Workstation setup for daily jobs.

[everstefan1]

Hi to everyone Im upgrading two workstations and I have a budget of $2500 for each.

 

Im not triying to build a personal renderfarm since we have a small one in house for final jobs. For us, most of the time we invest is in the work in process of the job, so we need an excellent video card for modeling, map preview and overall navigation thru models. And of course preview renderings are very important so a fast processor will help.

 

The issue now is the processor and video card, all the systems will work with win 7 64 pro, two sata3 ssd samsung evo 840 120gb in raid 0, 16gb of ddr3 1600mhz and water cooling. At this point we have three cpu on mind:

 

Intel Core i7-4960X 3.6ghz 15mb(single cpu, 6core, 12 threads) $1100

Fastest in budget but only one processor.

 

Intel Xeon E5-4610 v2 2.3ghz 16mb (single cpu, 8core, 16 threads) $1300

Fast, stable, workhorse, long productive life since it can be upgraded to two processors, cons... price only can afford one.

 

Dual AMD Opteron 6272 2.1ghz 16mb (dual cpu, total 32 core, 32 threads) $615/ $1350

Not so fast but with 16cores and at the price we can afford two cpus, how fast 32 cores can be??

 

For video cards two in consideration:

 

Nvidia Quadro K4000 3gb $780

 

FirePro W7000 4GB $760

 

I hope I got my self clear since is an important investment for us and we want to pick the right hardware.

Edited May 20, 2014 by everstefan1

[John Dollus]

The i7 will be a better performer for a workstation.

You can search on here for previous discussions but getting a single cpu xeon defeats the purpose and if you don't get both at the same time, odds are you won't add another one before it's time to change it out completely.

If you wait a couple more months, prices should fall a bit as the new chips are released.

[numerobis]

Intel Core i7-4960X 3.6ghz 15mb(single cpu, 6core, 12 threads) $1100

Fastest in budget but only one processor.

The 4930K offers ~96% of the performance of the 4960X for almost half the price...

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-4960x-4930k-4820k_7.html

 

And the 4930K can be overclocked easily to the same speed... (or even more if wanted)

 

 

Intel Xeon E5-4610 v2 2.3ghz 16mb (single cpu, 8core, 16 threads) $1300

Fast, stable, workhorse, long productive life since it can be upgraded to two processors, cons... price only can afford one.

The Xeon E5-46xx is for 4 CPU setups not 2 CPU. E5-26xx v2 would be the right one. But for a workstation you would want one with a high core clock to get a high single core performance.

(for one Xeon only E3/E5-16xx v2. The Xeon E5-1680 v2 is an 8-core for one socket, but runs only at 3GHz...)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors#Xeon_E5-1xxx_v2_.28uniprocessor.29

 

 

Dual AMD Opteron 6272 2.1ghz 16mb (dual cpu, total 32 core, 32 threads) $615/ $1350

Not so fast but with 16cores and at the price we can afford two cpus, how fast 32 cores can be??

This is not 16 cores but 8 modules where each module consists of 2 integer cores sharing one floating point core. So it is more like 8 cores with hyperthreding... And including the much lower per core performance of maybe -40% compared to intel the Xeons will be faster - especially for single threaded operations. And this Opteron you mentioned here has only 2.3GHz... here is a Dual Opteron 6272 compared to a single i7 4930K:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Opteron+6272&cpuCount=2

 

I would vote for the 4930K at this budget...

Or build a dual Xeon system with higher clock speeds - but as john said, buying one now and the second one later can lead to compatibility problems (even if the have the same stepping).

 

Generally it's not the best time to buy a new system because the next generation is around the corner... so if you could wait a few months for Haswell-E/EP: new socket/platform (Broadwell-E compatible), first 8-core i7, DDR4

Edited May 21, 2014 by numerobis

[everstefan1]

Thank you for you extensive reply numerobis, of course your change of the 4930k is the best for the budget, that give us more room to decide between MB.

 

Unfortunatelly we cant wait till new chips arrive, for now this rigs have much to offer and we can start saving for the next year.

 

Thanks a lot!!

[shauncarollo]

I love my 4930k oc'd to 4.6. It would be really wasteful to get the 4960X in my opinion.

[jasonstewart]

I agree my 4930 is at 4.5 and it is a beast.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Will you be overclocking or not?

 

For general modeling and occasional renderings, a non overclocked 49xx (s2011) is not considerably faster - actually it will be slower in pretty much anything but rendering itself - vs a 4790K (s1150) while being considerably more expensive.

 

Also, what kind of software will you be using to warrant the expense of these GPUs?

[Zdravko Barisic]

^

The main adventage of using socket 2011 is chance to use 64GB of RAM.

[everstefan1]

Also, what kind of software will you be using to warrant the expense of these GPUs?

 

Its for 3dmax and vray, heavy polygon models.... And yes I will overclok it, thats a must!!

[numerobis]

one more thing... i would really go with 32GB instead of 16GB today. Sure, id depends on your needs, but you need quad channel for socket 2011 so this means be 4x8 or 4x4GB. And 1866MHz modules would be the better choice for Ivy-E.