up having 2x memory controllers. RAM cannot be seamlessly shared between the 2 CPUs, and if you truly need a 2P for heavy rendering tasks with large scenes and rich textures, you might have to buy almost 2x the RAM. i.e. if you would go for 32GB of Ram for the 4930K, 64GB would be a fair comparison for the 2P (we are not splitting hairs here, just for simplicity's shake). Good news is, that regular unregistered RAM works fine with SB-EP/IB-EP, so you could go with 4x 8GB Dimms for each CPU, and keep the cost down a tad. Registered dims, still @ 1600 Mhz 8GB sticks (to go for quad channel 32GB @ each CPU), would be $800. give or take. Regular UDIMMs should cost $600 or less for 8 x 8GB sticks 1600/1866. Edited February 7, 2014 by dtolios Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isagreg Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 The amount of money you want to spend depends on how professional you are. The fact that you are still working on a system from 2008 gives me some clues. So as soon as my company gets me a new computer I suddenly become a better professional? That's how you measure professionalism? Now THAT gives me some clues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isagreg Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 Thanks Dimitris for the advice. I certainly don't wanna overpay. I'll go with 4930K then. Now I need your expert opinion on: -Motherboard -Memory (I'm thinking 32Gb) -GPU (GTX 770 4Gb or GTX 780 3Gb) -Case + PSU For hard drives I'm thinking Samsung 840 Pro 256Gb SSD for system and couple of WD Black 2 or 3 Tb. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isagreg Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 HP ENVY Phoenix 810-150se OS: Windows 8.1 Pro 64 CPU: Intel Core i7-4930K GPU: 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 RAM: 32GB DDR3-1600MHz (4x8Gb) HDD 1: 256GB SSD HDD 2: 2TB 7200RPM SATA HDD 3: 2TB 7200RPM SATA Optical Drive: Blu-ray Reader & SuperMulti DVD burner Card reader: 15-in-1 Multi-slot Media Card Reader, 4 USB Ports (Front/Top), Audio (Front 2 USB2.0, Top 2 USB3.0) PSU: 600W Liquid cooling Total: $3,070 Looks overpriced considering that they use cheaper parts, doesn't it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 Yes, most OEM systems are usually a tad on the pricey side taking into account upgrade-ablity and quality of components, but maybe for your office environment a complete build/warranty approach could be more desirable than a DIY/custom build? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isagreg Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 Either way will work. If custom built machine with better parts costs less then we'll go with custom built. Now I need your opinion on: -Motherboard -Memory -GPU (GTX 770 4Gb or GTX 780 3Gb) -Case + PSU Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joelmcwilliam Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 usefull links below to get an idea if you will get twice the speed while rendering http://nl.hardware.info/productinfo/2294/dell-poweredge-2950#tab:specificaties http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/1214/14/nieuwe-quad-core-server-cpus-amd-barcelona-vs-intel-harpertown-benchmark-cinebench-95-en-10 http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-FX-Processor-Review-Can-Bulldozer-Unearth-AMD-Victory/Render-Tests http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/intel-ci7-3970x-p2.html http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/4585/2/48-desktop-en-66-mobiele-processors-getest-in-cinebench-115-resultaten http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/4756/9/intel-core-i7-4960x---4930k--4820k-ivy-bridge-e-review-high-end-naar-22nm-benchmarks-cinebench-115 http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/4789/9/intel-xeon-e5-2600-v2-review-ivy-bridge-ep-voor-servers-benchmarks-windows-hpc-3d-rendering cpu: i7 4930k cpu cooler: corsair h100i/ corsair h110 mobo: asus x79 is populair Look at several mobo's and look at the features they have and what you need. Then do a google search. ram: go to the manufacturer site of your mobo or the site of kingston or crucial and look at what they recommend for the mobo. 1600 mhz or 1866 mhz is fine. minimum of 16 gb. gpu: need more info about what you do with your pc, software, workflow, preferences (gpu cooler: if you start to stress the gpu a lot and things get hot you can look at after market gpu coolers like from Arctic Accelero) case: there are so many good cases. You can look at cooler master, antec, fractal design. If you want to buy a big watercooler for your cpu (like corsair h110) then your case has to have space for it. Go to the manufacturer site and have a look. Examples of good cases: Antec Eleven Hundred Cooler Master CM 690 III Corsair Carbide 400/500R Corsair Carbide Air 540 Corsair Vengeance C70 Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 Fractal Design Define R4 Thermaltake Urban S41 psu: seasonic (g-series) or cooler master v series, like Cooler Master V Series V700 fans: ad/replace casefans if things get hot or noisy (for example Corsair Quiet Edition: ,looks cool too, i mean the fans) last: read previous topics. all the info is there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyderSK Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 If you go with Sandy-EP (wooooo, 2 generations behind Haswell, I'm scared), your could squeeze a couple of E5-1660 Probably you could go for a dual E5-1660 I re-read your post twice to make sure you're not in fact suggesting two computers, but dual-socketed Xeons. Well, the high clock and low price should obviously tick that's it not dual-socketable CPU but only rebranded 3930k. But the naming convention is identical for many years, the first numeric is the number of sockets possible. E5-1xxx/2xxx/4xxx E7-8xxx,etc.. It's foolish to build dual-xeon under 6000 dollars, unless you feel adventurous and are able to get engineering samples grade, but really, that's stupid anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 I re-read your post twice to make sure you're not in fact suggesting two computers, but dual-socketed Xeons. Well, the high clock and low price should obviously tick that's it not dual-socketable CPU but only rebranded 3930k. But the naming convention is identical for many years, the first numeric is the number of sockets possible. E5-1xxx/2xxx/4xxx E7-8xxx,etc.. You are absolutely right. I was juggling with more Intel ARK windows than I could handle I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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